Friday Food – 1

Here on Zelo Street we like our food. So, starting today, I’ll try and get a food related post onto the blog at the end of each week.

And today I shall be mainly talking about Thai curry. This should not be an alarming prospect for even the least culinary minded.

Many may have seen celebrity chefs putting together their Thai curry paste “long hand”, using a raft of spices and grinding the lot using pestle and mortar. Forget it. All of this can be replaced by the ready made variety which you can pick up at a specialist supermarket (I last bought Thai curry paste at the Wing Fat on Faulkner Street in central Manchester).

That makes everything else a lot easier.

The ingredient list can be varied to taste: I usually start by softening some onions and peppers in a little olive oil, but others will have their own favourites. Being naturally cautious, if I’m doing a chicken curry, the meat gets a pre-cook to make sure it’s done all the way through.

But the things it has to have are the Thai curry paste (so far, I’ve gone through Red, Yellow, Green, Masman and Panang) and coconut milk. The amount of the latter is a personal thing: some like to make their curries very milky and with less curry paste, while folks like me who like it hot (as it were) do less milk and more paste.

And to go with the curry, it has to be Thai sticky rice – as with the curry paste, the specialist supermarket is your friend here. Rinse it before cooking, and just drain it afterwards.

One last caution: if you have any left over, once it’s cooled down, get it into the fridge sharpish. It’s daft not to.