Friday, July 23, 2010

Green Curry or bust!

This week I decided i would try and be a bit adventurous and bought Thai green eggplants ( I admit it i bought them because i thought they were super cute - you know, the cuteness factor, always the best way to choose your food).


I have made thai curries plenty of times and thought these eggplants would be a fun addition, plus i thought I could be a little experimental and try out some new cooking techniques that would be a bit less fatty. Okay, I also admit, i didn't want to fall flat on my face with something super difficult for the first food entry on here. I read a couple of recipes and then decided to wing it (usually the way I cook). Most recipes said to quarter these bad boys before they went in, and so that is what I did. I also used onion, red pepper, an italian sweet pepper (also something new found at the market) tofu, and a mixture of other tiny eggplants. There was not a particular rhyme or reason to these ingredients other than i thought they were a good color mix and what happened to be in my fridge. Okay bear with me, I'm not the most exact measurer of things when I cook. This does sometimes bug my friends when they ask for my recipes and i act like a grandma and say i used almost a handful or two of this or that. Hopefully as the blog goes on i'll get a bit better at it.

I stir fried the vegetables with a small amount of oil and half a package of green curry paste, and then to try something new I added some boiling stock instead of more oil, when i thought it was going to stick to the pan. Yes that's right, I learned this trick from watching the chef at panda express. You never know where you might pick p something helpful!


I finished up by adding a can of coconut milk when the veggis were cooked through. I served the curry on top of some steamed rice. WhalaaH, a beautiful dinner.


Or so I thought. The curry was actually quite good, and i think the boiling stock worked really well, the eggplant cooked through way faster than normal ( a Rachel Ray style 30 minute meal) and I was able to use a significantly smaller portion of oil. But boy those little Thai eggplants were super seedy! I wish i had at least cut them in to eighths instead of quarters because they were big and the texture was a bit hard to get used to. They absorbed flavor better than the japanese eggplants I'm familiar with, but it might take me another dish to get used to all those seeds.