Posts Tagged ‘curry’
Red Duck Curry
I have written elsewhere about the different food memories I have and how a dish becomes indelibly tied to an event. Recently I was visiting my parents for a long weekend and my father gave me a cookbook on Thai cooking that I have long admired. At nearly 700 pages long, Thai Food by David Thompson is quite a definitive tome and well worth the price.
One of the long standing memories I have of Thai cuisine is a meal of Duck in Red Curry I had in Christchurch at an establishment called Annes’ Thai. It was sweet, sour, spicey, salty and rich. It is one of those meals that are just devine and the flavour has always stayed with me.
Page 312 of the Thai Food cookbook has a recipe for Red Duck Curry. While the version I had was similar, it also had small cheery tomatoes, thai basil and small chunks of pineapple. These may yet find a place in this recipe. I will let you know.
Ingredients
Paste:
7 dried long red chillies, deseeded, soaked and drained
large pinch of salt
2 tablespoons chopped lemongrass
1/2 tablespoon finely chopped kaffir lime zest
2 tablespoons chopped red shallot
1 tablespoon roasted and chopped red shallot
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
1/2 teaspoon shrimp paste
10 white peppercorns
1 1/2 teaspoons coriander seeds, roasted and ground
1 teaspoon cumin seeds, roasted and ground
1/4 nutmeg, coarsely pounded and briefly roasted
5 cloves, roasted and ground
2 duck legs about 125 grams each
3 cups coconut milk
1 cup coconut cream
1 teaspoon – 1 tablespoon palm sugar
2 tablespoon fish sauce
4 kaffir lime leaves, torn
2long green chillis, diagonally sliced
handful of thai basil leaves
Method
First make the paste by either pounding in a mortar and pestle or in a blender the paste ingredients. If needed, loosing with a little water, never oil.
Bone the duck and cut the meat into 1cm cubes. Wash the bones then chop and simmer in the coconut milk for 30 minutes. Strain and add the coconut cream to this coconut milk, bring to the boil and add the meat. Simmer gently until the meat in tender and cream is oily – about 10 minutes then remove from the heat.
Spoon about a tablespoon of the coconut cream and oil from this pot into a separate pan. Fry 3 tablespoons of the paste in this, moistening often with more coconut cream from the other pot, until fragrant. Season with palm sugar and fish sauce. Incorporate all the coconut liquid and duck, and simmer for 2-3 minutes. Add lime leaves, chillies and basil. Check the seasoning:this rather rich, oily, and spicy curry should taste salty, hot and sweet.
Serve with rice.