Making Thai Chicken Curry

I woke up this morning to pouring rain pounding on the roof. It's been raining cats and dogs this weekend and the forecast states that more rain to come for the entire week. On a day like this, a pot of hot spicy soup feels like the perfect meal. I decided to make some Thai chicken curry.

I tend to improvise when I cook. For making Thai curry, you need some essential ingredients - Thai curry paste, coconut milk, and fish sauce. Everything else is up to your liking. Most recipes call for chicken breast for chicken curry, but I prefer dark meat, so I used chicken thigh meat. I also added some bamboo shoots, straw mushrooms, and green bell pepper to my curry. Usually you eat Jasmine rice with Thai dishes, but I only have Nishiki rice. I started cooking a couple cups of rice with the rice cooker as I prepped for the curry.

Here's how to make Thai curry:

Cut up the meat into bite size pieces and bell pepper into strips. Heat up a couple table spoons of oil, add a couple table of Thai curry paste (I use red curry) and saute the meat in the curry. If you like it super hot, add more curry paste or a couple pieces of chili. As the meat is almost cooked through, add half can of the coconut milk and fully cook the meat. Add bamboo shoots, straw mushrooms, and bell pepper strips to the pot and pour in the rest of coconut milk. If you like it soupier, add some water or chicken broth. If you like it thicker, you can use coconut cream instead of coconut milk. As everything is heated through, add a table spoon of fish sauce and a table spoon of palm sugar (or brown sugar if you don't have palm sugar handy). Stir the fish sauce and sugar into the curry and let it simmer for 5 minutes then you are done. The rice should be done cooking as well.

Pour a couple ladles of the coconut curry over some steamy hot rice, and you have the perfect meal for a cold raining day.