Vegetable Thai Yellow Curry

One of my favorite activities is to go to a near by all purpose store and check out their spice section. The store stocks some of the amazing spices (both ground and whole) from all over the globe. Have you heard of Tanzanian meat masala? Or how about Spanish Paella spice? The place where i live is full of people living from different parts of the globe. So you understand why such stores.

Few weeks back when I happened to go there, I found vegetarian Thai curry (ready made) paste packet that was exported from Bangkok. One good habit I’ve inherited from my father is to check ingredients and other details before buying any thing. Carefully going through all the ingredients, my eyes stopped on one particular ingredient called Fish sauce. How can the product be certified as vegetarian when it contains fish sauce? To my shock the supervisor, whom I reported the issue wasn’t even aware of things. I made my way out with a decision not to visit the store again. Two days back when I was googling, see what I came to know…

Later that night I made Thai yellow curry. It took me almost ½ hr to find a perfect recipe. No, I didn’t buy the ready made masala. Still have my doubts. The recipe is taken from here. I've made few adjustments. Picture quality is not good, sorry about that. vegetarian fish sauce. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Sorry for the picture quality. Camera betteries needed charge so I used my mobile phone camera to click the picture.

Ingredients for the paste

Medium Onion 1 (peeled and quartered)

Finger length Dry Red Chilies 8-10 (soaked in warm water for 20 mins)

Ginger 1½ inch

Coriander Leaves 1 cup
Large Garlic Flakes 4-6
Stalk of Lemongrass 1 (trimmed)
Sugar ½ tbsp

Garam Masala Powder (I used Everest Brand)
Coriander Seed Powder 2 teaspoons
Cumin Seed Powder 1 teaspoon

Turmeric Powder1 tsp
Pepper Powder 1 teaspoon

Lime Juice 2 tbl spoons

Salt 1 teaspoon

 

Ingredients for the Curry

Mixed Vegetables 2 cups (I have used 1 medium Potato, 1 medium Carrot, Few French Beans, eggplant, and Green Peas)

Spring Onions 1 (chopped)
Coconut Milk 1 cup (200ml)

Yellow Curry Paste 2 tbl spoons

Kaffir Lime Leaves 2
White Sugar ½ t spoon

Soya Sauce 1 t spoon

Coriander leaves
Salt to taste

Directions

Add the vegetables, remaining coconut milk, soy sauce, sugar, and salt. Mix all the ingredients well so that each piece is coated with coconut and curry. Cover and cook till vegetables are tender. Garnish it with coriander leaves. Make sure that the vegetables aren’t over cooked.

On low flame, heat around 100ml coconut milk in a heavy bottom pan. Keep stirring till it starts to thicken. Add the paste and keep stirring for 2-3 minutes till coconut milk and its raw smell disappears.
 

The original recipe asks for galangal that I avoided because of its strong flavor (just can’t stand), I’ve avoided roasting seeds and instead used the ready made powders, though roasting and grounding enhances the flavor. I’ve reduced number of lemon stalks and Kaffir lime leaves (again too much flavor), even brown sugar is substituted by ordinary white sugar. I used vegetables that were already at home.

 I loved the taste of the curry. The best part of making this curry was that most of the ingredients were already in my pantry and it could be eaten with plain white rice.