Thai Tea

The Friday before last had seen the end to a very busy but exciting week at work and the Friday evening afforded me the opportunity to catch up with old friend of mine who I worked with a few years previously. He has a taste for Far Eastern food down in no small part to the fact that his wife is Chinese.

This said I decided to make a Thai Curry as it was something that after a long day at work was quick to prepare but also very substantial.

I first took half a cauliflower and cut it up into several fairly small pieces about the size of the flowerhead of a dandelion. I next warmed some olive oil in the bottom of my wok on the hob and then added the cauliflower to it with two teaspoons of Thai Red Curry powder and two teaspoons of ground coriander. As I always say the way to get the best out of your spices is to apply them early in the cooking process and this meal was no exception. I stirred the cauliflower for around ten minutes until it started to soften a little and it was totally coated in the spices.

It was then time to add about eight ounces of cubed butternut squash and frozen quorn pieces. You can vary the recipe at this point by choosing to add some cubes of Tofu or alternatively some pieces of chicken. After stirring the quorn pieces and butternut squash cubes for five minutes I added the juice of one whole lime and also to bring out the sweet flavours in the curry three tablespoons of dark soy sauce.

The trick with this part of the preparation of the meal was to ensure the cauliflower, squash and quorn pieces softened without at the same time burning them too much. The best way to do this is to apply a medium heat to the wok and keep stirring the ingredients constantly.

After the food began to soften I added half a pint of chicken stock and simmered the food moderately while stirring it until it had absorbed a lot of the stock. I also added some frozen peas to the wok and started to simmer some noodles in another pan of water.

To help ensure that the food was soft enough to be edible and rich I added a tin of coconut milk to the wok and again simmered the until it had absorbed about half of the milk. Doing this also helped mean the mixture wasn't too runny when I served it.

Around the same as the contents of the wok were ready the noodles had also been simmering for enough time to be ready to serve. This said I shared out the noodles in two bowls and then added the curry mixture to the bowls as well. I also pulled out a mandatory bowl of prawn crackers to dip into the curry.

The sweetness of the soy sauce served to make sure the spices were flavoursome but not unecessarily overpowering while the milk lent a richness to this curry to make it substantial. In all the dish was a success and my friend ate all of his share quickly.