Vegetarian Thai Green Curry with home made curry paste
This thai green curry is simple, delicious, highly nutritious, and utterly satisfying. Kids and adults, all seem to like this recipe without any fuss. It is packed with antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals.
Servings: 6 people
Cost: $10
Equipment
- Heavy Bottom Pan
- Food Processor or Grinder
Ingredients
For the curry paste
- 50 g Thai Sweet Basil Or 1 cup Fresh Basil Leaves
- 20 g Kafir Lime Leaves About 15 leaves
- 2½ inch Fresh Galangal Root You can replace with ginger if galangal is not available.
- 2 Shallots
- 2 stalks Lemon Grass
- 50 g Fresh Coriander Leaves optional
- 3 Garlic Cloves
- 1 Red Chili optional or black pepper sprinkled on the top per picture
- 1 inch Fresh turmeric root optional
- 2 Small lime
For the curry
- 200 ml Fresh Coconut Cream or Milk Coconut cream gives thicker curry and milk gives thin curry. So you can increase milk quantity to 300 ml.
- 2 tsp Rock Salt to taste
- 1 tbsp Jaggery or Brown Sugar optional
- 1 Medium Carrot
- 200 g Firm Tofu or Silken Tofu
- 200 g Hairy Gourd or White Gourd
- 100 g Eggplant
- 1 Medium Tomato
- 5 Long Beans
- 1 tbsp Pure Cooking Oil Olive oil, mustard oil, ghee, or coconut oil
Instructions
Making the curry paste
- Cut the lime and seperate out the seeds. We will add the peel of the lime to the paste as well, so no need to squeeze it out.
- Corasely cut the lemon grass, shallots, ginger, and turmeric.
- Wash the basil leaves stalks and seperate the leaves from the stem. Discard the stems as they are sturdy.
- Wash the coriander leaves. You can use the stems for coriander as it is pretty soft and crunchy.
- Coarsely chop the leaves.
- Add all the ingredients to a grinder with 2 tbsp water.
- Run the grinder till you get a smooth paste.
Preparing the veggies and tofu
- Wash all the vegetables well.
- Cut the carrots into small pieces. Cut the beans into about 1 inch long pieces.
- Wash the firm tofu, squeeze out excess water and cut it into small pieces. If using silken tofu then no need to squeeze out water.
- Peel the white gourd and cut it into small pieces, about 1 inch cube.
- Cut eggplant and tomato into small pieces for the curry, about 1 inch cube.
Making the curry
- Heat oil in a pan. Add the cut veggies and salt. Do not add tofu yet.
- Cover and let them cook on low heat for about 5-7 mins.
- Now add the curry paste, tofu, salt, and coconut milk. Mix well, cover, and let it cook on low heat for another 5-7 mins.
- Keep stirring and checking in the middle that the mix is not boiling out of the pan.
- Close the heat when veggies turn soft. Add the jaggery powder. Mix well.
- Sprinkle black pepper on the top if you didn't add chili to the curry paste.
- Serve hot with steamed rice. Enjoy!
Notes
You can also set aside half of the basil leaves and kafir lime leaves rather than adding all of them to the curry paste. Finely chop these leaves and add them to the curry for more flavour. If you follow this step, then add the chopped leaves in the second round with tofu and coconut milk.