A week of two curries

Since I last blogged about eating in Hong Kong, I thought I would be a bit more adventurous when trying to cook Asian food. As a rule of thumb, I always assume that the way we cook a lot of Asian stuff here is not 'wrong' per se, just not 'authentic' (whatever that might mean). However, the thought crossed my mind recently when chatting about this with a friend (S) that it really shouldn't matter - there's no way we can get the type or quality of ingredients here, but that shouldn't hinder being adventurous in the kitchen. 

So that being said, I had a week of cooking two curries last week - one was a Thai massaman, rich with peanuts and chili, which I was so pleased with because I finally got round to making my first Thai curry paste. I always had in my head that making a paste from scratch would be labour intensive and not really worth it, but I really don't find a lot of the shop-bought versions particularly convincing, and having given it a go myself I can report back that so long as you are following a recipe, and constantly tasting, it's no problem at all. Although quite heavy with chilli, it got a generally good reception.

The second was a sweet potato and chickpea dhanzak that I modified with the addition of lentils, and chicken for the more veggie-phobic members of my family, and this also went down pretty well. I made this twice last week – the first time was quite mild, so I spiced it up with more fresh chili than the recipe stated the second time which I think added another dimension. But what do I know…

So unfortunately the recipe for the dhanzak is in a book (and I can’t really be bothered to photocopy it), but here’s a link to the recipe for the massaman paste I used: http://thaifood.about.com/od/thaicurrypasterecipes/r/massamanpaste.htm.)

M