Alright, it’s January – it’s cold and we’re all a little more rotund from all the eating and drinking we did around the holidays. We need something warm and comforting to help stave off the cold, but we also need to get back to eating healthy again.
Luckily, we pulled out this green curry recipe from Bon Appetit and decided to make it one chilly Saturday, and it turned out pretty delicious. It’s not too difficult to make either, although you might have to look hard to find all the ingredients. We had to make some adjustments and modifications, but we’ll show you what we did.
This is what we used:
- Scallions
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 3 Mexican chiles
- Ginger
- Brined green peppercorns
- Turmeric
- Cilantro
- Mint
- Butter (or use coconut oil or a vegetable oil spread to make this vegan)
- 2 13 1/2-ounce cans of coconut milk
- Lime
- Dried lemongrass
- A package of rice noodles
- Swiss chard
- Sugar
First, we got out our food processor and threw in: 4 chopped scallions (the green parts only), 4 whole but smushed cloves of garlic, the chopped Mexican chiles, a 2-inch thick piece of chopped ginger, 2 teaspoons of the brined green peppercorns, 1/2 teaspoon of turmeric, 2 cups of torn cilantro leaves, 1/3 cup of mint leaves, and 2 tablespoons of water.
We blended all this together until everything was evenly mixed.
Then we added in 1/4 cup of melted butter and blended everything together again until we had a smooth sauce.
We poured this sauce into a pot and cooked it over medium heat for about 5 minutes.
We mixed in all of the coconut milk …
… along with 3 cups of water and the juice from half of our lime and let this mixture boil. Then we added a few pinches of the dried lemongrass, turned the heat down, and let everything simmer for about 25 minutes.
In the meantime, we cooked half the package of rice noodles by boiling them for six minutes, draining them, and rinsing them with cold water.
After the sauce was done simmering on the stove, we added in one bunch of chopped Swiss chard leaves and a tablespoon of sugar.
We cooked the Swiss chard only until it wilted and then took the curry off the stove.
We placed our rice noodles on the bottom of bowls and then ladled the curry over top along with some lime wedges and extra mint, and ate it like a fancy soup.
And there you have it – a veggie-filled, warm, spicy, comforting, and most importantly tasty meal. Making this was pretty easy – finding the ingredients was probably the hardest part, and we did end up having to make some practical substitutions. But this was delicious, and not too heavy, and it made us feel good to eat all these greens.
If you want to make this, we’d recommend finding a grocery store that carries products from Asia and the Caribbean and taking your time in hunting down what you need. Once you’ve got everything, you’re on your way to curry!