Recipe: Panang pork curry

(Panang muu)

Warm up your tastebuds with delectable Thai flavours. Lisa Featherby shows you how to make some curry dishes from one homemade red curry paste.

Serves 4

1 cup (250ml) coconut cream
1 cup (250ml) coconut milk
1/3 cup basic Thai red curry paste
500g pork fillet, thinly sliced diagonally
2 tbs palm sugar
2 tbs fish sauce
8 kaffir lime leaves, 4 torn, 4 shredded
1/2 cup Thai basil
1 long red chilli, thinly sliced
Steamed rice or noodles, to serve

1. Combine coconut cream and milk in a bowl. Pour 1/2 the mixture into a wok and cook over high heat for 6-8 minutes or until oil begins to separate. Add curry paste and cook for 2 minutes or until fragrant.
2. Add pork to wok and stir-fry for 2-4 minutes or until cooked, then add remaining coconut mixture and bring to the boil. Stir in sugar, fish sauce and torn kaffir lime leaves. Simmer for 2-3 minutes, then add 1/2 the basil leaves. Serve curry scattered with remaining basil, shredded kaffir lime leaves and chilli, on top of rice or rice noodles.

Cook’s tips

• Nothing beats freshly made curry paste, however if you are short of time we recommend the Mae Ploy brand, available from most major super-markets and Asian food stores.
• Use a good-quality fish sauce made only from anchovies (some brands are a mixture of fish extract, preservatives and sugar). It should have a dark colour with a reddish-brown tinge.
• Palm sugar is made by boiling sap collected from the coconut palm with water until it evaporates. It varies in colour and texture, from light straw to the darkest brown and can be soft or hard. Darker sugar has a stronger flavour. Substitute brown sugar.
• To rid curry pastes of their raw taste they need to be ‘fried’ first. In lieu of oil, Thais use coconut milk, which is simmered until the oil separates – this is called ‘splitting’ the coconut milk. The paste is then fried in the resulting oil, before adding other ingredients. To make a curry with a thick sauce, more coconut milk is required for splitting and less coconut milk is added later.

 

Recipes: Lisa Featherby   Photography: Andrew Lehmann   Styling: Michelle Noerianto.