Panang Curry

If you've had a look at the Thai Curry Paste post, you'll see that Panang curry is actually just Red curry with peanuts, so really you can kill 2 birds with 1 stone here. Easy peasy.

The ingredients here for the paste is enough to make a few separate curries, as you only use a small amount of paste as the curry base (for those who like it averagely spicy, 1 large teaspoon per person is enough). The great thing about these curry pastes is they can be sealed and kept refrigerated for up to a month without losing any flavour.

Ingredients for curry paste

Lemongrass stem

Ginseng

Kaffir lime skin

Galangal (1 slice)

Turmeric (3 round slices - similar to carrot thickness)

Dried large red chilli (chopped)

Coriander seed (tspn)

Garlic (3 cloves)

Shallots (2)

This is the base for Red curry. For a tasty Panang curry, add a small cup of peanuts. Comes highly recommended :)

First things first, as you can see from this absolutely rubbish photo, you need to chop up all those ingredients really nice and small (lemongrass, gingseng, kaffir lime skin, galangal, turmeric, garlic) as you'll be the one pounding it into a smooth paste.

Add to the mortar along with the chopped chilli and coriander seeds, and get cracking! Once it starts to smoothen a bit, add in the cup of peanuts and pound until the texture is smooth.

You can see the difference between the Panang (on the left) and the Red curry here - just a bit lighter in colour.

Alternatively, you can probably shop around and buy the paste pre-made, but I think this way is more fun.

Ingredients for Panang curry - serves 2

50g chopped chicken/beef (into small strips)

1 bowl coconut milk (see photo for reference)

1 tbspn Panang curry paste

1 tspn palm sugar (maple syrup can be used as an alternative but not honey)

2 tspn fish sauce

To serve

2 kaffir lime leaves

1 large red chilli or red pepper as preferred

Bowl of cooked rice

As you can see, you literally have 3 main ingredients to add in here - the paste, coconut milk and chicken. Coconut milk usually comes quite thick, and sometimes you can add half/half water:coconut milk ratio to thin it down, but for Panang curry you need to keep it more as a cream.

Add 2 big cooking spoons (about 8 tablespoons) of coconut milk to a wok over low heat, until it begins to sizzle. Add the curry paste and stir for one minute, or until it becomes fragrant.

Add the chicken and cook until it turns white, then pour in the rest of the coconut milk and bring to the boil. Add the palm sugar (or maple syrup alternative) and fish sauce, and leave it to condense until thick. Do not stir.

Remove from the heat and serve with kaffir lime leaves cut into thin strips and sprinkled over the top, along with thin strips of the red chilli or pepper as preferred. Serve with rice.