My Family Recipe: Thai Green Curry From Scratch | Marion's Kitchen

So, a Thai green curry. In its many forms, can be many different things. But at its very essence, it starts with like the most amazing fresh produce. The chilies, the galangal, the spices, the herbs. So I've come down to the market here so we can take a look at some of those ingredients. Typically, most Thai people, even my mum, doesn't make her own Thai curry paste, you know, all the time. And the great thing about living in Bangkok is that you have these markets where you can actually come and buy beautifully made fresh curry paste from the market. But we're going to make our own today. So, as much as I'd love to cheat and just buy this beautiful curry paste, we're going to get all the ingredients and make our own from scratch. The curry paste is the most important thing that we're going to make in this video. So let's start with that. I like to go with two types of green chilli here. One is always for colour. The other is for the heat. Colour and heat, that's what we want. I'm in Thailand, so I have here my two Thai chillies. So I have some large green chillies here. These ones are more mild and I use them for colour. And then I have these smaller green chillies. These ones are actually very spicy. Chop those up, add those into your mortar along with some salt. That helps to break everything down a little bit. And we're going to go ingredient by ingredient. So next up is the lemongrass. To prepare that lemongrass, you're going to get home from the market or the supermarket with something that looks like this. Now you need to just trim it up a little bit here. So have a look at the end. This part is also a bit hard and woody. So I chopped that off. These pieces are really great to make tom yum soup or something like that. And they freeze really well. So don't waste them. And then peel off the outer layers, which are also very tough. Now this part here, just take your knife and bruise it and then finely slice the centre. Now that can go into your mortar and pound that through as well. Now let's talk about galangal because a lot of people and a lot of recipes and videos tell you that you can substitute ginger for galangal. I'm saying that you can't. Sorry. For me, they're completely different things. I mean, they even look different. Have a look here. This is galangal. This is ginger. The ginger is very earthy. The galangal has a very like citrusy pine forest kind of flavour. So try and get the galangal if you can. When you do happen to find galangal, it freezes really well. So even if you don't want to make curry paste straight away, keep it in your freezer for when you do. To prepare it, just peel off the skin, finely chop it and then pop it into your mortar. Now, because I'm in Bangkok and I can take advantage of going to the market and getting all the amazing ingredients, I am using this. This is the magroot lime. You're probably very familiar with magroot lime leaves. That's these guys here. This is the actual fruit from that tree. This peel is really fragrant and very zesty and limey. So I like to kind of thinly slice it off. Try not to get too much of that white pith in there and then finely chop that. You also need to pound in some shallots and some garlic. And by now, your whole kitchen should be smelling like a beautiful Thai fresh market. This is the kind of situation that you're looking for in your mortar here. Just have a couple more things I need to add here. So here are my dried spices. So I just toasted off some coriander seeds and some cumin seeds and I ground that up in my mortar earlier. Spices go in and then also some shrimp paste. Now, this little packet here, I actually put the shrimp paste into the foil and then dry roasted it in my wok until I could smell that like shrimpy shrimp paste kind of flavour. You know what I mean? OK, so open that up, pop that in, stir that through. And that, my friends, is your homemade Thai green curry paste. So I know it's not as smooth and fine textured as your store bought one or the one from the market. But actually, I think that's pretty cool because you want people to know that you went to the trouble of making your curry paste if you are going to do it. So a little bit rougher, I think, is OK here. Round of applause, please. Thank you. You're welcome. Next up, let's do the curry. And now the technique for frying your paste here is a little bit different to if you're using a jarred curry paste. So if your curry paste comes from a jar, it's most likely already been heated. So it doesn't need to fry as long. Hear that sizzle? That's what I want here in the wok. And I need to give this curry paste time for all those raw, fragrant ingredients like the garlic, the shallots to really kind of soften down and mellow out. So turn the heat down, about medium. Just let all of this sizzling happen for about five minutes. So to compare, if you were using a jarred curry paste, you'd probably only do this for about a minute. Now, an interesting thing that I learned at the market from the curry paste lady was actually that a lot of locals add in a little bit of red curry paste into their green curry paste when they're making their green curries at home. Now, that's all really great when you're buying the curry paste from the lady at the market, but I'm not going to make a whole red curry just so I can put some red curry paste in my green curry paste. So thank you, market lady, but I will not be taking your advice. But what I will be doing is doing what I always do and what my mum does, and that is adding in some dried red chillies into the mix here. It will make things a little spicier, so it's up to you. But I like the extra heat in my green curry. Now I'm going to add a little bit of coconut milk. And at this point, you're probably thinking, wow, that green curry looks really pale and insipid. But don't worry, trust me, it will all develop as we go. And then once that's mixed through, now I add the rest of my coconut milk. One of the big differences between, say, an Indian curry and a Thai curry, I think, is the thickness. So a Thai curry often has the thickness of, say, like a lighter soup kind of texture rather than a really thick, heavy, creamy curry. What you need to do is add in a little bit of water to get the right texture. And then also some magroot lime leaves. Just crush those up in your hands before you put them in, release all that flavour. And then I'm going to put in my chicken thigh fillets. Of course, I'm using thighs. You guys know I'm a legs and thighs girl. And actually, this takes quite a while to simmer. And I want to keep my chicken really nice and juicy. So much better to use thighs than breasts here. Add in some palm sugar and some fish sauce. For my vegetables, I'm going to go really traditional here. And I'm using apple eggplants and pea eggplant. So the apple eggplant is this one here. They have a slight bit of flavour, but you just want to cut off the tops and quarter them and then put them in some salt water. And that kind of takes a little bit of the bitterness away. Once they've soaked for about 15 minutes or so, then you can put them into your curry. So I'm just going to turn the heat down low for around about 15 minutes. So now you can see the curry started to change colour a little bit. I'm going to add in my pea eggplants. This is another very traditional Thai vegetable to add in here. They're actually a little bit bitter and I love it. The curry is like a little bit sweet and spicy. Then you have like the bitter eggplant. It's really nice. I like to add bamboo shoots as well. But you know, if you want to here, you could do zucchini or any other kind of vegetable that you like. Now just let that simmer away for another 10 to 15 minutes or until your apple eggplant is really lovely and soft. And the colour, look at how it's developed as it's simmered down. Oh, so beautiful. OK, now final bits and pieces. I'm going to add in some Thai basil here at the end and quite a bit of it because it really adds a beautiful fragrance. And that, my friends, is the way that I make Thai green curry from scratch. This is probably one of the first curry pastes my mum ever taught me to make. And it's still one of my favourites now. And I hope you enjoy and love this curry just as much as I do. Let me show you how I would get stuck into it if I was you. Put that onto my rice. So good. Always, always just the best. I love this so much.