Curried minced pork with vegetables, Thai-style

Once upon a time I was misguided enough to think I could learn to speak Thai. Luckily, my very perceptive friend and teacher guessed that the way to access my language center was through my stomach.  Our lessons therefore always started at the market and ended in a communal meal in the shared kitchen of the women's dormitory where I was living. This is very appropriate because in Thailand it really is all about the food. Eating is a very social activity. I left with an extra ten pounds and a notebook full of recipes, including this one.

This meal has become standard fall-back fare at my house. If I haven't planned ahead and need to come up with a quick, satisfying meal that everyone will eat, this dish tops the list. It is also simple enough and tasty enough that I will prepare it for guests when I don't want to be preoccupied by a complicated menu.

An essential ingredient to this one-dish meal is Prik Khing curry paste. I'm lucky enough to have a great local Asian food store that carries a wide assortment of Thai curry pastes, but I have noticed that the ethnic food section of our grocery store also carries a small selection (but with a heftier price tag). For this dish you will only use about a tablespoon of curry paste but the rest will keep well in a ziplock bag in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks. I have also frozen it, spooning it directly from the freezer to the wok.

In addition to the curry paste, you will need:
1.5 lbs ground pork (or beef) (or so)
vegetable oil
1 large red onion, coarsely chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
3-4 quarter size slices ginger, minced
1/4 cup soy sauce
2-3 Tablespoons rice wine vinegar
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 Large bell pepper (red adds a nice color), sliced
green beans (a couple handfuls), sliced lengthwise
** Optional: Thai basil, 2 cups (or so) cubed pineapple

To prepare:
Cook ground meat, mincing as you go. Set aside when fully cooked.
Add a tablespoon or so of the vegetable oil to your wok. When it is very hot, add the onion and cook until tender. Add the garlic and ginger and cook until the ginger is golden brown. Add about a tablespoon of the curry paste and mix well, frying it with the onion for about a minute. Add the sugar, soy sauce and vinegar. Return the ground meat to the wok and mix well. Add the pepper and green beans, cook until they are tender but still retain some of their crunch. Remove from heat.

If you have Thai basil and some cubed pineapple, toss this with the ground meat and vegetables.

Don't be afraid to add more sugar, soy sauce and vinegar to your taste. The final dish should be a nice balance of sweet, salty, spicy and sour.

Serve over steamed jasmine rice.

A note about spicy foods: sugar counteracts the heat of spicy ingredients in Thai food. If you find that you've added too much curry paste, go ahead and slowly add in small measurements of sugar until the heat is more easily tolerated.

Curried shrimp with peas

N had minor surgery on Wednesday (all's well, nothing to worry about), and I don't know what it was in my insane preop mom brain that made me assume I would actually bring him home that afternoon and then sit down and do my usual Wednesday-night-NTMC-recipe-writing ritual.

Because, clearly, I did not. Thus, please accept my apologies for the dead air here today.

Please accept, also, that I'm just going to sort of throw this recipe at you, without much in the way of witty and interesting introductory text.

Oh, and the blurry picture above. I don't know what happened there!

I will say the following: This was a first-time-tried recipe. I was in the library the other day, picking up something I'd placed on reserve, and I decided to browse through the cookbooks. When I saw this recipe in The Best Recipe (by the editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine), I grabbed the book with one hand, and fished out my library card with the other. I went straight from the library to the grocery store across the street, got the needed ingredients, and headed home. Because Cooks Illustrated is, by far, my favorite cooking magazine. Nothing else even comes close.

The only other thing I'll say is this: I think I may have had a slight allergic reaction to this dish, delicious as it was. Hives, itching...on my thighs. I'm guessing it was the shrimp, though it could just be my head. In any case, as I was reaching for the antihistamine, I thought of Niksmom, and how I should have known better than to even contemplate a recipe she's allergic to! Niksmom, you have some powerful mojo, girl!

And with that, I present the many-ingrediented (yes, I made up that word) but easy to make and utterly delicious...

Curried shrimp with peas (adapted from Cook's Illustrated's The Best Recipe)

For whole spice blend
2 cinnamon sticks
4 whole cloves
4 cardamom pods
8 peppercorns
1 bay leaf

For rest of recipe
1/4 cup canola oil
1 medium onion, sliced thin
4 large garlic cloves (puree in food processor with ginger, below)
about 2 inches fresh ginger, peeled (puree in food processor with garlic, above)
1 1/2 pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined (mine were frozen, and so had to be thawed along with peas, below)
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground turmeric
1/2 tsp salt
about 3 canned plum tomatoes
1/2 cup plain low-fat yogurt
chopped fresh cilantro leaves (plus some for garnish)
1 cup frozen green peas, thawed

Some notes: You can omit as many of the spices as you like, or even other ingredients; this seems like a pretty forgiving recipe. In fact, the original has a bunch of other suggestions for things to add and/or subtract. This is not one of those recipes you need to sweat. At the same time, I do suggest getting everything out and measure and cut and prepare and set aside beforehand, as if you were the host on a cooking show. I almost always just grab ingredients as I go, but in this case, that would likely have spelled disaster, because the actual cooking goes QUICKLY.

1. Heat oil in pot or skillet; I used my dutch oven, and thought it was perfect for this. Let the oil get good and hot, then add the whole spice blend, stirring for less than 30 seconds. (The book's recipe never has you remove these whole spices, but I didn't like the idea of biting into them while eating, and so searched for and removed as many of them as I could find before serving the dish.)

2. Add onion; saute until softened or slightly browned.

3. Stir in garlic, ginger, ground spices (including salt), tomatoes, yogurt. Stir pretty much constantly until spices smell cooked, about two minutes.

4. Stir in cilantro and two cups of water; bring all to a boil. Taste and season with more salt, if needed.

5. Add shrimp and peas. Simmer for three minutes.

6. Serve over rice, because you're going to want something to sop up the spicy liquid. Trust me on this.

Enjoy. Because this is some hive-worthy stuff!