I did not die of a couple of days' vegetable experiments, so I decided to carry on along the same line. That is rather unlike me, as in Boston I had a name as a ruthless anti-vegan. Lately, though, there have been more vegetables on my plate than usual: Greek-style cabbage rolls, oven-caramelised cauliflower, a tomato Caesar and Meena's potato and pepper masala. The calories have stayed under control, and I have got on surprisingly well.
All Thai food is yummy, so naturally today's vegetable dish is a Thai recipe from the Thai volume of the splendid What's Cooking series. Before Christmas the same book gave me the duck breast with plum sauce. The books in the series are a pleasure to leaf through for the pictures alone, though not every recipe quite lives up to its photograph.
The dish's English name, Thai Red Bean Curry, is misleading to say the least, since it uses no red beans, nor bean seeds of any kind, but perfectly ordinary green beans. The red in the name refers to the warm, rusty red of the sauce, which admittedly does not really show in my picture. In the bowl the sauce looks more orange-yellow than anything. I also think of a curry as something a little different, but so what! The result is good despite the name 🙂
I read afterwards that in Thailand dishes like this are often made with yardlong beans, whose pods can grow to half a metre. They are said to be tougher and to stand up to cooking better, while an ordinary green bean softens quickly. Presumably that is why the recipe boils the beans for only a couple of minutes and simply warms them through in the sauce at the end. Green beans do the job perfectly well, and in winter frozen ones will do too.
The lemongrass, fish sauce and coconut milk came from Vii Voan, the Asian grocer in Hakaniemi, where all the Thai ingredients can be had in one visit. Of the lemongrass I used only the lower part of the stalk, peeling off the tough outer leaves, since the top is woody. I whizzed it smooth in the blender with the garlic, chilli, paprika, fish sauce and coconut milk, and it disappeared into the sauce entirely, leaving only its lemony scent behind. I fried the spring onions briefly in hot oil first, poured the sauce over and boiled it down until about half was left and it no longer ran. There is only a little over 50 ml of coconut milk, so a portion comes to all of 170 kilocalories.
Recipe card
Thai Red Bean Curry
- serves two (170 kcal per portion)
- Blanching the beans 2 min
- Reducing the sauce about 3-4 min
- Warming through a couple of minutes
You will need
| 200 g | green beans (fresh or frozen) |
| 1-2 | cloves of garlic |
| 1 | small hot chilli, or about 1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes (to taste) |
| 1/2 tsp | paprika |
| 1 | stalk of lemongrass |
| 1 tbsp | Thai fish sauce <em>(nam pla)</em> |
| a little over 50 ml | coconut milk |
| 1-2 | spring onions |
| 1/2 tbsp | oil for frying |
Method
- Cut the beans into pieces of about 5 cm, boil for two minutes and drain.
- Slice the garlic and lemongrass into thin strips. Put the garlic, chilli, paprika, lemongrass, fish sauce and coconut milk in a blender and blend until smooth.
- Slice the spring onions thinly on the diagonal and fry for about a minute in hot oil.
- Add the sauce from the blender and bring to the boil. Reduce the sauce until about half is left (nice and thick, no longer runny), about 3-4 minutes.
- Add the beans and let them warm through for a couple of minutes. Serve at once, piping hot.
These beans go well as a side to some other dish, or just as they are as a tasty starter. And if you are not otherwise fond of green beans, this may be a way to get the recommended daily portion of vegetables swallowed 😉
