It Just Has To Be Delicious

Archive for October, 2026

Thai Green Prawn Curry

You can make this curry with chicken if you prefer, but I happened to be near a really good fishmonger and bought some amazing jumbo tiger prawns. My recipe makes enough to feed two, but you can double it up to feed four or five. If you can’t get Thai eggplants, you can use Lebanese baby ones. I put onion and red capsicum in mine, which is not very authentic but hey more veggies can’t be bad. You can add anything you like to be honest, broccoli, mushrooms, snow peas, carrot etc.

Ingredients:

Half a quantity of Thai Green curry paste (see previous post). If using store bought, check the instructions, but about three generous tablespoons should be about right. Seriously, the home made paste is well worth the effort.
1 x 400ml can of premium coconut milk (I use TCC brand because there’s no thickener like guar in it)
Half a big juicy lime
A handful of fresh coriander leaves
1 tablespoon of fish sauce
1 tablespoon of palm sugar (brown sugar is fine if you can’t get palm sugar)
A handful of Thai holy basil (if you can’t get it use Italian basil)
Half a teaspoon of vegetable stock powder
Half an onion in chunks or diced
Thai eggplants either the pea ones or round egg sized ones, or a baby Lebanese eggplant, cut into chunks
Half a small red capsicum cut into chunks
About 300-400g of raw tiger prawns in their shell, peeled, halved lengthways, poop tube removed, rinsed (preferably use jumbo tiger prawns and remember that if you buy them in the shell, you lose about 50% of the weight when you peel them, so 200g in the shell is equivalent to 100g peeled and prepared prawn meat.)

  1. Pour about a third of the coconut milk into a wide pan and heat until it bubbles. Thicken the coconut milk for a while (takes about 4-5 minutes).
  2. Make sure you have some rice cooking so that it will be ready when the curry is ready.
  3. Add the curry paste and mix well. Cook for five minutes.
  4. Now add the veg in order of hardness (e.g. carrots will take longer than snow peas). Onion, capsicum and eggplant all take around the same time, so you can add them together.
  5. Add the stock powder, fish sauce, and palm sugar.
  6. Once the veggies are almost cooked, add the prawns and cook for 3-5 minutes until they start to go opaque.
  7. Add the lime juice and Thai basil.
  8. Taste the sauce, adjust the seasonings – if too hot add more sugar, if it needs salt, add a dash more fish sauce.
  9. Serve over rice and garnish with coriander leaves. If you like it hotter, add some sliced fresh chilli.

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Thai Green Curry Paste

I have made Thai red curry paste quite easily from recipes, but never found a good Thai green curry paste….until now. My previous attempts have been too mild or not very green (more of a sludgy brown), and they haven’t quite had that perfect Thai flavour. I’ve also had trouble getting the little green Thai birds eye chillies, I grow them but have to be super quick to get the green ones before they turn red, and the supermarket only seem to stock red ones. So this recipe is based on several recipes, and availability too. Jalapenos and cayenne chillies may not be authentic, but they can make an incredibly good paste, and this one definitely works for me. It’s not burn your mouth hot, but does have a lovely backheat that builds with each mouthful, making it really comfortable to eat. This makes enough paste to feed four people. It freezes well, so if you are a couple, make a curry now and put the other half of the paste in the freezer.

I use a stick blender to make my paste, put the harder items at the bottom of the blending pot and the softer things at the top. It takes literally minutes to whizz up.

If you want to go the extra mile you can use coriander and cumin seeds and roast them in a dry frying pan then grind them up, but if you don’t have time, ready ground spices will do.
Chop the veg ingredients up into dice if you have time, if not, they will whizz up but more effort will be required. I think if you dice everything first it just helps.

1 Teaspoon of ground coriander
1 Teaspoon of ground cumin
Half a Teaspoon of ground black pepper (you can also use white pepper)
A quarter of a teaspoon of turmeric, or a few cms of fresh peeled sliced turmeric if you have it.
One and a half teaspoons of shrimp paste (I buy the Jeeny brand which is already separated into little sealed portions)
100g red onion diced (this is about half an average sized onion)
3 lemongrass middles – slice lengthways and finely chop the whitish hearts and add them to the jar. Don’t include any of the fibrous outer casing – if it’s hard to chop finely then it’s too fibrous to add.
20g peeled fresh galangal or ginger – I grate mine to help it blend, but you can dice it finely
2 makrut lime leaves with the middle stalk removed – slice them finely
2 coriander roots washed and finely chopped (hairy bits removed)
A quarter of a cup of sliced coriander stems and leaves (an ideal use for the flavoursome stems if you want to save the leaves for garnish)
2 Thai bird chillies with seeds, sliced (green if you can get them, or red will do)
1 Green deseeded Jalapeno chilli pepper
1 Green Cayenne chilli pepper, half deseeded, half with seeds.

Chuck it all in the blender and whizz it up for a few minutes until it resembles a paste with no obvious chunky bits.

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