With the prior post on green Thai curry paste today’s post provides you something to do with it. While this dish may not look like it, it has everything you would want in a fabulous dinner entree.
Baby Lady & I love Thai curries. I don’t know if it’s the chiles, the coconut, the citrusy flavor, or just what. All I know is we really like it. We do like it hot, too. We love red Thai curries but the green Thai curries are the most well know of Thai dishes. No wonder because they are sweet, rich, and spicy with remarkable depth of flavor. They also are remarkably versatile. You find green Thai curries with chicken, duck, beef, pork, seafood and simply vegetables if you’re a vegetarian. There really is nothing like green Thai curries. They are kinda like Thai comfort food and absolutely delicious.
So, once we got the green Thai curry paste made, we needed to use it for dinner. Of course, I knew ahead of time what I wanted to do. Baby Lady and I had been to our favorite market and they had some beautiful U-15 white shrimp on sale. They were speaking to me as we were standing there admiring them. So, we bought 1 lb. specifically to make this curry dish and it was fabulous. We heartily recommend you give this dish a try, unless, of course, you don’t like shrimp. Then, if that’s the case, substitute skinned boneless chicken. This is such a flavorful, succulent dish we know you will like it. This is what we did.
Ingredients
- 2 Tbsp water
- 1/4 cup green Thai curry paste (adjust more for extra spicy, less for not so spicy -1/4 cup was perfect for us)
- 3 garlic cloves
- 1 can coconut milk (16 oz.)
- 4 Tbsp fish sauce*
- 1 lime, juiced, roughly 1 Tbsp **
- 1 Tbsp brown sugar ***
- 3 Tbsp oil, split
- 1/2 onion, peeled and thinly sliced****
- 2 yellow squash, cut in 1/2 inch half rounds
- 1 lb. shrimp (U 15), peeled and deveined
- 2 Tbsp Thai basil, chiffonade
- Steamed rice, for serving
Instruction
Add the water, green curry paste and garlic to a blender
Blend until smooth.
In a mixing bowl, combine the coconut milk
fish sauce
lime juice
and brown sugar.
Whisk to combine and set aside until needed.
Heat a large sauté pan until very hot. Add 2 tablespoons oil
Add onions and sauté until translucent, roughly 1 minute.
Add the squash
and stir-fry until the squash begins to brown, roughly 5 to 7 minutes. Then, transfer the onions and squash to a bowl to hold until almost ready to serve.
Reheat the same pan and add 2 tablespoons of oil and add the curry paste/garlic mixture.
sauté the curry paste for 30 seconds or so. Stir in the coconut milk mixture
Let simmer for 5 – 7 minutes to heat and develop flavors. Now, add the shrimp
and cook until the shrimp just turns opaque, roughly 4 minutes.
Return the squash to the pan and heat through roughly 1 – 2 minutes.
Finish with chopped basil
Place a mound of rice in the middle of a bowl. Arrange 7 shrimp in a ring around the rice and pour the squash with the sauce over the top.
Serve & enjoy. This is incredibly good. 🙂
NOTES: As I previously stated, this dish is very versatile. You can use yellow squash, zucchini, Thai eggplant, whatever vegetable of your choosing, as well as your protein of choice. So, if you don’t like something about this dish, change it. For a change of pace and similar to true Thai food, you can use rice flour vermicelli for the rice.
* Fish sauce (Nam pla) is a sauce made from fermented anchovies. It smells terrible but when cooked in Asian dishes it has a wonderful flavor. You won’t know it’s fish. Also, it adds salt so if you want a little more salt, add a splash more fish sauce instead of salt. Each brand of fish sauce has a different salt level so know your fish sauce. If you don’t always use a little less because you can always add but can never subtract.
** A true Thai green curry would use more Kaffir lime leaves but I was out and substituted lime juice instead. 😮 It was darn good this way, too. 😉
*** Technically, it calls for palm sugar. I didn’t have and couldn’t find palm sugar; so, brown sugar is a substitute.
**** Shallots also are preferred to onions but, again, I was out. I always find it amazing when I go to the store believing I have exactly what I need only to return to the house and find out otherwise. Oh, well.
REMCooks 
I literally just made green Thai shrimp curry last night!! Can’t wait to try it out.
Brilliant minds think alike. 🙂
Your blender looks like the same one I had for years; I loved it because you could use it with smaller mason jars (when you need to blend small amounts), the base of the blender was the exact same threading!
I adore green curries. I’m going to bookmark this one for when our weather turns cold in the fall.
Hi, Eva. You are probably correct. This is an old Oster blender. Baby Lady loves it because it fits mason jars. All of my small mason jars were in use so I was stuck with the canister but it was smaller than the Vitamix. 🙂 Why wait until the fall? Thai curries are perfect for those hot summer days when only a hot chile will do the trick. 😉
Green Thai curry is one of my favourites!! Unfortunately it’s quite challenging to find the ingredients here in Italy, such as curry paste and coconut milk… one reason I miss living in the UK where I could find these so easily!!
Hi, Ely. Thanks for dropping by and your nice comment. I would have thought Italy would have these food ingredients available but I have never been to Italy and know very little about it. I’m just used to what we can find in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which is pretty amazing. All of these ingredients, however, are available online but I have no idea the cost.
I will try and go on a hunt around the city where I live, maybe they are sold in some hidden corners I still don’t know of! Otherwise that’s quite a good idea, although I’m always so unsure of buying anything food-related online, I like to see and touch with hands what I buy 😉
Yum!! I love curry and this looks delicious! Definitely will be trying it soon.
Thanks for your very nice compliment. We’re glad you like it. 🙂
Hi Richard, love the simplicity of this dish and I’d love to make it from scratch.
PS The versatality (is that even a word?) of Thai dishes at Thai restaurants (at least around here) seems a bit ‘mechanic’ to me. There seem to be a lot of different items on the menu, but if you look more closely it’s really just a choice of protein and a choice of sauce and then all those combinations are listed as separate items 😉 Green curry shrimp, green curry beef, green curry chicken, green curry fish, red curry shrimp, etc.
Hi, Stefan. Thanks for the nice compliment. I think the word you are looking for is versatility. 🙂 The Thai restaurants in the DFW area have a little more diversity on their menus than curry although they do have curry dishes like you mention with a choice of sauce and protein.
Reblogged this on MBSIB: The Man With The Golden Tongs.
I love that Richard. You must have forgotten all those ingredients while the shrimp were speaking to you. I know that feeling.
It’s spooky when that happens, isn’t it. And I understand the shrimp. 😉
I’ve been waiting to see this recipe, Richard, and it didn’t disappoint. It’s not a difficult dish to put together but I bet it sure had a great deal of flavor. Now you’ve really got me considering making my own green curry paste, too. I think a trip to Little Chinatown is in order. Thanks for sharing both recipes. BTW, I, too, had an Oster blender. Still have some of those little jars somewhere, too. 🙂
Thanks, John, for your very nice compliment. It really isn’t difficult to prepare once you have the curry paste. I’ve read numerous cookbooks and various bogs that tell you a good commercial green curry paste will suffice but after having made my own several years ago I completely disagree. There is a freshness with homemade green curry paste that simply cannot be replicated commercially due to the canning and/or preserving process.
As for the Oster, Baby Lady & I are estate sale junkies. We bought each of the children their own Oster blender with either the little Oster jars or small mason jars. Then, after all the children had their own, she bought herself one. 🙂
I know that your curry had to be delicious and spicy…just like Baby Lady likes it. 🙂