Thai green curry is everywhere
"Thai green curry is Australia’s sentimental winter favourite; it has seduced Australians for decades. And the beating heart of a green curry is not what’s cooked with it but the unique spice paste which it’s cooked with."
Juan-Carlo Tomas - The Guardian Australia
Sorry to keep banging on about Thai food, but I was in Aldi today and I noticed in their frozen food section Thai Chicken Green Curry. Now they don't have that huge a selection of frozen meals in Aldi, but there it was. Indeed it is everywhere. The one in the picture is the top of the range if you like - it's from a recipe in Gourmet Traveller, that I think is David Thompson's. The top of the tree if you like. You can see him prepare a Green Chicken Curry on You-Tube, though frustratingly he doesn't tell you how to make the paste - which, as we know from yesterday's blog is the vital thing. Yes you can - separate video - however he doesn't tell you quantitities so you'll have to guess from what you see.
You will notice however, as you watch this, that it's a long list of ingredients and includes some, though not impossible to find, are a tiny bit more difficult - fresh turmeric being the most tricky - though I have seen it occasionally in Coles.
Anyway my Aldi experience nudged me into looking into green curry and authenticity. Now I know I have talked about authenticity a lot before, but it was very interesting to note some of the comments I found here and there about this particular dish.
I came across a website called SheSimmers hosted by someone called Leela in which she interviews Kasma Loha-unchit - a recognised Thai food authority. It's an interesting article which really rankled with me. She said a number of things that I took exception to really. The first being:
"Knowing — really knowing — how things are supposed to taste is prerequisite to creating those things. Without that knowledge, one is shooting at an invisible bull’s eye." Kasma Loha-unchit
What she meant was that unless you had tasted 'real' green curry in Thailand then you have no idea what it is meant to taste like and so you can't possibly cook it. Well, apart from being extremely food snobby, it's a stupid thing to say anyway. I'm willing to bet that there are thousands of different green curry pastes in Thailand. As many as there are housewives cooking it. So which is the one that's right? Besides we can't all go to Thailand. It's a long way from any of we western countries - even us. Your average man in the street is not going there. And doubtless the thousands of Thai restaurants at home that we talked about yesterday have probably modified their curry pastes to suit the western palate. Unless you can afford to go to David Thompson's Michelin starred restaurant that is. So honestly - no way to know what an authentic Thai green curry should taste like. I imagine there are bad cooks in Thailand too.
Then she said:
"unless you have all of the fresh herbs and spices required to make authentic and traditional Thai curry pastes, you’re better off using commercial curry pastes than trying to make do with ill-advised substitutes." Kasma Loha-unchit - SheSimmers
Which is a bit of a put-down isn't it? If you are going to make your own paste - nearly all the recipes say you should - then first find your 'authentic' green curry paste recipe. As I said yesterday there are hundreds. And Felicity Cloake does her usual good job of trying to synthesise them all into the best mix bearing in mind that she is talking to the British who apparently cannot get Kaffir limes. And if you do use substitutes - well I do sometimes - and you end up with something that is not truly 'authentic' nevertheless you might end up with something that is really, really good.
Bear in mind that the Thais themselves have not always cooked green curry. They did not get chillies, for example, until the Portuguese traders brought them in the sixteenth centuries onwards - they come from the Americas after all. Wikipedia seems to think that green curry is a twentieth century thing - early twentieth century anyway. So I'm guessing that some royal cook invented the first one and everyone else has been doing their thing ever since.
And one more thing she said was that there was no lime juice or grated rind in the paste. Really? I see David Thompson included the rind - kaffir lime of course, and liberally adds the leaves to the curry itself.
So have a go at making your own. If it's not 'authentic' it doesn't matter as long as it tastes good.
However, if you really don't want to bother just go to your supermarket. Coles has 18 green curry products - here are twelve of them. Woolworths has slightly fewer. There are pastes, simmer sauces, meal bases and packaged meals. These include: RSPCA Approved Thai Green Chicken Curry with Long Grain Rice, Asian Thai Green Chicken Curry and Jasmine Rice Meal (both Coles products) and for the health conscious - Super Nature Frozen Super Green Chickpea Curry with Quinoa and Brown Rice Wellness Bowl. They are pretty cheap, so you can understand why people might resort to them. And if you have the so-called experts encouraging you to buy bottled pastes then maybe we should, although how do you know which of those is the most 'authentic' if you have never been to Thailand?
As well as the ubiquity of the supermarket products I was also struck by the number of recipes out there - it seems that just about everyone has a recipe - name a celebrity cook and you will probably find that they have one. Taste.com has 274 recipes for green curry - not all chicken of course but nevertheless that's a lot. Here is a gallery of some of the ones I found. I've included four from Delia Smith, just to demonstrate that one cook can have several different versions. Donna Hay has six I think and Jamie Oliver, three.
From the top row and moving left to right: Jamie Oliver, Felicity Cloake, Delia Smith - Thai Green Curry with Chicken, Delia Smith - Thai Green Rice, Delia Smith - Thai Creamed Coconut Chicken with Green Rice, Delia Smith - Stir-fried Chicken with Lime and Coconut, The 'authentic' version from SheSimmers, The Guardian Australia, and finally Donna Hay puts the chicken on skewers and serves it with quinoa which just goes to show that something delicious and inauthentic can be made under the banner of an 'authentic' recipe.
Robert Carrier et al. were probably a bit too early to be into Thai food. I know I overdid Delia a bit here but it just shows how somebody so English can create so many variations of one dish - she has many more. She is an example of everybody else really. For she is not alone. Bill Granger, Neil Perry, Nigella, Nigel Slater, Stephanie Alexander, but not Maggie Beer. I'll finish with Jill Dupleix who has Green Thai curry mussels with cashew and panko crumb recipe - Thailand mixed with techniques and ingredients from everywhere.
