New Potatoes and Red Bell Peppers in Fresh Green Curry

The thing I love the most about Thai restaurants is the vast array of curries. Unfortunately, I seem to never be able to bring the love to my own kitchen. I've tried out a few curries over the years and either ended up with too-firey-to-even-get-hint-of-flavor curry or a bland-watered-down-bore-me-to-sleep curry. I must admit - they have all been derived from some sort of paste, powder or package in a language I don't speak. When my friends, LS and FK, came to visit over the 4th of July and brought The Curry Book in tow, I was so impressed by the curry recipes that I thought I'd give making curry another whirl. On Saturday night, we invited our friend, RB, over for coffee from our new Senso coffee maker and dinner. I'm just happy that we can finally offer our friends coffee and not directions to the nearest Dunkin' Donuts. For dinner, we tried out the New Potatoes and Red Bell Peppers in Fresh Green Curry Recipe. Here's a quick summarized version of the recipe:

1 lb new potatoes, quartered
1 red bell pepper, julienned
2 tablespoons shallots, chopped
1 tablespoon garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon ginger, chopped
2 fresh jalapenos
3 tablespoons plus 1 cup water
3/4 cup cilantro
1 can of coconut milk
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup fresh basil

The recipe basically calls for blending the curry ingredients into a pasta and mixing it with the coconut milk. The potatoes and red bell pepper simmer in the curry until the potatoes are fork tender. Top with basil and cilantro.

Overall, I think we all enjoyed it. The curry recipe was the right consitency, right level of spiciness but needed a little more of a flavor punch. Maybe a little extra ginger? Or maybe something not called for in the recipe like lemongrass? But with a little tinkering, I think the curry could be a household standard. However, there's way too many yummy-looking recipes in this book to try this recipe again for awhile.

Side note - when I searched to find a description of The Curry Book for the blog, I ran into a limited preview of the book on Google Book Search. Sure enough, the one recipe they have in its entirety is this recipe. So cook it up and let me know what you think! :)

For dessert, we wanted to attempt to be healthy. I think we ended up with a version of healthy. My original idea was to pick up fresh strawberries, whipped cream and those pre-made crepes in the dairy/fruit area of the grocery store. No luck. The strawberries were furry and cost more than the last tank top I bought and crepes were no where to be found. Then we ran into nutella...and it all changed. I think I've had nutella before or at least I seem to have some preconceived taste memory associated with it. So we compromised and found a pack of puff pastry (yes, that's when it became a version of healthy) and bought bananas and nutella for one option and raspberries and cool whip for the other. Thus, Puff Pastry two-ways emerged...

The nutella was so good that the next day AC made a sandwich with nutella, bananas and cool whip. tee hee...


One random thing before I close, I am in the process of getting allergy testing. Last week, I had phase I which I like to call the side dish round and today, the main dish round. I'm shocked how many foods I'm allergic to. I really only went to the allergist so I could be treated for my allergies to cats but I'm really happy now that I'm doing the whole set of testing. So far, I'm apparently extremely allergic to soybeans, lettuce, malt and navy beans with lesser allergies to corn, cane sugar, onion, pork and orange. I'm such a weakling - it's time to start shopping for a human-sized plastic bubble :(