There’s a common misconception that thai green curry is green in colour from all the thai basil used in the recipe. While there is often thai sweet basil tossed into the curry, the real green colour of the curry comes from thai green chilies that are the main ingredient of the thai green curry paste used to make the curry. The green chilies are bird’s eye chilies, but only the green ones are used for this recipe.

Some recipes add extra sugar to make green curry sweeter, but other traditional thai green curry recipes just rely on the coconut cream to provide the sweetness — I prefer the latter without adding extra sugar.

Making The Thai Green Curry Paste:

Like with many thai recipes, especially curries, the paste is the most important flavouring of the entire dish. The curry paste is a mixture of ingredients that are pounded together until all the oils are released and the ingredients are fully pureed into a paste in texture. The first step in this Thai green curry paste recipe is to prepare all the ingredients to pound.

To pound thai green curry paste, you’ll need a good stone mortar and pestle, and you can toss in the ingredients however you like, just making sure all the ingredients are added, and that they are all pounded together.

You could use a mixer to make thai green curry paste much faster, and that would work well and would still be better than buying canned green curry paste. However, when using a blender or food processor you won’t be able to extract all the flavour oils from the ingredients unless you pound them by hand slowly.

Serves – 4
Ingredients:

For the green curry paste:
1 tbsp coriander seeds
2 cloves
4 peppercorns
2 stalks of lemongrass
5-6 garlic cloves
1½” ginger
1″ galangal
3 chopped green chillies
1 chopped onion
½ cup coriander leaves
½ cup thai basil
1 kaafir lime leaf
1 tsp vinegar
Salt to taste

For The Curry In Any Proportion: 
Red bellpeppers
Green bellpeppers
Baby corn
Broccoli
Mushrooms
2 cups coconut milk
1 tbsp corn flour
Salt to taste

Method:
The Paste:

1. Dry roast coriander seeds, cloves and peppercorns for a minute and grind them.
2. Add chopped lemongrass stalks, garlic, ginger, galangal, green chillies, onion, coriander leaves, thai basil, kaafir lime leaf, vinegar and salt to the grinder
3. Grind all these ingredients to a fine paste
4. Set aside

The Curry:

1. Heat a tablespoon of oil in a pan and add in 5-6 tsp of the green paste and cook it for a minute.
2. Once cooked push the paste on one side of the pan.
3. Heat some oil in the free space of the pan and saute the bellpeppers, baby corn and broccoli in it mixing in the paste afterwards.
4. Add the mushrooms and salt.
5. Pour half the quantity of coconut milk in the cooked ingredients.
6. In the remaining half add corn flour and mix it well and then pour it in the pan.
7. Let all this cook for 2-3 minutes and add some bruised kaafir lime leaves and salt as required.
8. Once the curry starts to boil turn the flame off.
9. After you’re finished cooking a pot of green curry, eat it along with freshly steamed rice.

Lip-smacking Thai Green Curry is ready to be served!