Panang Curry

Over a month ago, I went to see a ballet.  We are Thai food before the performance and ate family style.  Someone ordered Panang Curry, and it was by far my favorite dish.  It was so creamy and delicious.  

I knew then that it was only a matter of time before I attempted my own Panang Curry.

I encountered a few bumps in my journey to this panang curry.  Apparently panang curry paste isn't carried by many grocery stores in the United States.  After checking several grocery stores, I ended up buying a jar on amazon.  I'm not am amazon prime member, so I had to pay shipping.  That's how committed I was to making panang curry.

When I went to the Safeway by my apartment to buy coconut milk, they didn't have any canned coconut milk.  They just had the box of coconut milk "beverage."  It's not a good substitute.  Regardless, this curry was fab.

Panang curry is obviously from Thailand. It is supposed to include a load of ingredients I didn't use.  It's also spelled several different ways.  I'm not sure what is correct.

The recipe came from Allrecipe.  The ingredients are 5 tablespoons panang curry paste, cooking oil, 4 cups coconut milk, 3/4 pound chicken, 2 tablespoons brown sugar, 3 tablespoons fish sauce, 1 tablespoon corn starch, zest and juice of 1 lime, and 1/4 cup fresh basil.  I made several substitutions because not all the requested ingredients are readily available to me.

I began by heating up some peanut oil and adding the panang curry paste.  I cooked this until the paste was hot and fragrant.  

I added the coconut milk.  Use canned coconut milk, not this weird boxed stuff.  

I stirred until it was combined and brought the curry to a boil.

I added the cubed chicken once the curry began to boil.  I let the chicken cook in the hot curry for ten minutes.

While the chicken cooked, I combined the brown sugar, fish sauce, lime zest, and cornstarch.  I stirred until there were no clumps of cornstarch.

After ten minutes I added the lime juice and brown sugar mixture to the curry.

I let the curry cook for an additional 5 minutes before serving.  I ate this with rice and garnished it with the fresh basil.  The recipe calls for Thai basil.

Super delicious!  Not quite as good as the curry I ate in the restaurant, but it's not too shabby.  

I would suggest using canned coconut milk and more chicken.  The chicken to sauce ratio was no good.  I could have easily doubled the amount of chicken.

There isn't enough curry being made in this world.  Curries are such a quick and easy one pot meal.  This took me 20 minutes to make.

 It was delicious and fragrant.  Yum!