Thai green curry with tofu, mushrooms & greens

Another Thai holiday influenced dish and Jonathan's new favourite to make. We tend to vary between red curry & green curry to keep it interesting. 

To make the rice, rinse long grain basmati rice well in cold water ( we use 3/4 cup of rice for 2 people). Drain, cover in lots of cold water & leave to soak for half an hour.  

To cook the rice, drain the soaking water & cover with 1 1/2 cups of water (that is, double the amount of rice you are using). Add 2 cardamon pods & a small piece of cinnamon bark. Place on a high heat & once it boils cover with a lid & turn the heat down to the lowest possible flame. Leave for 11 minutes & then turn the heat off, leaving for another 5 minutes. Then left the lid and fluff the rice with a fork, letting out any extra moisture. 

To make the curry, buy some interesting mushrooms, like King, Oyster or Enoki. Chop them into chunky pieces. We like to use Swiss Brown too. For our greens, we use brocollini, asparagus, spring onion & snow peas. We love to use the puffy tofu as it soaks up all the sauce. 

Brown the mushrooms & tofu & set aside. Jonathan adds garlic oil too. 

We use Ayam Curry Paste - the Red Curry paste is vegetarian but the Green has shrimp paste in it. We also use Ayam Coconut Cream - it has no added ingredients so allows for cracking.

To crack the coconut cream, heat a dry wok and add half the tin of coconut cream and at a moderate heat don't stir it and let it boil away. Eventually the oil will separate meaning you won't need to use any other oil for the rest of your curry. Add 2-3 tablespoons of curry paste, depending on the size of your curry.

Next, add your mushrooms & tofu, leaving the greens till last as they don't take much cooking.

Add a bit of palm sugar (about a teaspoon) or brown sugar to taste. Then add Thai basil and its ready to serve. Garnish with coriander and fresh lime & you're good to go!

Green papaya salad

Visiting Thailand recently has had a big influence on Jonny's cooking of late - as you'll see in the next couple of entries. 
We're also lucky enough to live close to Ashfield, which is home to one of Sydney's biggest Chinese communities. The quality & freshness of the fruit & veges available are so exciting - & they're so cheap! The supermarkets also stock a huge variety of tofu, sauces, pastes & spices.
To make this salad, start with the dressing. I know this isn't vegetarian. You apparently can find vegetarian 'fish' sauce & 'shrimp' paste, but we couldn't so went ahead as I eat seafood anyway & Jonathan has started eating anchovies again. (Which doesn't explain the shrimp paste but I think he'll just take the hit sometimes for the sake of a delicious meal).
To make the dressing, mix shrimp paste, fish sauce, grounded chillis, garlic, shallots, a little bit of palm sugar & lime juice in a large bowl. This makes a delicious hot, sour & spicy mixture. Into the dressing, julienne half a green papaya and mix in with bean sprouts, tomato, mint, coriander & chunks of puffed tofu. 
Bruise all together in a large mortar & pestle if you can, or in your mixing bowl.
Serve into large bowls & mix through peanuts for a bit of crunch.
I also feel like I should explain that this was made with a very firm yellow papaya as its all we could find this day - but we've since had it with green papaya and I think either is fine.
You can see my salad is topped with some BBQ garlic prawns too but Jonathan's was just fine with only tofu. We served with a Cosmopolitan each too - just trying to recapture that Thai holiday feeling.