I am a big fan of Maesri’s canned curry pastes from Thailand. Mostly very good, and handy when you don’t want to start from scratch. The one I wouldn’t recommend is the noodle dipping sauce, which is bland, and you can make a much better version in about five minutes.

I don’t think I’d tried this one, for a vegetable curry.

The instructions couldn’t be simpler: (1) Boil the curry paste with four cans of water, (2) boil some vegetables in it until they’re done.

That seemed a bit uninteresting, so I complicated it up and made it more like like a fave Indian vegetable curry, also simple but delicious (https://tiabr.com/aviyal-basic-vegetable-curry/.

No need to list the ingredients!

Method:

Cook the chopped onions and minced ginger in a bit of oil over medium heat for 3-5 minutes, or until the onions wilt. Add the minced garlic and stir continuously for a minute or until fragrant.

Stir in the coconut cream from one can of coconut milk.

Here I have to take a slight detour. I used this:

. . . which is cheap but terrible. With most canned coconut, you get a nice layer of cream on the top, like this:

With Top Coco, you get a nasty, congealed layer of what I assume is coconut oil, so dense that I bent my spoon trying to get it out of the can:

So, you ask, why did I use it? (1) I thought that maybe because the original recipe was basically just spicy water, the oil might add some richness to the final dish, and (2) I’m cheap and didn’t want to waste it.

Anyways, add the coconut cream to the pan and stir to melt:

Too much oil, and removed about half of it:

Now stir in the curry paste for a couple of minutes until well-incorporated and fragrant:

Add the water (you will need more than the four cans, depending on the quantity of the vegetables) and bring to the boil. Add the vegetables, starting with the longest-cooking ones, until done to desired doneness.

Serve with rice or whatever you’d like.

But, you ask, after all that drama, how did it taste?

Not bad. The “curry” flavor was, expected, pretty mild. The coconut milk didn’t bring much to the final flavor, although thankfully neither did the excess oil ruin it. So, okay, mostly because nothing overwhelmed the taste of the individual vegetables. Won’t make it again, though!

-R