Winter vegetables green Thai curry part 1

As I told you lately, I did a cooking course at Mai Kaidee in Bangkok on my last travel to Thailand. Believe it or not, but I think that Mai Kaidee is the only vegan restaurant in the whole of Buddhist Thailand!! Ok, just exaggerating a little. The fact is that fish or poultry and especially broth, which they use in almost every dish!!, don’t count as meat in Thailand. “Is this vegetarian” is not the right question; you have to ask “is there meat, fish, chicken or broth in this dish?????” So you see, that is not an easy one.

Also the Thai people are so incredibly polite and willing to help and be friendly, that they don’t like to say no, or I don’t know. So be aware of this when you visit this beautiful and amazingly friendly country.

Anyway, at Mai Kaidee you can be really sure. They serve delicious modern and traditional Thai vegan cuisine.

The cooking class was great fun, we were with 5 people and a little baby, did 10 dishes in 5 hours, we were talking, cooking, tasting, eating, dancing and singing. All inclusive!! I do recommend it, it was so enjoyable. I learnt a lot, but the most amazing thing I learned there was that Thai recipes in Holland or the internet, and probably elsewhere, talk about using 1 tablespoon of this and that, but the tablespoons they use at Mai Kaidee are much bigger, say 2 sizes; they use these ones

You can imagine that this creates a much bigger taste!

Thai kitchen is easy, quick and healthy. Preparation time is the most time consuming, but with a little music on the side and a smile on your face, preparing becomes fun and when it’s time to cook, everything is ready in a sec! Even my beloved C. is converted to Thai cooking now, and cooks it every 2 days or more. He even lost some excess weight (just a little, don’t worry)!!

Today I give you 2 versions of the Green Chili Paste of Mai Kaidee: 1 is the original and 2 is the version I made for children and other people who don’t like heat, without the chilies but with the same maximum taste.

The paste keeps well in a clean glass pot in the fridge for up to 2 weeks or even more.

Mai Kaidee’s Green Chili Paste

Blend the following ingredients with a mortar and pestle or in a blender:

2 tbsp green chilies, about 10 Thai chilies, chopped up, with seeds and all

1 tbsp kaffir lime leaf, I use frozen, tear the stems out and cut up fine

1 tbsp galangal, slices unpeeled

1 tbsp lemon grass, outer leaves discarded, inner softer part in small rings

1 tbsp onion, cut roughly

1 tbsp garlic, cut fine

1 tbsp cumin powder

½ tbsp of miso

                                  (picture found on Google images)

My child-friendly chili paste

2 tbsp or ½ green bell pepper, cleaned and deseeded, chopped roughly

And the same ingredients as above: 1 tbsp each of

Kaffir lime leaves

Galangal

Lemon grass

Onion

Garlic

Cumin powder

½ tbsp of miso

Next post will be the lovely winter root vegetables green curry I made with this chili paste!!

See you soon.