Saturday, December 11, 2010

An old favourite

Some of my favourite recipes are ones that I have pulled out of books and magazines, and scribbled down after eating something really delicious in a friend's house. I keep them all together in a notebook, which has now doubled in size and is jammed full of scraps of paper, all raggedy and covered in food stains. I think that, generally, these kind of recipes are the most time and wallet friendly, realistic recipes that don't take an age and have been finely honed by those who share them.

The very first recipe in The Book is Thai red salmon curry and it remains a firm favourite, a tasty reliable that takes about twenty minutes. It's from 2006, and it was actually in an issue of the Irish Times Saturday magazine, written by Hugo Arnold, but I forgot to tear it out and so had to write it down after a friend made it for me for dinner. It's written on the free stationery from a fab hotel in London called The Zetter where I stayed once, back in the good/crazy old days, when I was put up by a company who were doing a presentation on trends in interior design there.




After a long Friday, I was looking forward to staying in on the sofa watching the Late Late in anticipation of an early Saturday morning start to bring my nephews to visit one Mr S Claus in Arnotts. When I started thinking about what to have for dinner (these thoughts commenced immediately after I finished my lunch, in case you're wondering) this sprung immediately to mind. I thought that I had all of the ingredients already at home, but it turned out that I was wrong. The red curry paste had been culled in a fridge clearout, so I had to improvise. I flicked through The Book and found a speedy, makey-uppy red curry paste that I had taken note of from one of those Jamie's 30 Minute Meals programmes, and I mashed together the ingredients that I had to make my own alternative: a red chilli, grated ginger, ground coriander, tomato pureé, sesame oil and soy sauce.



After that, it was a total no-brainer. First the garlic...

...then the paste...

...then some coconut milk...

...fish sauce and brown sugar...

...chunks of salmon...

...and, to satisfy a need for crunchy green veg, some last-minute broccoli.

Bowl food. This curry just never disappoints. Unlike the Late Late.

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