The Famous Chicken Curry from Taste Tibet by Julie Kleeman & Yeshi Jampa

 

A few weeks ago... actually now I think about it. It was a few months ago, I made a very delicious chicken curry but life got in the way and then more life stuff happened and I didn't get to share it with you. But here it is. 

It's from a cookbook called 'Taste Tibet' by Julie Kleeman and Yeshi Jampa. Its a cookbooks filled to the brim with culture, history, traditions and of course recipes from the Himalayas. What I didn't know until I started reading is Taste Tibet is a restaurant, shop and festival food stall in Oxford, in the UK which is run and owned by Julie and Yeshi. Yeshi is the cook, head chef and chief recipe developer in the duo.

'At first glance, Tibetan food looks a lot like Chinese food. Noodles, dumplings and small plates are a big feature of the cuisine.' 

This book makes your mouth water just flicking through the pages. Stirfry's (hot and cold), fried rice, noodles, Tibetan yoghurt, soups, stews, savoury and sweet momos (which are a type of dumpling), flatbreads, curries and then there is the sweets for those sweet tooth's with ceremonial biscuits and truffles.

Although there were lots of delicious recipes to try, the one that caught my eye was the 'Taste Tibet Famous Chicken Curry'. Let me tell you, it did not disappoint. And that was without using curry leaves and doing my very best with what we have up here to find the closest curry powders too.

Text from Taste Tibet by Julie Kleeman and Yeshi Jampa, food photography by Ola O. Smith, travel photography by Keiko Wong.
Murdoch Books RRP $49.99

Taste Tibet Famous Chicken Curry

Recipe from: Taste Tibet by Julie Kleeman & Yeshi Jampa

Serves 4-6

2 tablespoons cooking oil

2 large garlic cloves, thinly sliced

2.5cm (1 inch) piece of ginger, washed but not peeled, thinly sliced

1 small red onion, thinly sliced

2 large tomatoes, thinly sliced

1/4 teaspoon tumeric

1 teaspoon Bassar curry masala (or hot chilli powder)

1 1/2 teaspoons Madras curry powder

2 tablespoons coconut milk powder

6-8 fresh curry leaves, or 10-12 dried

1 x 400ml (14 fl oz) tin coconut milk

600g (1 lb 5oz) chicken breast fillets, cut into bite-sized pieces

1 teaspoon salt

Chopped coriander (cilantro), to garnish - optional

Place a heavy-bottomed saucepan over a medium-high heat and add the oil. When it's hot, add the garlic and ginger and let it brown for a couple of minutes, then add the onion and stir for a further 2 minutes. Now add the tomatoes, turmeric, curry masala and curry powder. Mix together and cook for 10-15 minutes, turning the heat down a little and adding about 50 ml (2 1/2 tablespoons) of water if anything starts to catch, then add the coconut milk powder, curry leaves and coconut milk and mix thoroughly. Take your time here: you are making a curry paste, and it needs to be cooked through completely before you can add the chicken. 

Now add the chicken and salt. Turn the heat back up to high, stir the chicken through the sauce and cook for 8-10 minutes, adding a little boiling water - but only a little - if anything sticks. The pan should be quite dry to begin with, before the juices from the chicken start to be released, so wait a while before adding any water. 

After the chicken has been in for 8 minutes, check to make sure it is fully cooked. To do this, take a piece out and cut it through the middle - it should be white all the way through. If the sauce looks too thick, add a little more boiling water and stir briskly for 2 minutes. Garnish with coriander, if you like, then serve. 

Drunken Dumplings from Every. Night. Of. The. Week. by Lucy Tweed

So I have been meaning to share this delicious recipe with you for a few weeks now... actually it's more like a month. Back in July I was sent a copy of Every. Night. Of. The. Week by Lucy Tweed by the lovely people at Murdoch Books and boy is this book a keeper. 

The book is entertaining and quirky which I love. I mean come on - this recipe is called Drunken Dumplings and the optional ingredient listed is noise cancelling headphones. Midweek - whether you are working and spending all day looking at a screen or you've spent the day singing silly songs that you STILL get can't get the words right - its exactly what you need. I also think that right now, we all need a little quirky and fun in the kitchen and at home. Thinking about what we're eating next is exhausting when we are currently spending so much time inside. Lucy has brought the colour back into cooking and she shows how it can still be fun and you don't need a hundred ingredients or hours spent prepping. It's real food.

If you follow Lucy on Instagram everything she cooks just makes your mouth water and you instantly want that for dinner. Her instagram live's are worth rewatching as she cooks from Every. Night. Of. The. Week. and shows you how friendly her recipes really are. It's a cookbook that's for midweek meals but is anything but boring which I find most midweek cookbooks to be. Each recipe its bright and bold and the recipes I've cooked - so full of flavour.

So for something fun and different but highly delicious on a regular Thursday night and while we're all stuck inside with waaaaaay too much time on your hands thinking about whats for dinner. I'd suggest making this recipe one night or picking another which she's shared on her instagram or one step further, grabbing yourself a copy of her book - I think you'll thank me. With all the cookbooks I own, I can truely, hand on heart say - this is is the one I've gone to most over the past month for inspiration and dinners. Its exciting and fun and exactly what we all need right now.

Images and text from Every Night of the Week by Lucy Tweed; photography by Lucy Tweed. Murdoch Books RRP $35.00.

Drunken Dumplings

Recipe from Every Night of the Week by Lucy Tweed

Serves 2

For when you can’t commit to the idea of either a soup or a stir-fry.


Images and text from Every Night of the Week by Lucy Tweed; photography by Lucy Tweed. Murdoch Books RRP $35.00.

Ingredients

1 teaspoon olive oil

1 chicken breast fillet (around 220 g)

8 frozen dumplings
180 g somen noodles

2 tablespoons tom yum paste

400 ml tin coconut milk

2 heads of bok choy

1 teaspoon sesame oil

1 tablespoon lime juice

1–2 teaspoons chilli paste

Optional ingredients

noise-cancelling headphones

At some point every week I completely lose track of time. This happens so commonly on a Wednesday that it should act as a reliable time stamp.

There’s always someone at some kind of sport practice and usually a child in the house who belongs to another family in the neighbourhood.

It’s a comfortingly confusing day, Wednesday.

Mainly because there are often leftovers for the kids from yesterday, which means a compilation dinner of spices and flavours, dumplings, and some vegetables, blossoming and undisguised. The world is your drunken (somewhere between soup and sauce) bowl.

Just the way a Wednesday should be.

Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F).

Heat the oil in a large ovenproof frying pan over high heat and pan-fry the chicken breast for 2 minutes each side. Place in the oven for a few minutes to finish cooking through.

Boil the dumplings for 1 minute or until thawed. Add the somen noodles and cook according to the packet instructions. Drain. Remove the pan from the oven and set the chicken aside.

Fry the tom yum paste over medium–high heat for 2 minutes, then pour in the coconut milk. Add ½ cup (125 ml) of water to the tin and swish it around, then add to the pan. Bring to a simmer, stirring to combine with the tom yum paste.

Meanwhile, lightly steam the bok choy.

Slice the chicken and divide among two shallow bowls, then add the noodles, dumplings and bok choy.

Pour the broth over the top. Drizzle with sesame oil, then the lime juice and top with as much chilli paste as you can handle.

Coconut Curry Vegetables from Slow Cooker Central Family Favourites by Paulene Christie.

About a month and a bit ago a made a vegetable curry in the slow cooker that lasted me until last week, divided up in portions in the freezer, it was my grab and go lunch I didn't need to think about. It was so easy to make I should have shared this earlier so you could have also been making it while it's been crazy cold here. But anyway - here it is now so now you too can know how to make this delicious and very easy vegetable curry which takes no time and all except some forward thinking and then forgetting about it for about 6 hours. 

The recipe is from a cookbook I received called 'Slow Cooking Central - Family Favourites' by Paulene Christie. This book shows that you can make pretty much anything in your slow cooker, from cauliflower cheese to pull-apart bread to all sorts of curries, stews and soups to meatballs to even a whole chicken (yep a whole chicken in the slow cooker). There is no faffing about in the kitchen or hunting high and low for weird ingredients with this book. It's simple and has some great classics that you can make in the slow cooker to make winter a little easier.

I decided to make the Coconut Curry Vegetables one Sunday so I had a warm and comforting dinner when I came in from my basketball game because it's all too easy to order takeaway and pick it up on the way home when it's just you and its cold and it's Sunday. I chucked all the veggies in the pot, along with the curry powder and coconut milk at about midday and let it bubble away on low for pretty much all afternoon until I came home at 6:30pm. The kitchen smelt so delicious and all I needed to do was whack on the rice cooker and I'd have dinner in 15 minutes. Perfect amount of time for a shower and to get into winter pyjamas, uggs and a dressing gown.

To make this recipe even easier, she suggests you can use frozen vegetables which means this is a recipe to always have up your sleeve even when there are fresh veggies or even no sad veggies in your crisper, which is what I had to use up. I used a mixture of sweet potato, carrots, potato, kale, cauliflower and broccoli. I had to add about a cup of water when I checked on it able halfway through but I think this is only because I didn't use frozen vegetables which would have given off a little water when thawed and cooked. At the very end I added a splash of fish sauce and soy sauce to give it some extra saltiness. Yum.

Coconut Curry Vegetables

Recipe extract from Slow Cooker Central Family Favourites by Paulene Christie.

A great vegetable side dish, or even a main course for our vegetarian fans. This is mild enough for the whole family to enjoy, but if you like a little heat you can always add more curry powder.

Serves 6 as a side dish
Preparation 15 mins
Cook 4 hours
Cooker capacity 5 litres

1 small sweet potato, cut into chunks
5 baby red potatoes, quartered
1kg frozen mixed vegetables, such as carrot, beans, broccoli and cauliflower (see note)
400ml can light coconut cream
1 tablespoon cornflour
1 teaspoon mild curry powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground turmeric

1. Combines the sweet potato, potato and frozen vegetables in the slow cooker.

2. Mix the remaining ingredients and pour over vegetables.

3. Cover and cook on high for 1 hour, then low for 3 hours or until the potato is tender. Serve.

Notes: 
You can replace the frozen vegetables with the same quantity of fresh ones if you like. Use whatever you have on hand and cut into smallish chunks.

Some slow cookers cook more slowly than others, so use the high setting for longer if the potato is taking a long time to become tender. Keep the size of the potato chunks small, mo more than half the size of a golf ball.

If you want a thicker sauce, stir in extra thickening 10 minutes before serving: use a slurry of another 1 tablespoon of cornflour and 1 tablespoon of water.

Potato Tuturuga from Fire Islands, Recipes from Indonesia by Eleanor Ford

A couple of weeks ago, amongst the cake madness (see previous post) I received a beautiful book in the mail. Fire Islands, Recipes from Indonesia by Eleanor Ford. I had a brief flick through and thought wow, yum, um I need this now, ooo I think I had that in Bali, mmm noodles, but had to put it down to get back my cakes. It wasn't until last week I finally got the chance to have a real read and start cooking from it. And let me tell you, this book will make you hungry. It will make you hungry to source fresh turmeric and water spinach, and it will make you hungry to go and book a flight to Indonesia and not just sit on the beach of Nusa Dua drinking beer and eating Nasi Goreng every day, as delightful as that is.

The flavours and colours of the dishes in this book show waaaaayyy more variety of Indonesian foods than what we experienced. I have been completely oblivious of Indonesian cuisine before this year, and I'm embarrassed to say, the only Indonesian food I'd had was Mi Goreng from a packet, cooked in the microwave. Don't judge, I know you love the stuff too! Spicy and salty noodles, perfect street food/late night snack after too many drinks.

Geng Gari Curry from Thai Food Made Easy

I'm coming to you with a problem dear readers. My husband and I are funding our local thai restaurants rent with the amount of takeaway we order. We actually (embarrassingly so) order so much Thai take-away week to week that the driver now knows us and our broken apartment buzzer. And whats more embarrassing... they have an app that records your orders so that every 10th order is free... we've had a few free orders.

I can't help it, I freakin' love Thai food. It's one of my all time favourites. The freshness and variety of dishes mmmm just yum. As of last year, it also reminds me of our holiday in Patong where we ate fried rice topped with the perfect fried egg... runny yolk... crispy bottom, every single day. I wish I cooked more thai food at home than I do because as much as I love our takeaway place it's just not as good coming in those plastic boxes as it is piping hot, straight from the wok. But there is a reason for our takeaway problem. I find thai cooking somewhat intimidating. Yes, I'm a food blogger and I just admitted that. Bite me. But honestly, I do and I don't think I'm the only one. I mean, I'm pretty good with the pre-made curry pastes from the supermarket but other than that my thai cooking skills usually involve me botching up a salty stir fry by adding every asian sauce and condiment from the fridge. Sometimes it's great and others... well let just say I don't go back for seconds.

Tikka Chicken with Mint Chutney and Naan from A Kitchen in the Valley

After my sighting of the weevils a few weeks back I was only too pleased to be rid of them, until I realised...that when there is one... there are many or should I say thousands of the little critters, everywhere... I mean EVERYWHERE. Everything that was open, in a plastic container (yes they penetrated my containers) or in a paper bag was crawling with them which meant it all went in the bin, no discussion. Everything else that was sealed properly got a wipe down with hot soapy water and vinegar and sat on the kitchen counters for two days while I aired my newly washed and vinegar-ed cupboards out. After putting what was left after my cull back inside the cupboards I was only too happy to never go back in there again in fear of seeing another critter but then Sally Wise's new cookbook 'A Kitchen in the Valley' turned up on my doorstep and I took the dive and bought flour. I am still not game enough to put it in my cupboard and have stored it in my freezer just as google instructed me to. Supposedly it's to kill any un-hatched eggs and I'm keen to give anything a go.

But enough on my cupboard dramas and more on this cookbook you say? I agree. This new book of Sally Wise's is full of recipes using local produce found in the Derwent Valley, Tasmania where Sally lives. The recipes make you want to fill a long table full of food and invite everyone you know over just to feed them. Sally's home sounds picturesque with raspberry patches in the summer and a bed of giant rhubarb under the window and how can I forget Truffles the kitten?! The photography sets the feel for the book and although not every recipe has a photo, the titles of the recipes are tempting enough. There are some great sounding bread recipes in this book such as Tasty Breakfast Twirl which is a sort-of decadent stuffed breakfast bread, Raisin Bread and Turkish Breads with Spinach and Feta Stuffing or a Tomato and Bacon filling. Can you tell I have missed baking??

There are also some classic afternoon-tea treats that would make a great home-made high tea like Neenish Tarts which I remember from the local bakery as a kid and the Raspberry and Cream Cheesecake Slice...yum. But what caught my eye for dinner was the recipe for Tikka Chicken with Mint Chutney and Naan. There was no fancy curry pastes to make in advance and no ingredients which you need a whole day to find and a trip to every supermarket in your area, everything was in my pantry (expect the flour which is still in my freezer).

I started my making the naan bread so it had time to rise before starting the curry which surprised me as I have this idea that a curry is a long slow cooking process and this relatively quick. I made one slight change in the naan bread and used full cream milk instead of coconut milk as I have a thing about opening a can and not using the whole thing and I was already using a whole can of coconut milk in the curry so happily used regular milk instead and it worked just fine. However I will say this, these naan breads are not your traditional restaurant naans which have the gnarly black bits with bubbles of dense dough, these are light and almost fluffy. I'm not sure if this was just me or if they were meant to do this (there is no photo for this recipe) but mine turned into a kind of pocket when I baked them which was great to fill with the curry and chutney and although sometimes you want those naan breads with the black gnarly bits, these were just as delicious and much lighter which meant you could eat more of them. Always a positive.

And for the chicken tikka and chutney. Wow. Tristan said, quote and quote 'this is one of the best curries I've ever eaten'. He didn't say it was the best but I'll take that compliment anyway and I had to agree with him. It is a much lighter curry then anything I've had from the local Indian restaurant and although I say it was light, it was packed full of flavour and didn't have that layer of oil which you sometimes get from using the store-bought curry pastes. I was a little worried about the sauce being quite liquid but the recipe says you can thicken it by making a cornflour slurry but I let it simmer away for a little longer instead as I have a slight aversion with cornflour and curries together...just reduce it I say. With lighter naan breads, the fresh mint chutney, I served it with some steamed rice and roasted cauliflower (how good is cauliflower in curry?!) and just so you know, it got even better the next day.

Overall it was a pretty damn delicious dinner which we gorged ourselves on a huge bowl each while watching the new StarWars movie on the couch. A perfect date night in if you ask me.

Tikka Chicken with Mint Chutney and Naan

Adapted from 'A Kitchen in the Valley' by Sally Wise.

For the naan.
2 cups plain flour
2 teaspoons instant dried yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
125ml warm coconut milk (regular milk also works)
125ml plain yoghurt
1 egg
2 teaspoons olive oil
2 teaspoons lemon juice

For the chicken.
2 tablespoons coconut oil
1kg chicken breast fillets, sliced (or half the chicken and add extra veggies)
2 onions, finely sliced
3 garlic cloves, crushed
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger (jarred works great too)
2 long red chilli's, finely sliced
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 tablespoons sweet paprika
2 teaspoons garam masala
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
400ml can coconut milk
250ml chicken stock (stock cube is fine)

For the chutney.
60g fresh mint leaves (roughly half bunch)
3 tablespoons desiccated coconut
1 1/2 tablespoons sesame seeds
1/2 teaspoon brown sugar (regular sugar works too)
1 tablespoon vinegar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 clove garlic, crushed
180ml plain yoghurt

For the naan.
- Starting with the naan breads, place flour, yeast, sugar, baking powder and one teaspoon salt in a medium bowl and mix well. Whisk together the coconut milk (or regular milk), yoghurt, egg, olive oil and lemon juice. Pour into the dry mixture and mix using a wooden spoon until well combined. This is a wet mixture so don't be alarmed that this looks more like a mess than a dough. Cover with a tea towel and leave in a warm place to rise until doubled in size, about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

- Line two baking trays with baking paper and preheat your oven to 200C.

-Turn the risen dough onto a lightly floured bench and knead for 2-3 minutes or until smooth. Cut into 4-6 pieces and dust each lightly with flour. Roll each piece into an oval about 12-15cm long and 8-10cm wide. Place on lined trays, covered with a tea towel to rise for 15 minutes.

- Bake the naan for 15 minutes or until cooked through and golden on top.

For the chicken.
- Meanwhile start on your chicken. To make the tikka chicken, heat the coconut oil in a saucepan over medium-high heat and sauté the chicken until it changes colour. Add the onion, garlic and ginger and cook for about 2 minutes or until fragrant. Add the spices along with 1 teaspoon of salt and stir to coat everything in the pan. Lastly, stir in the coconut milk and chicken stock and bring to a boil.

- Reduce to a simmer and cook for about 10-15 minutes until the chicken is tender. If your sauce needs thickening, simmer for 10 minutes longer or thicken with a cornflour slurry (3 teaspoon cornflour mixed with 2 tablespoons water).

For the chutney.
- Place all the ingredients except the yoghurt into a small food processor and process until smooth. Stir the yoghurt into the paste. Taste and season with pepper and a little salt if necessary.

Serve the curry with the naan, steamed rice and mint chutney.

Pork and Sweet potato red curry with lazy brown rice.

On this rainy, cool Tuesday morning it felt like a Monday... humpf (we had a long weekend here in Australia so to a lot of us it kinda was a Monday). Waking up to find that Arthur has just discovered the toilet paper and decided it's a fun game to spin it until all the toilet paper end ups in a pile on the floor all ripped with holes in it somehow I don't think I was the only one who felt this either. The guy in front of me on the train this morning had his t-shirt on inside out (he bought it from cotton on and wore a size medium) and the man next to me was on the phone most of the train trip trying to get his flat tire fixed that by the sound of it he had only discovered flat this morning.

We have been having some of the oddest weather here in Sydney and today I feel like I should be in a scarf and my gumboots but instead I turned up to work with soggy socks then trekked it out again for the morning coffee run. On days like these I crave food that tastes like it has spent hours cooking on the stove or in the oven. Something that fills your cold little belly with a warm home cooked meal. 

During the week I feel like I cheat this little blog, I don't often stretch my cooking skills or bake much at all (or any eeek). I pick quick meals to cook. When I get home form work at 6:30pm, I give Arthur some much deserved cuddles, kick off my shoes, strip my uncomfortably too tight pencil skirt off, slip on a pair of daggy old sports shorts, tie my hair up in a sprout on top of my head and start on dinner. I want to be sitting down eating by 7:30... at the latest. 

Yes I know what your thinking - I'm a nanna. I can't help it.

Tonights dinner I got from Donna Hay's book 'no time to cook'. It has the flavours of a slow cooked dinner, the vegetables that give you that comforting full tummy feeling and the meat was so tender that you would be completely fooled when I tell you that it only took about 30 minutes of cooking but tastes like it cooked for hours. What more can you want from a mid-week dinner on a rainy Tuesday which feels like a Monday??

Pork and sweet potato red curry with lazy brown rice.

- recipe adapted from Donna Hay's 'no time to cook'

Serves 3 

note - this is a mild curry (unless you get the HOT curry paste)

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons red curry paste 

1 brown onion, sliced into chunks

1 teaspoon jarred grated ginger

400g can coconut cream

200ml water (I half filled the coconut cream can with water and gave it a slosh around)

1 vegetable stock cube

1 medium sized sweet potato, peeled and thinly sliced

200g pork fillet, thinly sliced

1 teaspoon dried coriander leaves (a small handful of fresh would be better but I didn't have any)

2 teaspoons fish sauce

1.5 cup brown rice

3 cups water

1 teaspoon salt

- Start with your rice. If your using white rice you can start it after you have the sweet potatoes boiling but brown rice takes longer. Put your brown rice, water and salt in a medium pot, give it a stir and bring it to the boil. Once it reaches boiling stage reduce it to low (as low as your stove can go), place a lid ajar and set a timer for 25 minutes.

- Heat the olive oil in a medium pot on high heat. Add the curry paste and cook for about 1 minute. Reduce the heat to medium and add the onion and ginger and fry for about 4 minutes or until the onions have softened but not coloured.

- Add the sweet potato, coconut cream, water and stock cube and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for about 15-20 minutes or until the potato is soft.

- Keep en eye on your rice! If the timer has finished, turn the heat off. Place the lid on properly and leave it for 10 minutes to keep steaming.

- Add the pork to the coconut cream sauce and cook for a further 6-8 minutes or until the pork is cooked through (this will depend on how thin you sliced your pork).

- Stir in the fish sauce and coriander at the last minute and serve with brown rice. 

A nice addition would be to add some freshly sliced chilli on top if you like a bit of spice!

Something a little different: Nostalgia.

Do you ever feel nostalgic about food? about a specific smell? Or even a lip gloss you used to use when you were in high school? Does it bring memories of your childhood or teenage years flooding back?

Or do you simply crave those memories and create that smell yourself?

Thats what I did tonight. Having a quarter life crisis at the moment and having a down day I wanted something that was home cooked that brought back memories of my mum's cooking when I was younger and had not a care in the world. It wasn't quite the same or even as good as her's but it filled our tiny apartment with the smell of my mum's cooking and it has given me a satisfied full tummy like when I was little. And I'm sure ever mum has their own version of chicken curry but nothing does it like your own mum's.

I remember asking for this curry for my birthday dinner one year catching my mum by surprise, normally I wanted to go out to the little Italian restaurant at the end of our street which served sizzling garlic prawns in little black pots. But I wanted mum's chicken curry.

So I thought tonight instead of sharing a recipe I've cooked from a book, I'd share my mum's chicken curry which always makes me feel like I'm home again. Given that I didn't have chicken and only turkey mince and no eggplant, only carrots and broccoli the photo looks a little different but the recipe is right. I know this won't bring the childhood memories back like it does for me but it's still a pretty damn good dinner, nostalgic or not.

What smell or home cooked meal takes you back to a place where it feels all warm and fuzzy?

My Mum's Chicken Curry.

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1 glove garlic, crushed

1 onion, chopped

500g chicken thighs, cut into rough pieces

2 tsp Keen's traditional curry powder (if it's not Keen's it wont taste the same)

1 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsp fish sauce

1 tbsp sesame oil

2 tbsp lemon juice

400ml coconut cream

1 eggplant, roughly cubed

- Heat vegetable oil in a large saucepan over medium heat and fry garlic and onion till golden and soft.

- Add eggplant and cook for a few minutes. Add chicken and cook until browned.

- Add curry powder, soy sauce, fish sauce,sesame oil, lemon juice and coconut milk. Stir and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes on low.

- Serve with steamed rice, tomato salsa (recipe below), cucumber cooler (recipe below) and poppadoms.

Tomato Salsa.

2 tomatoes, diced into 1cm cubes (roughly)

1/2 red onion, finely diced

pinch of salt and pepper

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

- Mix everything together and serve.

Cucumber Cooler.

1/2 cup light sour cream (or greek yoghurt)

1/2 continental cucumber, diced in 1cm pieces (roughly)

pinch of salt and pepper

1/2 tsp dried dill tips

- Mix everything together and serve.

Thai green chicken skewers with ginger quinoa from Donna Hay's cookbook Fresh and Light.

Have you ever eaten anything so spicy that you felt like your tongue was swollen and your tummy was burning?

I should have followed the recipe.

Here I am getting cocky again and boy did I regret that choice. Instead of two tablespoons of curry paste it was more like three... and I knew this stuff was hot. Somehow this completely slipped my mind and turned into a dinner that blew my taste buds away with so much spice.

Trying to be healthy and incorporating "super" foods into my diet lately I went with a different/light variation of a Thai green chicken curry which used quinoa instead of rice. I made the Thai green chicken skewers with ginger quinoa from Donna Hay's book Fresh and Light.

The quinoa was so delicious but the little bit of refreshing heat fresh ginger gives off it didn't help the burning on my tongue from the curry sauce. I had to cover my dinner in plain yoghurt but the flavours were really fresh and delicious once my mouth had started to cool down and I could taste again. It was such a lovely light change from the normal green chicken curry we make at home and it made me feel healthier :)

I added some steamed bok-choi to add a vegetable to the dish. The recipe could easily feed 4 but I'm always a little scared that maybe some people are smaller eaters than me and Tristan so what happens if I'm hungry after?! this is why we always have so many left overs and freezer lunches because I'm scared of going hungry... hmm think I'm a little crazy... please keep reading this crazy girl's food blog even if I am crazy! 

It's quick to prepare and doesn't make that much mess which is exactly the kind of recipes I love.

You can find the recipe on Donna Hay's website here.

I used one of those small can's of coconut cream (I think they are about 160ml) instead of just using the 60ml specified in the recipe, it gave more sauce for the skewers and quinoa plus I hate having half a can of anything sitting in the fridge going to waste. Also please don't make the mistake like I did and use a really hot curry paste - unless of course you LOVE hot things then by all means blow your socks off just offer your guests yoghurt as a condiment. If you know it's a hot paste be careful how much you use so you can enjoy it without having to slather plain yoghurt over it to extinguish your burning mouth. 

I will definitely make this again but either use less of the same curry paste I used or a different brand and hope that doesn't blow my socks off too.

Give this a go for a light summer change! ...just watch the amount of curry paste you put in...

p.s. Donna Hay's photo looks much better so definitely click on the recipe link above to see how the professions make it look. hmmm...still dreaming of that fancy camera and fluorescent lights and some crockery to spruce things up... I'm just always so hungry when it's time for dinner... I guess patience is a virtue.