Spicy Quick-Fried Beans

From Thai Vegetarian Cooking, Vatcharin Bhumichitr, Pavilion Books, 2003.

Before beginning this recipe I had to make a red curry paste. It was only a matter of pounding all of the ingredients in a mortar until they became a paste. The ingredients used were dried red chillies (7 in all), coriander seeds, chopped galangal root and lemon grass, some salt, and chopped kaffir lime peel, garlic and shallots. From the wonderful smells that rose at the pounding I could tell it was going to be a good curry paste.

 The remainder of the dish was an easy one.

Beancurd was cut into blocks and fried until brown.

From then it was only a matter of heating up a wok and frying chopped garlic for a few seconds and then adding the red curry paste. The rest of the ingredients were added in the order of beans cut into 3 cm lengths, light soy sauce, sugar, ground roast peanuts and chopped kaffir lime leaves. The last to go in was the fried beancurd.

This was served with rice with peas. What a tasty way to have beans. Next time I make a red curry paste I’ll save some to use with beans.

This was another successful recipe from Thai Vegetarian Cooking. It's good when you can find a recipe that manages to make a good vegetarian curry paste without having to use ingredients such as fish sauce.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔