Everyday Epicurean

_While on the way home from work today I got a craving for Green Thai Curry. However, I didn’t have all the ingredients for said dish so upon arriving home I set about making a dish of similar properties, similar enough to satisfy my craving at least.

The recipe below contains some fairly rough measurements (who ever measures anything when cooking ?)._

h2. Ingredients

h3. The Rice:

* 1.5 cups of long grain rice
* 1/4 cup of red lentils
* 1 teaspoon of salt
* 2.75 cups of water

h3. The Curry:

* 300 g of chicken breast fillets, thinly sliced (across the breast)
* 1 onion
* 1 green capsicum (bell pepper for the foreigners)
* 4 fresh mushrooms (sliced)
* 3 cloves of garlic (diced really finely)
* 1 dessert spoon of tamarind paste
* splash of soy sauce
* 2 teaspoons of curry powder ( _I’m guessing here, as I just tipped “enough” in_ )
* half a teaspoon of palm sugar ( _another guess I’m afraid_ )
* 1 can of coconut cream
* salt and pepper
* hot chili flakes ( _about 1 chili’s worth_ )
* 3 dried curry leaves
* 1/4 cup of pearl barley
* 1/8 cup of red lentils
* oil ( _I use olive oil most of the time_ )

h2. Method:

Place the barley in a cup of water to soak, set aside.

I microwave my rice as it’s fairly quick, requires no attention and is out of the way of the other cooking. Thus, put all the rice ingredients into a large microwave casserole dish (with lid), stir, cover and zap it on high for 14 minutes ( ^may vary with microwave wattage^ ).

In a wok, put some oil.
Slice the onion in half (top to bottom) and then slice each half evenly (and relatively thinly) also top to bottom (from the onion’s original perspective). Place in the wok and turn the heat on medium-low.
Now deseed the capsicum and slice it into strips, then lining the strips up together, slice them on an angle twice such that you get three short strips with angled ends per long strip. Add these to the wok too.
Add the garlic once the onion starts to go clear (or brown, depending on how hot your wok is).
Reduce the heat while you’re slicing the chicken (if you haven’t already).
Add the chicken, turn up the heat a bit to brown it, then add the tamarind paste, curry, soy sauce, salt, pepper and chili.
Reduce the heat a little (you don’t want to burn it), and stir through, cooking for a few minutes.
Now, add the coconut cream and lentils, bring to a fast simmer, stir through and then reduce the heat again to a slow simmer.
By now the rice is done, so take it out and if your barley is still fairly hard, nuke it with the water in the microwave for about 1.5 to 2.5 minutes (until slightly soft).
Drain your barley and add it to the curry.
Add the curry leaves.
Simmer for about 10 to 20 minutes (or until the lentils are cooked), then serve on a bed of the rice/lentil mix.