Recipe

Gaeng Keow Wan Gai (Thai Green Curry)

4 servings · prep 20 min (with prepared paste) · cook 20 min

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• lunch
• dinner
• thai

Authored by the maintainer; Bangkok home method using a quality bought paste, with notes for making it from scratch.

Ingredients

the base

• 200 ml coconut cream (the thick top layer of a tin of unshaken coconut milk)
• 400 ml coconut milk
• 4–5 tbsp green curry paste

the protein

• 500 g boneless skinless chicken thigh, sliced 1 cm thick

the vegetables

• 200 g Thai apple eggplants (or pea eggplants), quartered
• 100 g bamboo shoots, sliced

the aromatics

• 8 kaffir lime leaves, torn — Ratchaburi aromatic farm
• 4 bird's eye chiles, halved lengthwise

the seasoning

• 3 tbsp fish sauce — Phú Quốc fish sauce factory
• 2 tbsp palm sugar

the finish

• Large handful Thai basil leaves
• 1 large red chile, sliced (for colour, not heat)

Method

1. Open the coconut cream tin carefully without shaking. Spoon the thick white cream from the top into a wok or wide pan. Place over medium-high heat. Cook 4–6 minutes, stirring, until the cream visibly splits — small pools of clear oil separate from the white fat. This is *cracking the coconut cream* — the foundation of a real Thai curry. · 6 min
2. Add the curry paste to the cracked cream. Fry hard for 3 minutes — the paste should turn a deeper green and become intensely fragrant. The oil colours green; this is what you want. · 3 min
3. Add the chicken. Stir 2 minutes until coated and just starting to colour. · 2 min
4. Pour in the coconut milk and bring to a simmer. Add eggplant, bamboo shoots, half the kaffir lime leaves, and the chiles.
5. Simmer gently for 12 minutes until eggplant is tender and chicken cooked through. Do not boil hard — the coconut milk will split unattractively. · 12 min
6. Stir in fish sauce and palm sugar. Taste — should read as salty, slightly sweet, with chili heat in the back and curry-paste aroma in the front.
7. Off heat. Throw in the Thai basil and the remaining kaffir lime leaves. Scatter sliced red chile for colour.
8. Serve immediately over jasmine rice.

Notes

Thai green curry is structurally a fat-suspension dish. The flavour
is carried by the curry-paste oil that separates out of the coconut
cream during the fat-crack step. Most home cooks skip that step,
dump everything in cold milk, and end up with a flat, watery,
vaguely-green soup. The fat-crack is the dish.

Make double curry paste when you make it from scratch — pound for
20 minutes in a mortar, freeze in ice cube trays. A frozen cube
is dinner in 15 minutes.

Variants: red curry (red chiles, no Thai basil); massaman (Persian-
influenced, with potatoes and peanuts); panang (drier, peanut-rich).
Same grammar, different paste.