Sawaddee ka welcome to hot Thai kitchen so in the curry chapter of my cookbook I talked about
there being two types of curries the coconut base one and a water base one and the coconut
one sort of rich and creamy the water base ones are brothy and light well this dish is sort of
an in-between so it's got coconut milk in it but it's light enough that I literally drink it like
soup it's so good and we use a combination of meat and vegetables that are so popular
it's called gaeng gai fakkiew gaeng is curry gai is chicken and fakkiew is winter melon which is this
big thing in front of me here this is something that my grandmother makes quite a lot and it's
one of my absolute favorite ways to have a curry so let's get started so winter melon if you've
never had it before really doesn't have much of a flavor on its own but when you cook it it
absorbs flavor of the things around it really well it becomes super soft and delicious now
in Thailand winter melons about the size of a butternut squash I have never seen something
so big until I came to Canada it's so big in fact that they cut it out and sell with you
in slices like this I have seen like a full one and it's this massive like thing it's crazy so
anyhow what I want to do is cut off the peel and also the seeds and cut this into the inch cube
all right this is a very simple dumb Panther kind of curry I'm going to start out by putting
about half of my coconut milk into this pot here and reduce it and I got I brought this coconut
milk all the way from Thailand because it's so good my brother who lives in Thailand told me
I found this new coconut milk and it's awesome when you have to try it and I tried it and it
brilliant and I love the fact that I can seal it again so I don't have to transfer the rest of it
into something else so while that's coming to a boil and reducing let's look at the protein so
I've got here some chicken bone-in skin-on chicken leg and thigh so this is two legs into thighs and
they're chopped into chunks right through the bone and you can find chicken that's cut like
this at Chinese butchers and if not you can also use chicken drumettes which has a lot of bones
as well and the reason why I chose this kind of chicken is so then I can just use water and the
bones from the chicken will turn that water into flavorful chicken stock however if you're going
to use boneless chicken you can totally do that just make sure you use a good unsalted chicken
stock instead to maximize your flavor okay all right so now that the coconut milk is reduced
and it's super thick now I'm going to add my curry paste so I'm using red curry paste and I wanted to
just point out because this brand of curry paste comes in a little can like this and it's good for
vegetarians because there's no shrimp paste added to it however because we are clearly not making a
vegetarian curry what I would do normally is I add like a little pinch of shrimp paste into it
to sort of make up for that I forgot my gym pace today so we're going to have a non shrimp a sea
curry for today that's all right and of course if you're feeling hardcore and you want to make
your own curry paste I have a video for that so I'll put the link right up here so now that the
curry paste thick and you can see the coconut oil sort of fizzling away around the edges that means
it's ready so what that is is the curry paste is now frying in the coconut oil is developing the
flavor so it's you know basically you want the herb from the fight to really cook them bloom
now the time is right but again what am i doing I can just pour the whole thing in but uh there
you go sometimes you know you do something in your life this makes no sense all right so give this a
quick toss get it all covered in the curry paste look at that and now I'm going to add the rest
of my coconut milk and it so happens that this model is exactly one cup so that makes it easy
but I'm going to add two more cups of water and so it's a pretty high ratio of water to coconut milk
but that's what's going to keep this broth yeah I like to call it broth light and Sybil I should
say drinkable because I have been known to drink this broth I'm going to season this a little bit
with some fish sauce and also some palm sugar to cut all that saltiness so now what I'm going to do
is I'm going to let the chicken simmer and braise until it's fork-tender for thirty minutes that's
that's about how long it should take but of course you always want to check it with a fork but I'm
also going to add my winter melon right now now I know some of you are wondering ways obviously
wouldn't take 30 minutes for these things to cook and it doesn't but if you cook winter melon just
until they are done they kind of taste like just winter melon and that's not very exciting like
it doesn't pays great but if you give it a long time to sit and simmer it will absorb all that
flavor and they become sort of a sponge full of curry flavor and they don't actually overcook
very easily so you can let them go for a good 30 minutes and they'll still hold their shape look
at that smells so good in here right now now about five minutes before this was done I threw in some
kaffir lime leaves which I just tore into chunks and that just add sort of some citrusy freshness
to help balance out the richness of the curry now if you notice there is a lot of oil on here and
this is a combination of the coconut oil that we separated and also some chicken fat in Thailand is
completely normal and we just leave it as is but if it bothers you you can skim some off I would
skim it all up because you are throwing away some of that flavor as well the chicken is now super
tender and the winter melon is fully cooked and it's going to be translucent all the way through
but it's still holding its shape right now it's just soft and delicious and if you look at the the
actual consistency of the broth look how light and thin that is right so it's more like a soup so I'm
going to give it a taste oh oh it's so good are so comforting it's like chicken soup taken to the
next level but I will add a little more seasoning with some fish sauce and this is always what you
want to do when you make curry you don't add all your fish sauce in the beginning because you just
never know it's hard to stick something that's too salty this next little bit is completely
optional but I wanted to show you anyway because it is done in Thailand and I actually like it I'm
going to add in here some pork blood so this is pork blood that's sold in a block you can also
do chicken blood actually I would prefer chicken but I can only find pork and it's got a texture of
sort of similar between soft and medium firm tofu in fact when I was little out of the grocery store
and I saw this being sold and I was so convinced it was chocolate flavored tofu thank goodness I
didn't try it before somebody told me that that's not chocolate tofu so I'm just going to add this
to the curry and bring it to a boil it doesn't need to be cooked for a long time but you do
want to sort of cook it until it's hot thoroughly hot all the way through again this is completely
optional all right that looks good to me and now I'm going to finish it off with some Thai basil
whoa this pot is full I'm going to throw this off now because I just need the residual heat
to wilt the basil and that is pretty much done now you can serve it right now if you've got time to
let it sit for a couple hours or even do this a day in advance and the winter melon will be even
more flavorful as it sits and absorb all that flavor so good we always have curry with rice
in Thailand and this is how we normally would serve this curry as well but it's so light and
brothy as you can see that I am actually going to paste it as is straight up and it's a great
curry to put with noodles as well so you can make like a curry noodle soup so good oh that's hot but
you can have to go from here oh that's so good I'm going to have a little bit of the blood ah what a
comforting dish the seasoning is not so strong so you can sort of drink it like soup and that blood
if you haven't had it before but you have liver it's got a similar flavor so if you like liver I
think you're going to like it cuz it's got almost like a a jello ecoboost texture what a great dish
super simple really rustic something you can whip up the day before and I can guarantee you you can
eat this for a week and you won't get sick of it so the recipe as always we'll be on happy kitchen
calm when you make it send me a photo on Facebook Twitter or Instagram and if you haven't subscribed
to the show please do so you never miss an episode and I will see you next time for you next time