Red Curry with Roast (Duck) Chicken

 

Everyone has a favourite Thai dish that they order every time they go to a Thai restaurant. Mine is Red Curry Duck. The unique taste of red curry with the falling-apart tomatoes, fresh pineapple and lychees with the succulent taste of roast meat is so delicious that to order it every time I go to a Thai restaurant is not even close to overkill. I used to live in Sydney and when making this dish, I'd drive into Thai town (yes, that's a thing), order a roast duck that they'd butcher on the spot, pick up Thai miniature eggplants, palm sugar, kaffir lime leaves and authentic red curry paste, drive home and whip it up. It sounds romantic, and although I'd try and feel the romance of it while spending 30min trying to find a parking spot in the zero parking options of inner-city Sydney, each time it'd end up being a pretty big undertaking, cost a lot of money ($20 roast duck, not to mention once copping a $240 parking fine) and it inevitably ended up being a meal reserved for special occasions only. 

However, all that changed when I met someone who had as their family staple a green curry with an easy-as-it-gets roast chicken from Woolies as their choice of protein. Hmmm, interesting thought *file that one away*

Fast track two years and we've moved to regional Victoria and there's simply no way I can drive to an asian butcher and order barbecue roast duck and grab miniature eggplants from the Thai supermarket next door. So I pull out the Thai cookbook, scour the ingredients, decide to sub miniature eggplants with our homegrown lebanese eggplants (skinny long variety) and use the sacrilegious Woolies roast chicken. Thanks to the ever-increasing multiculturalisation of Australian supermarkets, you can literally get everything else from Woolies shelves. The result? It. tasted. so. dang. good.

This recipe is from that same Thai student back in 2011 who got her Mum to send me an authentic Thai cookbook translated into English for my birthday present. Still one of my favourite presents.

Ingredients:

1 roast duck (or store-bought roast chicken, shredded keeping skin)

1/4 cup red curry paste (use half this amount if you want it mild)

4 cups coconut milk

1 cup miniature eggplant (or lebanese eggplants sliced in 1cm chunks)

10 cherry tomatoes (I use the entire punnet)

1 can of lychees, drained

1 can of pineapple pieces, drained

4 kaffir lime leaves, torn

1 tsp palm sugar

1/2 tsp salt

2 tbsp fish sauce

1/2 cup chicken stock

1 1/2 tbsp cooking oil

Jasmine rice, boiled

Method:

1. In a wok, fry the curry paste in oil over medium heat until fragrant. Add 1 cup of coconut milk, stir thoroughly until red oil surfaces. Add the shredded roast chicken and saute for 1 minute. 

2. Transfer to saucepan, add remaining coconut milk and chicken stock and stir well. Add the tomatoes, eggplants, pineapple, lychees and kaffir lime leaves.

3. Season to taste with sugar, salt and fish sauce. (If using roast chicken, be mindful that it already has a lot of salt). Continue cooking until the mixture returns to the boil, then turn off the heat. 

Serve hot with boiled rice and garnish with torn lime leaves.