Shrimp Sour Curry is a traditional food of Central & Southern Thailand. Think of it as curried soup. Although the ingredients are the same for the two refions, the south of Thailand variation tastes more spicy because they add more dry chilli during cooking. The Central Thailand version is closer to sweet and sour soup and is the one given here. This is medium hot.

Ingredient For 2 People
50 gsm Sour Curry Paste.
800 ml. Water.
50 gms. Tamarind
8 Shrimp
50 gms. Pak Kra Chate (Or Green Vegetable)
50 Long Beans (Or green beans)
4 Oyster Mushroons
4 Tablespoons Fish Sauce.
2 Tablespoons Sugar.

Preparation
1. Clean the shrimp, ensure you cut the shell and remove the entrails which can spoil the appearance of the dish.
2. Clean the oyster mushrooms, pak kra chate, and long beans and chop into 3 cm pieces, set aside.
3. Mix the tamarind with water, squeeze until the water goes brown and taste sour. For this curry we need the sour tamarind water but not the tamarind, seive the mixture to remove the tamarind and place the sour water into a pan.
4. Add the sour curry paste to the pan and stir over the heat until the water boils.
5. When water start boiling, add the fish sauce and sugar in and taste it. You are aiming for sweet, sour, salty, spicy taste, you can adjust the sugar, salt and curry paste to achieve this.
6. Add the vegetables and shrimp and cook over the heat for 2 minutes.

This is a dish of scrambled, curried eggs served with shrimp and spring onion. Thailand has China to the north and India to the west and this dish is the Thai merging of those two traditions. Here I've used shrimp, you can also use crab and other seafood.

Ingredients for 2 People
75 gms Shrimp
1 Egg
1 Spring Onion
1 Sprig Coriander
3 Garlic Cloves
1 Teaspoon Curry Powder
1 Teaspoon Sugar
1 Teaspoon Salt
2 Tablespoons Condensed Milk
2 Tablespoons Light Soy Sauce
1 Tablespoon Oyster Sauce
4 Tablespoons Oil
50 ml Water

Preparation
1. Chop the garlic and fry in the oil.
2. Clean the shrimp put into frying pan with garlic.
3. Mix the curry powder with the water, sugar, salt, light soy sauce, and oyster sauce, and add to the frying pan.
4. Fry for 1/2 minute.
5. Chop the coriander and spring onion and add to the pan.
6. Scramble the egg and add it to the pan.
7. Add the condensed milk, fry for 2 minutes and serve.

Serve With
Hot Rice or Snacks

This dish is seafood in a set red curry. The seafood is normally a mixture of chopped shrimp, crab meat, squid, mussels and minced white fish, but you can omit or exchange similar seafood if you prefer. For a true authentic look, make little parcels of the mixture in banana leaves and steam those, but the taste is the same if you steam it in serving pots, or even foil cups can be used. This dish can also be made with coconut milk in place of the soya milk.

Ingredients for Family
100 gms Shrimp
100 gms Crab Meat
100 gms Squid
100 gms Mussels
100 gms White Fish Meat, Minced
1 Egg
2 Tablespoons Red Curry Paste
250 ml Soya Milk
2 Tablspoons Salt
1/2 Teaspoon Sugar
2 Red Chillies
2 Kaffir Citrus Leaves
50 gms Chinese Cabbage Sliced Finely
20 gms Sweet Basil Leaves

Preparation
1. Clean the shrimp, cut along the centre of the back and remove the black thread 'gut'.
2. Clean the squid, remove the gladius (the hard plate in the body of the squid).
3. In a blender, mix the red curry paste with the fish mince and egg and blend until they are well mixed.
4. Add the soya milk, salt and sugar and blend until you make a red paste.
5. Take several bowls for steaming, I used square serving dishes for the photograph above.
6. At the base of the dish, layer some cabbage and sweet basil, then add some of the chopped seafood as the next layer, then finally fill the dish with the red curry mixture. Tap the bowl to make sure the red curry fills all the gaps.
7. Steam for 10 minutes in a chinese steamer, you can test if it is cooked by pushing a fork in it.
8. Slice the kaffir leaves and chilli into fine strips and garnish the top of the curry with them.

Serve With
Hot Rice

The most unusual part of this recipe is the rambutans, the semi-sweet Thai fruit we add to it to balance the spicy curry. Lychees can be substituted very successfully if you can't obtain rambutans. The duck though is essential, it has a soft meat that blends into the dish. If you can't get hold of duck, try one of the other pork or chicken red curry recipes on this site instead!

Ingredients for 2 People
100 gms Duck
200 ml Coconut Milk
Water for Boiling
3 Tablespoons Thai Red Curry Paste
2 Tablespoons Brown Sugar
2 Tablespoons Oil
2 Red Chillies
5 Basil Leaves
4 Kaffir Citrus Leaves
5 Cherry Tomatoes
1 Teaspoon Salt
2 Tablespoons Fish Sauce
2 Cubed Raw Potatoes
4 Rambutans (From a tin is better than fresh for this recipe)

Preparation
1. Boil the potatoes in water until they are cooked, drain off the water, leaving only approx. 100 mls remaining in the pan.
2. Clean the duck and slice the meat into strips.
3. Into a frying pan, fry the curry paste in the oil for few seconds - this will release the flavours - then add duck and stir fry in the hot oil. Again this only needs to be done for a few seconds.
4. Cut the chillies and kaffir leaves into smaller pieces and add to the frying pan with the duck.
5. Add the coconut milk, salt, sugar and fish sauce, and fry for 2 minutes.
6. Add the contents of the frying pan to the potato pan and bring the liquid back to the boil.
7. Add the rambutans, basil leaves, and cherry tomatoes and serve immediately.

Serve With
Hot Thai Fragrant Rice

There's plenty of good healthy light protein in prawns, and this is a nice way to eat them. Eat this dish with Thai fragrant rice, a good way to present them is to keep the head and tail on, and only shell the middle. It makes the dish look more stylish!

Ingredients for Two People
8 Prawns
1 Tablespoons Red Curry Paste
2 Tablespoons Fish Sauce
1/2 Teaspoon Sugar
100 ml Coconut Milk
50 ml Water
2 Red Chillies
2 Kaffir Citrus Leaves
2 Tablespoons Oil

Preparation
1. Clean the prawns, take off the middle shell leaving the head and tail intact. Cut the prawn down the back and remove the black thread 'gut' which is very off-putting.
2. Fry the shrimp in oil for 30 second and remove onto a plate.
3. Into the same pan, put the curry paste and oil and fry for a few seconds to release the flavours.
4. Add the coconut milk, sugar, fish sauce, and water and fry on a low heat while mixing, it only takes a few minutes to make.
5. Chop the chillies into halves, and add to the frying pan.
6. Serve the prawns by arranging them on a plate and pouring the curry sauce over them. Garnish with slices of the kaffir leaves. When you eat it, east some of the kaffir leaves too, they're part of the flavourings.

Serve With
Thai Fragrant Rice

This simple fried dish of yellow curried pumpkins with pork is the last dish we'll make from pumpkin for a while, now that all our halloween pumpkin has been used up! When I was young my sister and I would fight over who got to eat this pumpkin dish, but after a week of pumpkin dishes, I won't be fighting over it now!

Ingredients
100 gms Pumpkin
70 gms Pork Mince
2 Tablespoons Thai Yellow Curry Paste
150 ml Coconut Milk
100 ml Water
1 Tablespoon Sugar
2 Tablespoons Light Soy Sauce
2 Garlic Cloves
2 Tablespoons Oil

Preparation
1. Clean and chop the pumpkin into a bite sized pieces.
2. Put the oil into a frying pan over a medium heat. Chop the garlic and fry with oil for a few seconds.
3. Add the curry paste and coconut milk, stir it until the curry is mixed with coconut milk.
4. Roll pieces of pork mince into small balls and add to the pan.
5. Add the sugar, light soy sauce and water, and fry for 1 minute. It's better to put a lid on the pan so it doesn't dry out.

Serve With
Thai Fragrant Rice

The balls in this curry are squid balls made from squid and rice flour. You don't have to make them yourself if you don't want to, you can buy them in Asian supermarkets. Just look in the freezer section. The other main ingredient is the celery greens, these are the leaves of the celery, rather than the stalks.

Ingredients Squid Balls
200 gms Squid
2 Tablspoons Wheat Flour
1 Tablespoons Salt
50 gms Crushed Ice
Cool Water

Preparation Squid Balls
1. Put a pan of water onto boil
2. Clean the squid, for this recipe we just want the flesh. Remove the eye, the beak and plate and chop the flesh into small pieces.
3. Put the pieces into a food processor and blend with the salt and flour until smooth. Add the crushed ice, and continue blending. What you want is a fine mixture of ice, squid and flour.
4. Take spoonfuls of the mixture and drop them into the boiling water. You can make round balls by using two teaspoons and scraping the mixture between the two spoons.
5. The ball will swell up and float once cooked, when that happens remove it from the boiling water and drop into the cool water.
6. During the cooking the ice melts and leaves a ball with a spongy texture.

Ingredients for Curry
2 Tablespoons Red Curry Paste
250 ml Coconut Milk
50 ml Water
1 Tablespoon Sugar
2 Tablespoons Fish Sauce
30 gms Chopped Celery Greens
2 Tablespoons Oil

Preparation for Curry
1. In a frying pan, heat the oil until it is hot, then add the coconut milk and stir.
2. Add the red curry paste and mix well, bring the curry mixture to the boil.
3. Cut the squid balls into halves, add to the curry mix and bring back to the boil, cook for 30 seconds.
4. Add the fish sauce, sugar, celery and fry for 30 seconds longer.
5. Mix in the chopped celery greens, and remove from the heat.

Serve With
Thai Fragrant Rice

A dish of fried fish on a bed of curried celery greens. This should be eaten as a side dish to rice. Notice I softened the curry with evaporated milk, you can also use coconut milk, but for this fish dish the creaminess of evaporated milk works better.

Ingredients
3-4 White Fish Steaks (I used Hake).
1 Teaspoons Curry Powder
2 Tablespoons Evaporated Milk
2 Tablespoons Oil
1 Egg
1/3 Teaspoon White Pepper
2 Tablespoons Chopped Onion
30 gms Chopped Celery
3 Garlic Cloves
4 Tablespoons Light Soy Sauce
1 Teaspoons Sugar

Preparation
1. Deep fry the fish in hot oil until it is golden and brown. Then drain on kitchen paper.
2. Pound or chop the garlic, fry the garlic and chopped onion in a frying pan for a few seconds.
3. Add the curry powder, and egg. Stir the egg to break it up and mix it with the other ingredients.
4. All all the other ingredients and stir fry for a few seconds.

Serve with
Thai Fragrant Rice

A steamed salmon coconut curries, salmon so cheap and plentiful these days, and it makes a good meat base to use with a creamy curry. For these foil trays, the bottom of the tray is layered with basil, and the top topped off with a coconut milk topping.

Ingredients
300 gms Salmon
600 ml Coconut Milk
2 Tablespoons Red Curry Paste
2 Eggs
2 Tablespoons Sugar
50 gms Chinese Cabbage
10 gms Basil Leaves
Tinfoil Cups

Ingredients for Topping
30 gms Rice Flour
225 ml Coconut Milk
10 Kaffir Leaves
4 Chillies

Preparation
1. Clean and cut the salmon into pieces, mix with the coconut milk, eggs, sugar, and red curry paste.
2. Put the basil leaves in the bottom of the foil cups, and fill them just short of the top with the salmon mixture.
3. Steam for 10 minutes.
4. Mix the rice flour, coconut milk, and top off the foil trays. Continue steaming until this layer is cooked.
5. Garnish with kaffir leaves and chillies.

Serve With
Hot Fragrant Rice

All of this dish is edible, making it perfect for serving with rice.

Ingredients
50 gms Fish Balls
1 Tablespoon Red Curry Paste
1 Teaspoon Sour Curry Paste
100 ml Coconut Milk
100 ml Water
1 Teaspoon Salt
2 Tablespoons Sugar
1 Teaspoon Fish Sauce
40 gms Pud Bung (or other Green Leaf Vegetables)

Preparation
1. Boil the coconut milk until it begins to steam.
2. Add the red curry paste and the sour curry paste, and stir until it is dissolved.
3. Add the fish balls, and bring back to the boil, add the water and again bring back to the boil. Simmer for 5 minutes.
4. Remove from the heat, add the fish sauce, salt and sugar and adjust the seasoning to taste.
5. Clean and chop the green leaves and mix into the curry.