Thai green seafood curry with quinoa

Green curries are a personal favourite among Thai dishes. And there are countless variations to explore. The core ingredients though, the uniquely Thai green curry paste, together with the coconut cream, ensure that whatever other ingredients are used, the dish will remain true to its name. To add a new flavour dimension, and make things a bit more healthy, quinoa is used in  this version instead of the more traditional white rice.

A true curry purist would have made their curry paste from scratch. In this dish I used a purchased curry paste, though it was quite a good one from a Bangkok gourmet market. When looking for Thai curry pastes in your local super/asian markets, make sure it is actually produced in Thailand. If not, look somewhere else.

If you have the time and can find the ingredients to prepare the curry paste yourself, I highly recommend this Thai Green Curry Paste guide by the High Heel Gourmet. It provides a detailed description and lots of pictures. One very novel suggestion in this guide is to replace the shrimp paste with Vegemite or Marmite in order to produce a vegetarian green curry paste. This is a suggestion also very relevant to Vietnamese cuisine which uses a lot of shrimp paste.

Thai green seafood curry with quinoa

Course: Main

Cuisine: Thai

Servings: 4 people

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Ingredients

• 3 - 4 Tbsp Thai green curry paste the best you can find. Using 4 Tbsp will be a bit more spicy.
• 400 ml chicken stock home made is best
• 400 ml coconut cream 1 can
• 1/2 Tbsp vegetable oil
• 10 g butter
• 1 onion
• 5 cloves garlic
• 5 spring onions
• 1/2 Tbsp plain flour
• 1 large red pepper
• 1 yellow pepper
• 200 g snow peas
• 1 bunch of fresh basil
• 1 large or 2 medium sweet potatoes
• 100 g green peas shelled
• 250 g fresh salmon skin off and pin bones removed
• 250 g scallops
• 250 g crab surimi balls
• 1 cup uncooked quinoa

Instructions

Green Curry

1. Dice sweet potatoes to 1cm pieces.
2. Cook peas and sweet potato in the chicken stock.
3. Remove the vegetables from the stock and set both aside.

4. Roast red and yellow peppers for 30 minutes at 200 degC. Cut into strips.

5. Steam the snow peas until just done (a brighter shade of green and still crisp).

6. Pick out the best leaves of basil for the garnish. Crop up the rest.

7. Finely dice the onion, garlic, and spring onions. Reserve the diced green parts of the spring onion for the garnish.

8. Salute the onion in the butter and 1/2 Tbsp vegetable oil until softened. Add the garlic and white parts of the spring onion and cook until fragrant.

9. Add the green curry to the pan and cook together with the onions for 5 minutes. The curry fragrance will be quite strong at this point.

10. Add 1/2 Tbsp plain flower and stir well.
11. Slowly add the chicken stock stirring constantly.
12. Slowly add the coconut cream.
13. Simmer for 10 minutes.
14. The curry should have a slightly thickened consistency. If too thick, add a few Tbsp water, or better yet, fresh coconut juice.
15. Allow to cool, or carry on...

16. Quickly sear the scallops. 

17. Brown the crab balls a little.

18. Dice the salmon fillets into 15ml pieces.

Quinoa

1. Rince quinoa.
2. Cook in a rice cooker with 2 cups of water.

When nearly ready to serve...

1. Bring curry back to a simmer should it have cooled down.

2. Add the steamed snow peas, chopped basil, roasted peppers, sweet potatoes, peas, crab balls, scallops, and diced salmon.

3. Simmer for a few minutes to allow the flavours to meld and the salmon is just cooked through.

4. Garnish with the reserved basil and green parts of the spring onions.

Recipe Notes

To serve, spoon some quinoa on to a plate, then ladle some curry on top of it.