Panang Curry

Every time I have a couple spare hours on my hand, my thoughts almost always turn to getting creative in the kitchen. As you make have picked up from prior posts, Nick and I had a few of these spare hours available last weekend, and so after a little bit of brainstorming with our heads and some mindful consideration to our stomachs, we decided to try our hands at "Panang Curry."

Panang curry is our favorite Thai dish. It's a milder curry that is made with coconut milk, so it ends up being on the sweeter side (which is, of course, why it's up my alley). Much to our surprise, this ended up being such an easy meal to put together. The hardest part is finding Panang curry paste. Our local grocer didn't carry this type of curry, so we were forced to find the nearest Asian market.

All-in-all, this was a delicious meal. It was easy to put together and I like how you can make it your own by adding your own choice of meat and vegetables. We did chicken with peppers and snow peas. Other variations include tofu, beef, or shrimp for meat, and corn, mushrooms, or carrots for veggies.

 

Unfortunately, we didn't end up using a specific recipe for this meal, but rather threw a few different recipes  that we researched into one. This is my best guess at what we threw in the pan:

Ingredients

Three chicken breasts cut up into bite-sized chunks

One red pepper cut into slivers

One green pepper cut into slivers

Half a white onion

Some Basil

One 14 oz can of coconut milk

One 6 oz can of Panang curry paste

White rice

1 big spoonful Peanut butter

Cayenne pepper

2 Tablespoons Garlic

2 Tablespoons Chicken Stock

Procedure

Start cooking the rice. 

Season the the chicken breast with salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper and cook.

Take the chicken out of the pan. In that same pan, saute the garlic and onion for about 1 minute. Add the entire contents of the curry paste. Add half of the coconut milk. Stir in the peanut butter. Season with cayenne pepper. Stir in the chicken stock. Stir in the rest of the coconut milk. Simmer for two minutes. Add the vegetables and let simmer for another two minutes or so. Stir in the basil. 

Serve over cooked white rice.