Vegetable Green Curry at Ginger Thai in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget
There is shrimp paste in the vegetable green curry at Ginger Thai in Salinas, California, which gives it a delicious salty and sweet flavor along with many vitamins.
I consulted True Thai by Victor Sodsook to find out what goes into this perky green curry and loved everything, which includes the following:
-coriander seed
-shrimp paste
-anise seed
-peppercorns
-minced Kaffir lime peel
-cilantro stems
-lemon grass
-Siamese ginger
-garlic
-1/2 cup green chiles
-lettuce
To make the curry, you dry roast the spices first and then grind them in a food processor. The herbs are then pounded in a mortar and pestle and added to the dry spices in the food processor.
Next, the garlic and shallots are crushed in the mortar and pestle and then added to the food processor. The shrimp paste and green chiles come next and are added to the food processor and whizzed.
The lettuce leaves go in last to be processed, giving the curry its moist texture.
Ginger Thai serves its warmed green curry with stir-fried eggplant chunks, zucchini slices, bell pepper squares, and peppery Thai basil for a pungent, spicy meal that is good at any time of day.
The meal comes with rice so you can soak up every last bit of the delicious curry. Ginger Thai lets you choose the spice level you would like; they have four options. I like the third level, which is spicy.
The vegetables in the green curry are soft-bodied and soak up oil in the stir-frying process. I like the silken texture the vegetables have, but if you prefer firmer textured vegetables, you might want to try the yellow curry, which comes with potatoes and carrots.
For a huge vitamin boost, I highly recommend the green curry with eggplant, zucchini, bell pepper, and basil at Ginger Thai in Salinas, California that really highlight the produce grown in the Salinas Valley in addition to tasting great.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France and creator of the games Sommelier, Camembert, Vienna, and Senf
