Green Curry with Chicken and Thai Basil

What to expect

Taste

Hot first, and hotter than its colour suggests — this is generally the fiercest of the three common Thai curries, because the green is fresh bird's eye chillies rather than dried red ones, and there are many of them. Coconut sweetness arrives immediately behind the heat and rounds it rather than cancelling it. Under that: salt and a deep savoury funk from fish sauce, sourness and perfume from makrut lime leaf, and a faint bitterness from the aubergine that stops the whole thing being cloying. Thai basil is the last thing, aniseed and peppery.

Aroma

Green and sharp — lime leaf and basil over the coconut. The strongest smell in the whole process comes at the moment the paste hits the split cream, which is a fried, toasted smell quite unlike the finished bowl.

Texture

Thin and pourable rather than thick, closer to a soup than to an Indian curry, and it is meant to be. A visible slick of coconut oil on the surface is correct and is the evidence the cream was cracked. Chicken thigh soft, aubergine collapsing, basil leaves just wilted.

Sound

Almost none at the table. All the noise is in the wok.

How the flavour moves

The heat arrives first and builds across a bowl rather than fading — capsaicin accumulates, so the fourth mouthful is hotter than the first even though nothing has changed. Coconut and sugar round it in the middle, and the finish is lime leaf and basil, which is where the perfume lives. The rice resets the mouth between spoonfuls, which is exactly why it is served with it.

Serve it

Hot, and eaten with plain rice that cools each mouthful — the rice is not a side, it is the thing that makes the heat survivable across a whole bowl.

Cook's notes

Difficulty

Easy, with one step that decides everything.

Cost

Low to moderate. Fresh Thai basil and makrut lime leaves are the items worth going out of your way for.

Equipment

A wok or wide pan

Where it goes wrong

Shaking the coconut milk before opening it, which destroys the whole method before it starts. Boiling the basil. Using Italian basil.

Making it ahead

The curry reheats well, but add the basil fresh each time — reheated basil is the grey bitter failure again.

Scaling it

Doubles fine, but crack the cream in two batches — too much in the pan at once steams instead of splitting.

Substitutions

Chicken thigh rather than breast — the simmer is short but the thigh holds together better and carries more flavour. Thai basil cannot be replaced by Italian basil; the aniseed note is the point.

Dietary swaps

Fish sauce makes it not vegetarian. Light soy with a little extra salt is the usual swap and gives up some depth.

Where it comes from

Origin

Central Thailand, recorded in the early twentieth century.

Said out loud

The English name — 'green curry' — is two ordinary English words and is safe to say cold. THE THAI NAME IS NOT, and that is why it stays out of any spoken line: kaeng khiao wan is roughly gaeng kee-o WAAN, and Thai is tonal, so a generator handed that string invents a pronunciation and nothing catches it until the film comes back. Same class of trap as 'Pho Bo', which a voice renders 'foe boh' — wrong in Vietnamese and meaningless in English. Print the Thai name in the caption where it can be read rather than said.

History

Recorded in Thailand in the early twentieth century, with the name kaeng khiao wan — literally 'curry green sweet', where 'sweet' describes the shade of green rather than the taste of the dish. That naming is the single most misread thing about it in English: menus routinely translate it as 'sweet green curry' and diners order it expecting mildness.

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