Thursday, September 23, 2010

Coconut Curry with Salmon

All I've been doing lately is making ice cream right and left. Basically every other day (oh don't you worry...there are more posts to come with more delish ice cream).

However, with Halloween coming up, I figured maybe...just maybe I should stop eating buffalo chicken pizza and heavy cream and whole milk and maybe throw some spinach into my diet. Though I'm sure Princess Jasmine loves eating rose or mango flavored kulfi from the markets of Agrabah.

If I were Alton Brown, I could probably spit some knowledge out about the kinds of nutrients snow peas have. But I'm not, so I don't know. They are green, and isn't green good for you?

I think shallots are my favorite from the onion family. I once made a delicious fondue in which I smeared the pot with shallot and let the rest just cook in the pot. Ohhh soooo delicious!!

Noodles boiling away....I did try to find whole wheat pad thai noodles, but for some reason, WF didn't have them! WTF! Maybe Trader Joes would...

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the leftover red curry paste...maybe I'll make RED CURRY WITH CHICKEN! or Paneer. Oh yummmmmy paneer!

I totally love the idea from David Lebovitz to mix in palm sugar with more "exotic" meals that include coconut. I made saffron coconut ice cream with this sugar, so I figured i would try it with my coconut curry. I only did one tablespoon and another tablespoon of regular sugar, but next time I think I would do the full two.

Prepping the green onions, sugars and fish sauce

Coriander (AHHH love the smell!) ready to go!

The recipe was originally made with chicken, but I saw CoHo river salmon at Whole Foods and couldn't resist. I love pink fresh salmon. Reminds me of home!

The curry is almost ready! And it smells SO good!

The salmon was perfectly cooked - tender, soft and very flavorful. Best.Substitution.Ever!! Topped with my favorite herb ever (cilantro) this was a very nom nom dinner.

This recipe is loosely adapted from cookinglight.com while trying to find a quick recipe that used up all the ingredients in my fridge: cilantro, spinach, garlic and scallions.
  • 4 cups water
  • 3 cups fresh spinach
  • 1/2 lb. snow peas, trimmed and cut in half
  • 1 package of pad thai noodles
  • 1 tbsp. olive oil
  • 1/4 cup thinly sliced shallot
  • 2 tsp. red curry paste
  • 1 1/2 tsp. curry powder (I used my mom's garam masala mix)
  • 1/2 tsp. ground turmeric
  • 1/2 tsp. ground coriander
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 6 cups water (the original recipe called for low-sodium chicken broth...I wasn't sold on this so I decided to use water instead)
  • 1 can light coconut milk (I just got the Everyday 365 brand from Whole Foods)
  • 1 pound salmon, cut into cubes. You might want to ask the fish monger to do it for you as this was a little messy as you have to trim the skin off the salmon
  • 1/2 cup chopped green onions
  • 1 tbsp. palm sugar (remember her from the saffron coconut ice cream?)
  • 1 tbsp. regular sugar
  • 2 tbsp. fish sauce
  • 1/2 cup cilantro
  • Optional: sliced red chilis. I left this out because my mom's masala is pretty spicy as is
  • 7 lime wedges
In a large pot boil the 4 cups of water. Add the spinach and the peas and cook for about 30 seconds. Remove from the pot with a slotted spoon and put in a large bowl. Add the noodles and cook according to directions (most likely boil for 5 minutes).
Drain the noodles and add them to the same large bowl the spinach and peas are in.
In a sauté pan, heat the oil. Once heated, add the shallots, garlic, red curry paste, curry powder (in this case my mom's garam masala), ground coriander and ground turmeric. Cook them for 1-2 minutes.

My sautee pan wasn't big enough to hold the 6 cups of water - so I transfered all ingredients back to my pot. I then added the 6 cups of water (you could sub in chicken broth to this but I'm not sure how salty this would have been so I left it out). Bring to a boil. Once it boils, reduce the heat, add the coconut milk and let it simmer for 5 minutes.
Add the salmon, green onions, sugars, and fish sauce to the pot and cook for about 2 minutes (the salmon should cook pretty fast).

Put the noodles and spinach/peas back into the pot and stir together.

Add cilantro (and the chilies if you want). Serve in a bowl (accompany with both a spoon and chopsticks).

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