Thursday, April 22, 2010

Grilled Chicken Red Curry with Lychee


I fell in love with Thai red curry roast duck with lychee the first time I tried it in Sydney.
I thought, it would be so easy for me to kind of recreate in Hong Kong, since I could get roast duck for as little as HK$18 downstairs, stir in a pack of Thai red curry paste, throw in a box of coconut milk and a can of lychee...and I'd get an easy, yet super impressive dish.

...at least that was the plan.

Naturally, since life is so kind, and luck is my middle name...when I needed a roast duck, it was too late and the siu mei shop just below my flat's closed.
This is totally predictable.
If I could get duck when I needed duck, that would be surprising :D

Anyway, no duck (or lack thereof) shall deprive me of curry lychee, so I went for chicken instead.
A little bit more troublesome, a little less flavorful, but, it should work.

Recipe
(for two)

- 2 pieces of boneless chicken thigh fillet, with skin on
- 1 stalk of lemongrass, crushed
- 1 galangal, crushed
- 2 shallots, sliced thinly
- 1 pack of Thai red curry paste
- 200 ml box of coconut milk
- 1 can of lychee in syrup
- salt, pepper, olive oil
- freshly chopped corriander

Preheat oven to 200C. Season chicken fillet with salt and pepper, brown the skin and grill in the oven until it's almost cooked. Meanwhile, saute lemongrass, galangal and shallot until fragrant, throw in thai curry paste, stir in coconut milk and some syrup from the canned lychee. Keep tasting the mixture until you reach the perfect balance between sweet, sour, spicy, creamy and savoury. Add lychee pieces at the end. Take chicken out of the oven, slice and arrange chicken pieces in the curry sauce, try not to submerge the chicken skin to keep it crispy (unless you don't mind the chicken skin not being crispy anymore. Alternatively, you can also lay the sauce on a shallow plate and add the chicken pieces on the plate, but I wanted to get the chicken meat cooked in the curry sauce a bit). Garnish with freshly chopped corriander and serve with steamed rice or roti prata (I served mine with frozen roti prata, simply heated up in the oven until golden brown. Yum!)

You can also add okra/Thai eggplant/cherry tomatoes and sweet Thai basil into the curry or even make a vegetarian version of it.

PS. A cooking disaster happened when I was cooking this dish. I accidentally used the ladle I'd been using to stir the curry to stir the other dish, which was stir fried zucchini, tomatoes and beancurd sheets in oyster sauce. It was literally just a few secs of stirring, and the damage was done. The second dish was totally infused with a tinge of coconut milk and lychee flavor, it turned it inedible. I tried adding a bit of this and that, but there was no way to recover it. I had wasted a whole lot of ingredients and it broke my heart T_T

PS II. Moral of the story, look before you dip.

14 comments:

zoom yummy said...

I love the recipe - it looks sooo YUMMY. And I also love the moral of your unfortunate story - it is very wise. ;)

tigerfish said...

Woops, but it would have been too unpredictable if you have added the zucchini and the rest and it turns out a new creation? So it is ok, it was totally predictable - just like when you wanted duck but got chicken. I have stir-fry lychee in chicken before in a sweet sour sauce and love it a lot. Hmmmm...time for curry version :)

jisampedro said...

Looks really good this dish and not too difficult to cook. First time to read about the combination with lychee, must be interesting taste :)

Joanne said...

Isn't that the way it always goes? Whenever you need something you can't find it and then when you don't need it, it appears in abundance. Crazy.

This curry dish looks delicious. I love that it has lychee in it, which is something I've never seen in curry before. I'm so sorry about your zucchini dish :(

Anonymous said...

OOh yuummm, but pity about the mix up with the ladle :(
Come back to Syd ^^!

Noob Cook said...

aww sorry to hear about your second dish. kitchen disasters happen to me ALL THE TIME so I can totally relate keke but at least you still have the yummy chicken & lychee curry to make up for it ^^

Little Corner of Mine said...

Aww, it's okay, at least you have a pot of delicious chicken curry with lychee.

Cookie said...

Duck would've definitely been good here but I'm glad you improvised and still got to have this yummy curry with Lychee!

Mrs Ergül said...

I'm sorry it didn't work well this time. But I can almost imagine how smacking good it will be with the duck!

sweetlife said...

i love that there is lychee in your curry I have never tried this..wow I bet the taste is fab..

sweetlife

EatTravelEat said...

Sorry to hear about the second dish! I can see why the lychee flavor would probably "ruin" that dish. I've never had lychee with curry before so this recipe is quite interesting. I usually just each lychee as is.

Kitchen Butterfly said...

Sorry about recipe #2 having to head south but love red curries and lychees in? Superb combo, and new to me!

mr. pineapple man said...

love your story, and great photos!

Pei-Lin said...

Well, I'm well-aware of the fact that taste-wise, chicken is from Venus and duck is from Mars. Hmmm ... But by looking at the super red hot dish here, the mishap ain't really a matter! I'd never thought of adding lychees to my curry! Thanks for sharing the experience!

Hope life's treating you well!