Recipe: Vegan Seasonal Summer Thai Green Curry

This flavour-packed healthy vegan curry is quick and simple enough for a mid-week dinner.

A Crunchy tip: our Thai curry pastes have quite a kick, so start light and add more if need be! It’s always worth bumping up the flavour with extra ginger, garlic, lemongrass and fish sauce for a really fragrant dish.

We stock vegetarian ‘fish sauce’ – nam pla jey – based on seaweed to make this suitable for vegetarians and vegans. This umami-packed sauce isn’t just for Thai cooking, it gives a savoury depth of flavour that will be your secret ingredients in stews, noodle soups, soups and even salad dressings.

Please check the curry paste to make sure it’s vegan / vegetarian: some are, some contain shrimp.

Though it’s full of exotic flavour, this curry is a great vehicle for local, seasonal veg. It will take any medley of vegetables that are to hand. Other options include fresh or frozen spinach; broccoli; chard; cabbage; asparagus; courgette – sliced, diced or ribboned...plus you could use a mixture of:  sliced mushrooms; finely sliced peppers; diced cooked carrot; sweet potatoes; squash; aubergine etc.

You could also add tofu or meat: shredded raw or cooked chicken; chunks of white fish; shellfish e.g. prawns or mussels; or pretty much any leftover meat.

Serves 4

Ingredients

200g mange tout, sugar snap peas, green beans or runner beans, de-strung if necessary
1 400ml tin cannellini beans
1 tin coconut milk
A big handful of kale
200g potato, cubed
100g sweetcorn, ideally stripped fresh from the cob
1 dessertspoon of vegan Thai green curry paste, or to taste
2 tablespoons fresh chopped or grated ginger
1 stick lemongrass
1 white onion, diced
3 cloves garlic
Vegetarian fish sauce
Juice and zest of 1 lime
2 kaffir lime leaves
Small bunch fresh coriander, roughly chopped

Noodles or rice, to serve

Method

1.      To prepare the lemongrass, first strip off the tough outer layer. Then bash it with a rolling pin, sturdy glass bottle, the end of a glass or ceramic bowl or similar to break up the tough stem and tenderise. Finally chop it really really finely, until it’s almost the consistency of sugar – some recipes will advise you just to chop it into two or three pieces and then take it out at the end, but that seems a waste of flavour. If it’s not fine enough you will end up with tough pieces in the curry, but if you mince it really fine you’ll just get all that gorgeous fragrant flavour.

2.      Heat a tablespoon of oil in a medium sized saucepan. Strip the leaves from the kale and roughly chop them.

3.      Add the onion to the pan and sweat for five minutes or so until soft. Then add the garlic, ginger, lemongrass and curry paste and stir for a minute or two until fragrant.

4.      Add the potatoes, coat in the spices, then pour in the coconut milk and lime leaves and stir well. Season with black pepper and the fish sauce.

5.      Bring to the boil and simmer for about seven minutes then add the kale, cannellini beans, sweetcorn and green beans and simmer for another three minutes until everything is cooked through but not too soft.

6.      Turn the heat off and stir through the lime juice. Test for flavour: does it need more lime juice, pepper, fish sauce?

7.      Fish out the lime leaves and serve the curry with noodles or rice, scattered with the lime zest and coriander.