Asian Night
Mikel requested this as a repeat. I had made it once before - last year. Having made it before, I felt free to experiment a a bit. The original recipe is from Buddha's Table, a vegan Thai cookbook, but whereas most of the recipes form this book have been a knockout, I had cryptically written "Find galanga next time?" as my note. Yeah, not too helpful regarding our thoughts of the recipe, I'm afraid.
Having made more than a few of his recipes, and realizing that while having the original-authentic ingredients is ideal, substituting appropriate equivalents is at least acceptable. So galanga became ginger and lemongrass became lemon zest. Also, the original recipe is a bit complicated so I simplified it.
The outcome was outstanding - even David loved it and asked if there was more.
I'm positive he didn't last time.
I salted my eggplant slices to remove a lot of the moisture so the eggplant would keep its shape during cooking. I stir fried my eggplant until golden and removed them to set aside. I repeated the same for any of the vegetables I wanted cooked.
I had made red curry paste for another recipe a few months ago and froze half. This was what I used as my red curry paste which I fried in a little oil. I added some vegetable broth and coconut milk, added back the eggplant slices and simmered the curry until the eggplant was tender.
As accompaniments, I had bean sprouts, tomato slices, yellow and green pepper slices, lime, green onions, the stir fried green beans, cabbage and garlic slices.
I poured the curry sauce over the noodles and added the accompaniments to the dish.
Cost Breakdown:
noodles: $2
peppers: $1
tomato, green onion, garlic: $1.50
bean sprouts, green beans: $2
lime, cabbage: $2
coconut oil: $1
red curry paste: $1
Total to feed a family of 5:
$10.50
