Easy green thai pork curry

One the hardest things for me in cooking is to figure out a menu with out a starting point, like starting a picture when all you have is a large white piece of paper.  So I like to have a vision to fulfill or at least one ingredient to use a jumping off point.  For the first dinner of 2011 Nancy produced a small jar of thai green curry paste from the fridge and said "I thought we could use this." She knows this about me.

We were still up at Whistler and so had limited ingredients, this little jar is a good alternative to making a curry paste from scratch and is one that I often use.

This fed 10

1 tablespoon of olive oil

2 large garlic cloves 

2" piece of ginger

1 large onion chopped

1 tablespoon of green curry paste (taste for heat and add more or less to taste)

3 pork tenderloins

1 can of coconut milk

1 tablespoon of soy sauce (if I had fish sauce I would have used it)

Zest and juice of a lime

A handful of basil shredded

1 large red pepper

About 3 cups of small potatoes cut in half.

Cook off the onion, garlic and ginger until the onion is translucent.

Then add the the green curry paste stir in and add the pork

Stir to mix everything together and then add the coconut milk and soy sauce (or fish sauce) lime zest and juice.

Cover and simmer for 1/2 an hour until the pork is cooked and tender.  This can now sit either on the stove or in the fridge depending on how long, until about 20 minutes before serving.

Now add the red pepper, potatoes and basil.  I added the potatoes to fill out the dish as we ended up being more people than first expected, but in fact they were delicious.

Simmer until the potatoes are cooked through, taste for seasoning and serve with some jasmine rice.

We also had a salad using a  Light asian dressing that I blogged in December, tossed with some savoy cabbage, green onion and cucumber that I found in the fridge. Did I mention before I love using up stuff found in the fridge.

We finished the meal with a cake brought by a friend who works for a company that makes cake, you have got to love a man who travel with cakes.  It was chocolate mousse and against all New years resolutions but well worth it.