GCC: Thai Green Curry with Shrimp

For Gutsy Cooks Club we're kicking the year off with a fresh new start. All of our recipe choices this week consisted of some fresh, clean flavors. Being the curry fanatics that we are around this house it took all of 2 minutes to decide we'd be preparing Pete's Thai Green Curry from Our Kitchen for our recipe this week. (Yeah, we admit it's pretty boring how predictable we are..but hey we know what we like.)

We do make a lot of curry dishes around here and pretty much if we go out for Thai food you can guarantee some sort of curry dish will be ordered; sometimes panang, other times massaman, but truthfully most often we go with a red curry whether it's at home or eating out. But T personally loves a green curry.

This recipe was straightforward and simple. Some fresh veggies; we went with a few of our favorites asparagus, shiitake mushrooms, Walla Walla onions, green jalapeno and the small corn cobs.

But my favorite part of this particular recipe was that it called for Kaffir lime leaves and we happened to have found them this time. And let me tell you the difference that Kaffir lime leaves make. Usually when we can't find them  we use grated lime and lime juice in it's place (they aren't always available at our local Asian market). But the smell alone from the Kaffir leaves puts a curry dish on a whole new level. It really makes this dish taste so much more authentic.You must try them if you are a Thai food fan at all. But do pull them out before you serve the dish..they are an aromatic used similarly to say a bay leaf. But the flavor and aroma they leave in the dish are remarkable.

The recipe called for chicken but we had some shrimp we needed to use so went that route instead.

Here's an adjustment that we regretted. We chose to use a light coconut milk. The flavor was fine but that creamy curry consistency just doesn't come from the light version of coconut milk and this simple dish really seemed to showcase the missing creaminess.

We have been tempted to make our own curry paste but we still have yet to do it and since it was a Tuesday we used store bought green curry paste.

And of course since T was at the stove we went a tad bit heavy handed with our use of the curry paste too.

It was pretty evident early on we were going to notice the difference in consistency using the light curry paste but at that point we were committed to our choice.

We plated our Green Curry Shrimp over Jasmine rice and topped with Thai Basil.

We served it with a Washington made Stonecap Riesling wine. A second label made by Goose Ridge Vineyards.

The dish was perfectly spicy, light, freshly flavored thanks to the Kaffir lime leaves and overall delicious. We are used to using both ginger and lemongrass usually when we make curry but I think using the Kaffir we didn't really miss those additional flavors at all.

If you want to give it a try here's the link to the: recipe.