Thai Chicken Curry

I love Thai food so I was looking forward to trying this recipe. It's from Food Made Fast: Weeknight (Williams-Sonoma), which is a great cookbook, one of my favorites. Overall, we really liked this dish, but it wasn't quite what David and I were expecting. We were expecting the curry sauce to be more intense and taste like the curry sauces from Thai restaurants. The flavor was similar, but very mild. That said, I'm planning to make this again because Camille loved it! She has never eaten so voraciously. Seriously. So Camille loved it and we liked it -- it's a winner.

I made a few changes to the original recipe. I used chicken thighs instead of chicken breasts because they taste better to me and are less dry. I also tripled the amount of green beans and I added red pepper. Here's the recipe as I made it:

1 teaspoon lime zest

1/4 cup lime juice

1 3/4 pounds skinless, boneless chicken thighs, cut in strips

salt and freshly ground pepper

3 tablespoons canola oil

3/4 pound green beans, trimmed and cut into 2-inch pieces

1/2 of a red pepper, cut into thin strips

1 1/2 tablespoons Thai red curry paste

1 1/4 cups lite coconut milk

3/4 cup low-sodium chicken broth

1 tablespoon Asian fish sauce

6 scallions, sliced

1/4 cup slivered basil

Sprinkle salt and freshly ground pepper on the chicken. In a large frying pan over medium-high heat, warm the oil. Add the chicken and cook, turning occasionally until golden, about 4-5 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer to a plate. Add the green beans and red pepper and cook, stirring frequently, just until tender-crisp, about 3-4 minutes. Transfer to the same plate as the chicken.

Stir the curry paste in the pan over medium-high heat. Stir in the coconut milk, chicken broth, and fish sauce. Bring to a simmer and stir, scraping up the browned bits on the pan bottom. Stir in the lime juice and lime rind. Return the chicken and vegetables to the pan and stir to combine with the sauce. Simmer until the chicken is opaque throughout and the sauce is thickened slightly, about 10 minutes. Stir in the scallions and basil.

Serve over brown rice.

I plan to make a few changes next time I make this. The first is that I plan to plant some Thai basil in my garden, so I'll use that instead of regular basil. I'll also try using about half as much lime juice and increase the amount of curry paste. If the changes are successful, I'll post it again with an updated recipe.