That’s not Spicy Cod Curry with Coconut Milk - the video above is Dr. Sook-Bin Woo discussing what distinguishes her native Malaysian chicken curry from curries around the world. The Spicy Cod Curry recipe comes at the end of this short curry conversation.
Dr. Woo grew up in Malaysia, in Kuala Lumpur, and traveled to the U.S. for medical school. An Associate Professor of Oral Medicine, infection and immunity at Harvard School of Dental Medicine, Dr. Woo raised her now-grown children in Ipswich, where she still lives. Sook introduced me to the luxuriously comforting dish Hainanese Chicken Rice, which I’ve published, along with her surprisingly vibrant lentil salad recipe. Sook’s short lesson here made me begin thinking about how wrong most westerners get curry.
The English word “curry” originates from the Southern Indian and Sri Lankan Tamil word kuri, which means “sauce” or “relish for rice,” according to Wikipedia. Curry powder is a western creation dating to the 18th century, possibly marketed by Indian merchants to members of the British colonial government and military so that they could reproduce their new favorite dish at home in England. The dried spice combination in curry powder - coriander, cumin, turmeric, etc. - appears in many curries, but it is only one theme in a seemingly infinite number of curry variations across the world. Curry has traveled the word, from South Asia to Japan to South Africa and as far as the West Indies, charming cultures along the way, and settling in as local cuisine. And that’s including Dutch and Brits who went home with the yellow powder.
Curry is many things to many peoples, and the powder is not really what it is at all. In Thailand the word for curry is geng, which refers to any liquid, savory dish enriched and thickened by a paste. Geng ped means “thickened spicy liquid.” According to David Thompson’s expansive book “Thai Food,” experts speculate that the original Thai curry was a broth into which someone stirred a spicy relish - nahm prik - to make a poor, simple dish taste better.
Thompson lists the fundamentals of a Thai curry, which applies to a lot of other curries, but not all.
1. A paste made of aromatic fresh ingredients like scallions, galangal, kaffir lime, coriander root (literally the roots of cilantro), red shallots (and many more possibilities,) and often (but not always) dried spices like turmeric, coriander, cumin, and cardamom (and many more possibilities.)
2. The paste must be cooked. It is either boiled or fried, which result in very different flavor profiles. Boiled curries are typical of Northern Thailand. They are the simplest and most popular Thai curries. Fried curries, like Mussaman, have a more complex flavor profile, and are typical of Southern Thailand.
3. Then there are the other curry ingredients, such as lentils, fish, chicken, duck, red meat, noodles etc., which certainly add flavor, but not as profoundly as the cooked pastes.
Some curries are “dry” with almost no sauce - like Panaeng curry - and some are “wet,” which can be either thick like a Mussaman curry or thin like a green curry, but a sauce is evident.
Hundreds of variations rise from these basic components, influenced by regional, religious and family traditions. Almost all Burmese curries begin with fresh onion, Indian spices and red chilies; they almost never include coconut milk. As Sook said, Malaysian curries are distinguished by the citrus notes of lemon grass, curry leaf, and lemon leaf. Aung Aung Taik, in his Burmese cookbook “Under the Pagoda, The Best of Burmese Cooking” says that his family’s cook, when told the family would like a shrimp dish for dinner, offered them a choice of curries: sweet, sour, hot and spicy, or bitter. Four ways of preparing curry with one ingredient in one country’s curry lexicon. Preparing a curry means many things to many people.
Here are a few basic curries:
Green Curry: The most classic Thai curry, Green Curry’s base is a paste of fresh green chilies fried in a coconut cream. It’s hotter than red curry.
Red Curry: It’s red, made with a paste of dried red chilis, garlic, shallots, lemongrass, galangal and shrimp paste fried in coconut milk. The profile is salty, and considered milder than green curry.
Jungle Curries: These are pungent, vibrant, and hot. Jungle curries originated in the Thai countryside with wild ingredients. There are often vegetables added. Dried spices are rarely used. There is no coconut milk, as coconuts don’t grow in the Thai jungle.
Mussaman Curries: These are the most complex and time consuming curries, according to David Thompson. One history places the Mussaman origin story in a Siamese court. Another history places it in Southern Thailand, home to a large Muslim population whose cuisine includes spices like cardamom and cumin which are prominent in Mussaman curry.
Panaeng Curry: This is a “dry” curry usually made with beef. The paste includes peanuts, giving it a distinctive flavor. .
I recently made “Spicy Fish Curry with Coconut Milk” from “Hot Sour Salty Sweet” by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. This recipe helps us fathom why curry - not the talc-y powder but the dish with multiple levels of flavor - conquered the world. Using a New England ingredient like fresh day-boat cod and an inexpensive list of other ingredients, I was able to create a profoundly flavorful and satisfying dinner on a frigid Cape Ann night in February. The only hard-to-find ingredient here is lime leaf, which is easily available in Asian grocery stores like H-Mart. (I have used leaves from my Meyer Lemon tree in a pinch, and they worked well.) The recipe calls for fresh water fish, but I took the plunge and used Atlantic cod. It may stick in the pan a little more, but the end didn’t suffer at all, and I think fish and sauce were great complements. From Northeast Thailand, this is a dry curry, as there is relatively little sauce. The photo may look very white, but I promise it is humming with complexity from the shallots, scallions, chilis, lime, coconut milk and cilantro.
Spicy Cod Curry with Coconut Milk adapted from “Hot Sour Salty Sweet”
Serves 4 with rice
1 pound fish fillets (cod, haddock, halibut or use a freshwater fish of your choice)
½ teaspoon salt, plus a pinch
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 Thai dried red chilies, soaked in a little warm water until softened
5 scallions
2 small shallots, chopped
2 tablespoons rendered pork fat or vegetable oil
1 can coconut milk, divided into the thicker milk and thinner milk. (When you open the can the milk has separated, leaving the very thick part at the top and thinner below.)
1 - 2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
3 - 5 fresh or frozen lime leaves
More freshly ground black pepper
½ - ½ cup coarsely chopped cilantro
Instructions:
Slice the fish into 1” pieces. Place in a bowl, and add ½ teaspoon salt and the pepper. Toss to coat, and set aside.
To make the spice paste, reserve the chile soaking water and coarsely chop the chiles, discarding any tough stems. Place the chiles and a pinch of salt in a mortar, spice blender or food processor. Trim the roots off the scallions. Chop off the green ends and set aside. Finely chop the bulbs and white stems of the scallions, and place them in with the chilis. Add the shallots, and pound or blend into a paste, adding a little of the reserved chili soaking water if necessary to make a paste. Set aside in a bowl.
Finely chop enough of the reserved scallion greens to make ½ cup. Set aside.
Heat a wok or large skillet to medium high heat. Add pork fat or oil, and when it is hot add the fish pieces to the pan. (If using a white, ocean fish be prepared for it to stick and not stay firmly together. Don’t worry too much. The fish will flake anyway when it returns to the sauce.) When fish is barely cooked through remove to a plate and set aside. You could put it in a warm oven, but it’s not imperative.
Place the pan back on high heat, and add the thick coconut milk. Lower the temperature to medium-high, and scrape the stuck bits on the bottom of the pan into the milk. Cook like this, stirring and scraping, for 5 minutes, and then add the spice paste. Cook for another 5 minutes or until the paste smells fragrant. Add the remaining thin coconut milk and the fish sauce, and bring to a simmer.
Add the fish pieces, and the lime leaves, stirring to gently coat the fish. Add most of the scallion greens, reserving a few for the top. Taste for seasoning. Let cook for 30 seconds more and transfer to a bowl or over rice. Top with remaining scallions, cilantro, and more freshly ground black pepper. Serve immediately.