Keeping the cold out
One of the lovely thing about living in Paris is that people don’t just turn to the supermarket to cater for their every need, you can quite easily find a really good greengrocer or butcher within walking distance and buy fresh seasonal produce.
Today it was bitterly cold and the accumulating ice on the pavements made it a struggle to get anywhere. My attempt at going for a run quickly proved foolhardy and then dangerous. So I picked up a small mountain of veg from the greengrocer, whatever was on offer, and thought about what to make with it. I knew I wanted something that would wake up the taste buds and clear the sinuses, so the obvious answer was a curry. But in the end I settled on a winter warming Thai soup, so rich that a bowl of soup becomes a full meal in itself, but whilst being completely vegan (and with the added advantage that I could freeze some of it for later).
It is curious how some food cultures, which are in fact very varied and complex, become associated with a few key dishes or flavours. In the UK, we immediately think of fish and chips, shepherds pie and roast dinners. The combination of lemongrass, coconut and chilli (which yields the red and green pastes that form the basis of Thai green/red curry) are for me really strongly evocative of Thai cooking. Their pungent aromas fill the room as soon as they hit the pan and your mouth starts watering— and you’ve barely cooked anything yet!
Both Thai green curry and Thai red curry pastes are surprisingly easy to make at home and can be used in all sorts of ways, happily they take to almost every vegetable so I cooked up some of what I had bought and some bits that were lying around in the fridge.
Dinner: Thai winter soup (click for recipe), followed by a stewed apple and crème fraiche.