There is something about Shakespeare that does it for me…

We had some left over roast chicken and always keep a tub of Thai red curry paste in the fridge for a tasty quick supper, so a week or two ago after long days at work, Rocket popped the paste into the pan and added some coconut milk and the cooked chicken, brought the temperature to just off the boil then simmered for a few minutes and – “taa daa”, the curry was ready.

Being unseasonably hot – it was a few weeks ago (the weather not the curry) we decided to add a crunchy salad of things we had available and whilst we were taking a nod from a Thai green papaya salad – we didn’t actually have access to said green papaya so we used a ripe pink one…not the same at all but strangely delicious. So we shredded the papaya, some cucumber, some carrots, a few segments of pink grapefruit (I’d been thinking about pomelo but didn’t have one to hand!) and some batons of ginger. Then we threw in a generous handful of beansprouts and a few sliced cherry tomatoes and some torn coriander leaves.

We made up a dressing of:

3 tbspn fish sauce

juice of half a lime

1 tsp palm sugar

1 finely chopped shallot

2 finely chopped red chilli

1 tbspn rice wine vinegar

a little warm water to melt the sugar

A few crushed peanuts to garnish

Then we gently turned the salad veg over in the dressing…. we served up the curry, a little jasmine rice made the perfect foil for the richly, deeply spicy curry paste and tangy fresh salad. From thought to table in 30 minutes.  1 week until we are off to La Belle France….