This recipes was inspired by one of my favourite Thai dishes, Khao Soi – egg noodles with rich chicken curry. I wanted to use the same basic concept but utilise green curry instead of red and use meat instead of chicken. The Green curry of beef in this recipe is pretty authentic but it’s a lot thicker than a traditional green curry. I also added some curry powder to the paste to replicate some of the flavours found in khao soi. You can use any type of beef you like but I particularly like beef shank. The slow cooking makes it meltingly tender and the bones add a lot of flavour to the sauce, not to mention how delicious the marrow is. As for the noodles, try to find fresh Chinese flat wheat noodles but even rice noodles would work well. This is comfort food at its best!
Ingredients – Serves 4
1kg beef shank on the bone cut into large chunks. I used beef osso bucco
½ cup coconut cream
4 tablespoons best quality green curry paste – you can use more if you want it to be particularly spicy
1 tablespoon mild curry powder
1 x 400ml can coconut milk
3 Japanese eggplant cut into 1 inch pieces
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoon palm sugar or brown sugar
Salt
1 cup Thai basil leaves
400g noodles – fresh Chinese flat white noodles or dried flat rice noodles cooked according to package instructions
Method
Place the coconut cream in heavy bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Cook the coconut cream until the oil starts to separate from the cream. This should take about 5 minutes. Add the green curry paste and the curry powder and continue to stir and cook for a good 10 minutes until the paste is well cooked and the oil is starting to separate from the paste. Regulate your heat to make sure the spices and paste don’t burn.
Add the beef and stir well, ensuring that all the pieces are covered in the paste and cook for a few minutes to lightly seal the meat. Add the coconut milk, the fish sauce and the sugar along with a teaspoon of salt. There should be enough liquid to just cover the meat, if not add some water.
Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and partly cover the pan and let it simmer until the meat is tender, beef shanks will take about 2 – 2½ hours. When the meat is ready add the eggplants and bring to a boil. Cook uncovered for about 8 minutes until the eggplants are tender.
The sauce should be thick and creamy but there should be enough of it to be able to generously pour over the noodles. If your sauce has reduced too much and you want more, add some water from a recently boiled kettle and bring back to a simmer. Taste for seasoning and add more sugar, salt or fish sauce if required. Turn off the heat and stir in the Thai basil. To serve place some noodles into each bowl then ladle in the beef curry and sauce.
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