Ha-Gai-Thai Chicken Curry

Real early in this semester my friend from Israel and I had dinner with these two lovely ladies from Holland and even after like half a year, I never forgot how good the dish he made was. It's his own invention so there's no name for the dish, but it's basically a thai chicken curry with coconuts and a bunch of other stuff in it. Since yesterday was my second last day here, I decided I'd ask him how to make it so I could write a recipe and remember it (as well as share it with all of my loyal readers). Credit goes to my buddy Hagai for the amazing recipe!

INGREDIENTS (using these amounts yesterday, we had enough for two people and had plenty of leftovers. i forgot the precise amounts for most of these but its not really important, just put more of whatever you like):

- two chicken breasts

- 2 medium or 3 small potatoes

- a couple of spring onions (scallions)

- one lemon

- mushrooms

- coconut powder or coconut milk

- rice

- oil

- salt/pepper

- onions

- red pepper

- cumin

- minced garlic

- chili powder

- thai red curry paste

- mango (optional)

First, chop up the potatoes into small cubes. Place them into a bowl (or any container) and add a tiny bit of cooking oil. Add water until it looks like this:

Stir it a little bit, then put it in the microwave for 6-7 minutes. It should be basically cooked after microwaving - if not, just microwave it for a little longer.

Next, chop up the scallions, mushrooms, onions, peppers, and chicken. Keep them separated for now.

Cut off about 1/3 to 1/2 of the lemon and slice it into thin slices.

Now it's time to make the coconut milk. Pour some coconut powder into a glass and then fill it up all the way with water. This is how much powder we used (actually we added a bit more powder after the pic was taken), and how much milk we ended up with:

Now it's time to cook the rice. You can cook it however you want to cook it. Rice cooker would probably be easiest... what we did since we didn't have one, is put the rice into a bowl, then add hot water (amount of water = double the amount of rice) and a bit of salt and oil, mix it up, and mirowave it for 14 minutes.

Now comes the fun part... the cooking. It's pretty easy and what you're basically doing is adding the ingredients one at a time to a big pot/wok until everything is done cooking. You can basically cook it in anything that's big enough to hold the amount that you're cooking. First, add a little bit of oil to the pot and put in some of the thai red curry paste. Mix it up and let it cook for just a minute or two.

Then add the onions and stir it with the paste. You'll want to let this cook for just a couple minutes.

Add the chicken and stir it in. Mix it up every now and then.

Add potatoes, stir for 30 seconds to a minute.

Do same thing for peppers/mangos, and then mushrooms, and then the coconut milk.

Add garlic, nutmeg, cumin, chili powder, and salt and stir. Add the chopped spring onions on top and mix them in. By this point the chicken should be done cooking but if not continue cooking until it's ready.

Final step is to prepare yourself to eat some of the tastiest Thai food you've ever had in your life! Oh yeah, and put it over the rice.

Enjoy.... more coming soon!