Thai Fish Curry

I seen my wife make this today using imported Italian Mackerel, and local sourced ingredients. Seems like a lot of steps but this actually goes together quite fast overall. The coconut milk is made from fresh grated coconut, use canned if you like. Measurements are very approximate as no actual measurements are made, what is listed is my best guesses.

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Prep Time 20

Cook Time 20

Total Time 40

Course Lunch, Main Dish

Cuisine Thai

Servings servings

Ingredients

500 grams shredded coconut, fresh, not bagged
6 whole Italian Mackerel, gutted, tails removed, 6-8 inches each
2 handfuls lime leaves, finely sliced
2-3 tablespoons chili paste
2-3 tablespoons shrimp paste
2-3 tablespoons fresh tamarind
cooked rice, for serving

Instructions

With the fresh shredded coconut, you are going to make coconut milk. to do this, place the coconut in a large bowl and cover with water. Squeeze the shred and the water will become milky. Do this for about 5-10 minutes, really squeezing the clumps of shred, then grab some shred and hold it above the bowl and squeeze it dry, discard the clump, now you have a bowl of coconut milk, almost, you are not done yet.
Place a strainer over a bowl and pour the milk into the strainer, tap the strainer and move the contents a bit with your fingers to get the liquid out, you are now removing any of the remaining shred from the milk. For the remaining shred, pick that up and squeeze dry as well.
The end result is fresh coconut milk, this is just one bowl, we used two, goal is 3-4 cups of milk total.
Now get your ingredients together. Here is one of the two bowls of coconut milk, chili paste, shrimp paste, and the lime leaves (before slicing).
Fish used is Italian Mackerel. We bought these are Tesco, sold by the piece, not weight, 90 Baht for 6 fish.
Clean the fish by scaling, the scales are very small and this goes quickly, then gut each and cut the tails off. (If you want to remove the heads, feel free to do so.)
Add about ⅔ of the coconut milk to a pan, and add the chili paste and shrimp paste. Put on medium heat.
While the milk is heating up, slice up the lime leaves. Grab the handful or so of leaves, the younger bright green ones are preferred, hold in a tight bundle, and slice. Not looking for perfection here, just get most of them thinly sliced. Set this aside.
With the milk now hot, stir to mix in the chili and shrimp pastes. Let this simmer, low boil, for about 10 minutes. You just made a curry.
Then add the fish in a single layer.
Now pour in the remaining coconut milk and sort of mix that in, let this simmer for about 10 minutes.
This is fresh tamarind, it is like a paste, the stones (seeds), and the string fibrous part is still in this. To this, add a little water, about 1/4 cup and squish this up to soften it.
Remove the fish to another pan.
To the pan with the curry, hold a strainer over the pan and pour in the tamarind mush into the strainer, move the mush about with your hand to get the tamarind liquid into the pan, when the all the liquid is strained out from the tamarind mush, discard the strainer contents. Stir the tamarind liquid into the curry then add the sliced lime leaves and stir that in.
Pour the curry over the fish in the second pan, add a few whole lime leaves, bring this to a simmer for 2-3 minutes.
Place a few fish in a bowl, spoon some curry over the top and ready to serve.