The cashew, although it may seem incredible due to its very common use in the cuisine of Thailand, Sri Lanka or India, is a native tree originating in northern Brazil and the Guianas. It is in the 16th century when the Portuguese took the seeds to Africa and India to the point that centuries later, the latter became the main supplier in the world.
As we say, in the kitchens of South Asia it is a common element and that by itself can constitute a curry dish, such as a Cashew Korma, Kaju Maluwa from Sri Lanka or the use that we have made with a Thai massaman.
Less known to us is okra, whose fruit we can see in the photo. Some say that it is loved or hated. It is not a flavor that leads to such extremes either. It is possible that it is due to its somewhat viscous texture once cooked. , although it can be consumed perfectly raw. We will dedicate an exclusive entry to it now that we have it available in cans.
Ingredients for 2 people:
– 50g block coconut
– 150 ml of boiling water
– 50g massaman curry paste
– 1/2 onion finely chopped, better if we even put it through the processor
– 1/4 broccoli, you can also use cauliflower
– a handful of okra, about 5 or 6 per person is enough
– a cup of fresh or frozen peas
– a large cup with roasted cashews
For the massaman curry paste, what we will do is bring water to boil, place the coconut block in a bowl, pour the coconut milk over it and let it dissolve. We will have to help by scraping the coconut with a knife and stirring so that it is well dissolved. Another option would be to use coconut milk directly and save this process.
Once the coconut cream is ready, we add the curry paste and place everything in a saucepan that we will bring to a minimum heat and stir everything until we obtain the sauce without letting it come to a boil.
Once we have it ready, we remove it and place a pan with a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil, we introduce the onion and let it brown a little, we add the broccoli, we leave about three minutes for it to continue cooking.
Next we will add the okra and the peas, we continue sautéing everything well to finish with the cashews, we leave for about three more minutes and we will add the pasta with the coconut milk that we had reserved.
We will lower the heat, as you can see the sauce hardly makes a chup chup and it will remain for about 5 minutes avoiding thickening the sauce too much.
We serve it with basmati rice, the smell and flavor of dried fruit of this type of rice is better than the traditional jasmine and, as a tip, it can be accompanied with a little tamarind chutney and a little sprinkled grated coconut
Note: you may think that this dish is vegetarian, for example the use of fish sauce as the usual final touch in these dishes has been avoided, but we must say that it is 95% vegetarian, the 5% that is missing is because The curry paste contains this percentage of shrimp paste.
Note 2: despite the fame of Thai and spicy curry, we must say that massaman is, by far, the weakest of all, only 20% chili in its use, so it is, as it could go with korma, a type of curry ideal for the introduction to said cuisine.
