Day 21

Well, when I set myself this challenge, I really do set myself a challenge. Nothing by halves. I must have thought that I would suddenly develop telepathic powers as I took my cookbook to work to show it to one of the girls at lunch time who is making dinner for her friends this weekend and needed some recommendations. It is now a regular occurrence every day at break-time that I have to give the girls a full run-down of the previous evening’s endeavours with complete analysis of the scoring system.  And, sure, what did I do?! I only left it sitting in my office and didn’t realise until, of course, I went to make tonight’s dinner. I had intended to make another pasta dish but, instead, I had to rummage through the Internet to find a recipe from the book and, thank God for the RTE website, as they have a special site for Rachel’s Easy Meals programme! If you Google it, you’ll find it. Now, not all the recipes are on the site but thankfully I found one in which I had all the ingredients for which was the Very fast red prawn curry with basmati rice.

First of all, I had to put 4 teaspoons of Thai red curry paste in the saucepan for 10 seconds. Now, how glad was I that I read the recipe again before making it as I skimmed reading it the first time and thought it was 10 MINUTES that I had to cook the paste for. That would’ve been some disaster with a burnt saucepan! Next I had to add a can of coconut milk and, once it came up to the boil, I added the prawns and simmered them. I then added some nam pla which is fish sauce. That was a task trying to find that stuff in the supermarket. I don’t know how many times I was up and down this aisle and that aisle looking for it! Finally, the dish was garnished with freshly chopped basil and accompanied by basmati rice.

The verdict…

Dear Husband gave it 6 out of 10 marks. He said that it was nice but the sauce part could probably have done with being a little thicker. Right enough, it was quite watery and not what one would expect for a curry sauce. It was a complete no-no from Dear Son. He said… and I quote…“ick!!!” I don’t blame him to be honest after having a whiff of the nam pla.

However, in conclusion, I couldn’t believe how quickly the recipe was to make. I would recommend this if you have to whip up something quickly using ingredients that you have in the house already and that’s an achievement for a dish that still managed to get 6 marks out of 10. Making this dish would actually be quicker too than ordering a takeaway so  there’s food for thought for you for tomorrow night…