Cod & Prawn Thai Green Curry

Ingredients

• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 large onion, diced
• 1 thumb-sized piece ginger, grated
• 1 lemongrass stalk, bruised
• 2 x 400ml tins coconut milk
• 2 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 tsp palm sugar
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 3 tbsp Thai green curry paste
• 2 kaffir lime leaves
• 400 g cod fillets, cut into large chunks
• 300 g raw king prawns, peeled and deveined
• 200 g tenderstem broccoli
• 1 lime, juiced
• jasmine rice, to serve
• 15g Thai basil or coriander

Method

1. Heat the oil in a wide pan or wok over medium heat. Add the onion with a pinch of salt and cook for 4 minutes until softening and translucent — the salt pulls moisture out and stops the edges from catching too fast.
2. Stir in the garlic and ginger and cook for 30 seconds, just until fragrant — no more. Burnt garlic turns the whole curry bitter, so watch the pan and keep things moving.
3. Add the green curry paste and fry for 2 minutes, stirring constantly, until it darkens a shade and the kitchen smells properly fragrant. This is the bloom — raw paste tastes flat and dusty; bloomed paste tastes of itself.
4. Pour in the coconut milk and add the kaffir lime leaves and bruised lemongrass. The coconut is your break-down liquid here — it loosens the paste into a proper sauce rather than a clinging coat. Stir in the fish sauce and palm sugar and bring to a gentle simmer.
5. Add the spinach and stir through until it melts into the sauce, around 2 minutes. Simmer for a further 3 minutes so the aromatics and coconut marry.
6. Add the broccoli and courgette. Cook for 3 minutes until just tender with a little bite — they'll keep cooking once the seafood goes in, so pull them while they still have snap.
7. Season the cod chunks lightly with salt, then slide them in and simmer for 2 minutes. Add the prawns and cook for a further 3 minutes, until the prawns are pink through and curled into loose Cs, and the cod flakes easily under a fork. Don't stir hard — nudge gently or the cod will break up.
8. Fish out the lemongrass and lime leaves. Stir in the lime juice off the heat. Taste, season, taste again — it should be salty, sweet, sour and hot in roughly equal measure. Most of the salt comes from the fish sauce, but a final pinch ties it together. Adjust now, not at the table.
9. Ladle the curry into deep bowls over jasmine rice, scatter the torn Thai basil or coriander over the top, and serve.