Mango Chicken Curry

My mango chicken curry is adapted from a recipe featured in Jody Vassallo's Easy Curries, which I recommend highly if you, like me, are a curry-lover. The recipes are accurate and not too fussy and many of them, like the mango chicken curry, can be thrown together in just a few minutes. I especially love creamy curries made with coconut milk, but I find that in restaurants, they are often extremly greasy. When you make them at home, you can get the silky richness without the heavy feeling that sometimes sets in after a meal at Thai restaurants.

For the two of us, I used:

- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 2 spring onions, stalks only, finely chopped
- 1 tablespoon panang curry paste (a thick paste containing chilies, ground peanuts, garlic and many other spices)
- 300g chicken breast, cut into 2cm-wide strips
- half a mango, cut into chunks roughly the size of the chicken
- 1 tablespoon chopped flat-leaf parsley
- 1.25dl coconut milk
- 0.5 dl water
- juice of half a lemon or lime
- 2 teaspoons fish sauce
- 1 tablespoon sweet chili sauce
- a couple of basil leaves, chopped (use thai basil if you like)

- heat the olive oil in a large frying pan, add the panang curry paste and fry for a few minutes over moderate heat
- season the chicken pieces with a little salt, then add them to the pan together with the spring onions and fry for about three minutes, stirring occasionnally
- add the mango and parsley, fry for another minute, stirring carefully
- add the coconut milk and water, cover and simmer for five minutes
- season with lemon or lime juice, fish sauce and sweet chili sauce
- sprinkle with the basil and serve

You could make the curry paste yourself if you're ambitious. If you're not, (ts, ts) buy it from a supermarket or Asia shop (like I did).

Jody Vassallo's recipe asks for red curry paste but I quite like the combination of the mango and panang paste. The fruit adds a very pleasant freshness to the rich, earthy taste of the peanuts.

Also, a whole mango is used in the original recipe which makes for a very fruity curry. I use less mango and a little more chicken instead. The Boyfriend actually suggested not to add any mango at all, but that's hardly the point in a mango chicken curry, is it? Men.