Critter’s wild boar curry.

Now, this exclusive photo is an honor indeed!

A reader named Critter recently escaped fiscal-cliff negotiations in Washington, D.C., to take a well-deserved break in Thailand. While there, if Facebook photos are any indication, he appeared to have a glorious time lounging poolside near damsels in bikinis, kayaking through exotic blue waters, and of course, dining on sumptuous Thai dishes.

One such dish is pictured above, which Critter sent me separately from his Facebook photos. “I know not everyone on FB loves curry porn as much as some folks, but thought I’d pass along the final dish I had in Thailand, which was a wild boar curry at Mom Tri’s that was fantastic,” he said.

Yum. The menu description, which Critter also sent, describes this entree as “sliced wild boar with green peppercorn, galangal, khaffir lime leaves and basil in a creamy curry sauce” — served apparently with brown rice and green vegetables (some rather banal-looking broccoli, but I’d be too distracted by those heavenly peppercorns to care).

A big thank-you to Critter for sharing the beautiful dish, providing some inspiration for a future meal, and coining a new phrase — “curry porn.” (!)

And now, back to fixing the debt ceiling….

One final shot of curry pastes, taken by Critter at a Thai market.

Yum! This is a delicious soup I recently made, thanks to a reader (and ahem, family member) named Jimmy. He had found the recipe in a Rachel Ray magazine, tried it himself and then sent me the instructions. “Maybe if you think it’s worthy enough you could share it with your Cracking Curry viewers,” he said.

The timing could not have been more perfect, as the BF had the flu. What’s better than chicken noodle soup when you’re sick? So after a quick trip to Chinatown to secure the more hard-to-find ingredients (in this case, Thai basil and the rice noodles), I tried making it myself.

To note, this is slightly different than the Rachel Ray version…hers calls for cilantro, which the BF doesn’t like, so I substituted Thai basil (which actually makes the dish more authentic). I used a generous helping of my homemade red curry paste, whereas her recipe calls for just 2 teaspoons. Jimmy mentioned that he used more chicken (hers called for just 12 oz) to make it heartier, so I did the same. I also added a few chopped chile peppers to the soup, as I can’t resist spice — plus I thought the heat might benefit the flu victim’s sinuses.

This was truly delicious — an easy recipe that I’ll definitely try again! Thank you, Jimmy and Rachel Ray.

Thai Curry Soup

1 16-ounce chicken breast, with bone in
6 cups chicken broth (plus 2 cups water)
3 tbsp red curry paste
6 oz rice noodles
1 red bell pepper, julienned
2 chiles, sliced
2 scallions, sliced
Fresh Thai basil
1 lime, cut into wedges

In a medium saucepan, bring the broth and 2 cups water to a boil. Add chicken on bone, and reduce to simmer. Cover until the chicken is cooked through, about a half hour. Remove chicken, let cool, then shed and set aside meat. (If you like, add a dash of fish sauce to help keep chicken moist.) Return bones to the broth, bring to a boil and reduce by about a third. Remove and discard bones. Add curry paste into the broth and return to simmer. Add the noodles and bell pepper; cook until the noodles soften, about 5-8 minutes. Stir in the chicken. Add chiles.
Serve the soup in bowls and top with the scallions and fresh Thai basil leaves. Garnish with lime wedges. Delicious!

Now this is what we call in the news business a “developing situation.”

A reader named Rod, who has appeared on this blog before, spotted this sign and immediately sent an alert. “Whoa,” he said. “Look what I discovered on my way home. Curry bacon!”

Stop the presses! Curry bacon? Does that mean strips of sizzling meat, coated with curry paste? Or sides of pig cured — as the sign suggests — in a mix of curry spices? Either way, all indications signal delicious. Rod suggested an upcoming outing to further investigate this intriguing mystery dish. It combines “one of your favorite things and one of my favorite things,” he said…all the more reason to do a little more digging.

To be sure, this is not the first time Cracking Curry fans have noticed a link between curry and bacon. In August 2011, a reader named Tracey sent this photo of an equally delicious-sounding Shrimp Curry topped with Bacon, from a restaurant in Culver City, Calif.

But actual curry bacon? This is a new twist. Rod spotted the sign for this dish at a Nolita restaurant named Jo’s. Clearly, there is more reporting that needs to be done here.

“Hope your 2013 is off to a great start,” Rod added. Oh yes. Yes it is.

My kaffir lime tree, decorated for Christmas.

(Updated to include MORE curry meals.)

It’s been a wonderful holiday season – the best in years! – and CrackingCurry has had the opportunity to make at least two four hot and spicy meals for a big group of friends or family. The above photo, taken the Saturday after Thanksgiving, is of the BF’s family enjoying bowls of Red Curry With Zucchini and Bamboo Shoots.

This week, we headed to Brooklyn for a “multinational” Christmas party. The hosts are from Great Britain and Australia, respectively, and encouraged guests to bring food or drink from sundry parts of the world: Mexican chili, British mince pies, German beer, etc. Of course, we represented Thailand, bringing the fixings for Wild Ginger Curry with Shrimp, made with my homemade red curry paste…all of which, I can happily report, was devoured. Yum!

Below, the BF obsessively “chiffonades” the kaffir lime leaves for our Wild Ginger Curry.

Our hosts’ impressive German beer selection.

Since this post was first published, I’ve had the opportunity (by request, mind you) to make two more curries at holiday parties… Spicy Southern Curry with Swordfish for the BF’s parents and cousin on the day after Christmas, and also Lamb Curry with Turnips & Carrots at friends’ New Year’s Eve party in Greenpoint. It’s been an honor!

The BF and I have been talking recently about visiting Cambodia when we take a long-awaited trip to Asia next year. I’ve long wanted to see the ruins of Angkor Wat, and the BF (who’s seen them before) wants to go back and explore other parts of Cambodia, such as its beaches. So this is my explanation for why, on a recent Saturday night, I decided to attempt a Cambodian curry.

Fortunately, my Curry Cuisine bible has a recipe for “Saraman,” or cardamom and ginger beer curry with peanuts. I’ve never actually eaten a Cambodian curry, much less attempted to make one, but after finding the recipe, and watching Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations Cambodia episode, I felt ready.

One advantage of my years of Thai and Indian curry-making is a well-stocked cabinet…which is good, because, damn there were a LOT of ingredients in this recipe. I liked that it called for star anise (pictured left), a star-shaped spice which — to sound incredibly girly — is the cutest spice ever. Other hard-to-find ingredients, which I fortunately had on hand: green cardamom pods, mace, cilantro root, galangal…and the list goes on.

The recipe wasn’t as complicated as it was labor-intensive and time-consuming…and there were times when I was skeptical as to whether the hours in the kitchen were worth it. But lo and behold, the finished product was terrific! We decided to eat it the authentic way, using baguettes to scoop up its deliciousness, rather than serving it over rice like most curries. The baguettes are leftover from the French colonization era.

The curry was thick, creamy, complex, layered — all the things a proper curry should be. Here’s my version of the Curry Cuisine recipe.

Cambodian Curry

3-inch piece ginger, pureed in food processor
1 lb beef (I got tender pieces, already cubed, used for making beef stew)
2 tbsp coconut oil
2 dried large red chiles, soaked, seeded and sliced
1 tsp galangal
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1 large shallot, chopped
1 stalk lemongrass, sliced
1 cinnamon stick
2 star anise
7 green cardamon pods
1/2 tsp ground mace
1 tsp nutmeg
2-3 cilantro roots, chopped
1/4 tsp turmeric
3 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp shrimp paste
1/2 can coconut cream
1 can (or 1 16-oz frozen bag) of coconut milk
4 tbsp palm sugar
1/4 cup tamarind water (water mixed with 1/4 tsp tamarind)
2 tbsp fish sauce
big handful roasted peanut halves
2-4 Thai chiles, sliced lengthwise
1 French baguette (sliced)

Puree the ginger and then squeeze it in your hand to release the juice into a mixing bowl. Discard the dry fiber. Add the beef cubes to the bowl, and marinate  in the ginger juice for a half-hour so. Meanwhile, pound the cinnamon stick, star anise, cardamons and mace in mortar & pestle; set aside. Heat the coconut oil and stir-fry the chiles, galangal, garlic, shallot and lemongrass until fragrant. Add the cinnamon/anise/cardamon/mace mixture along with the nutmeg until all are toasted. Transfer all to a food processor. Blend. Add cilantro root, turmeric and a small amount of  water; blend until paste. Set aside.
Heat the vegetable oil in a large pan (like a Le Creuset) over medium-high heat and stir-fry the shrimp paste, breaking apart with spoon until it’s dark. Add half the coconut cream and coconut milk, and all of the curry paste. Stir all. Add the beef and cook for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the remaining coconut cream and coconut milk, the palm sugar, the tamarind water, the fish sauce and the peanuts, then reduce heat. Simmer for about 1.5 hours of so. Add Thai chiles for heat. Serve with slices of French baguette, which you can use to scoop up the sauce. Delicious!

I recently made a batch of my red curry paste, and paused to take this pretty pic of its dried spices — white peppercorn, and dry-roasted cumin and coriander — before mashing them in a mortar & pestle.

I’m not just sharing this photo to show off the capabilities (unenhanced!) of my new iPhone 5. Rather…look at how beautiful, fresh and colorful the key ingredients of my Easy & Simple Curry recipe are! That’s red bell pepper julienned, yellow bell pepper squared and whole snow peas. Delicious!

Selections from Fatty Crab’s Post-Hurricane menu.

Last night was a strange one in the West Village. The power was back on, but things were far from normal.

Usually, Saturday nights are busy ones in this neighborhood, particularly as droves come in to enjoy the restaurants — something that’s good for New York City’s economy. Many of the small eateries in the Village (and other parts of lower Manhattan) have been shut down for nearly a week — a steep loss of revenue for the city, the owners and the workers who wait and bus tables.

We walked the neighborhood last night and noticed a lot of quiet, half-deserted restaurants — rather a surreal thing for this part of town. No doubt the lack of subway service had deterred a number of people from coming out. We stopped into Fatty Crab, where a small group of boisterous diners were celebrating a friend’s birthday, and were given a table by the window. But by 10 p.m., we were the only ones left eating in this normally packed place.

The waiter, who told us he had been holed up in Brooklyn the past week, said he was happy to be back working. He shrugged off the empty tables. “Tomorrow will be better than today, and the day after that will be even better,” he said. Of course, he’s right. The Village will bounce back in no time flat. Certainly neighborhoods that sustained severe damage — the Rockaways, Fire Island, the Jersey Shore, Staten Island — can only wish recovery would happen so quickly.

Fatty Crab, which had just gotten power earlier that morning after five days without, put together a limited “Post-Hurricane Sandy Menu” (picture below). We had the branzino penang, the Malay fish fry and Chinese broccoli, all of which were delicious. How they managed to put together such a selection under the circumstances is impressive, and a testament to some hard-working cooks and waitstaff. For a number of reasons, we were glad to support them.

Obviously there are far greater things to be concerned about during a hurricane than curry. But five days ago when we left our lower Manhattan apartment, I packed the necessities — my work computer and clean socks — and rounded up anything in our powerless refrigerator that I wanted to save. My freezer has a supply of hard-to-find Asian ingredients (things like wild ginger, whole kaffir limes and turmeric root) and so I packed all in a Zip-lock bag and took it with me uptown.

Today we returned to our beloved West Village ‘hood and marvelled at a few things we had taken for granted before, namely power and heat. We’re fortunate that — unlike so many others — our lives have barely been disrupted. Still…after nearly a week away, it’s comforting to be home. Return to normalcy to me meant cleaning up the fridge and sticking the curry ingredients I love back in. Hope to make a great one soon.

A photo from earlier today, of trees down in Central Park.