Red Curry Coconut Noodles

Confession: I've had my first vegetarian "meh".

I am willing to accept part of the blame for the forgettableness (is that a word?) of this recipe, since I didn't follow it to a "T", but I'm sure some of it has to do with the recipe itself.

At first glance, it seemed to have everything going for it - thai flavors, including curry, ginger, cilantro and coconut. A good mix of veggies and noodles. A little spice and intrigue. But the resulting sauce was simply too heavy, rich and thick. Not at all the light thai noodle dish I had envisioned.

What did I do wrong? Well, it's possible that the noodles I used (the grocery store was out of traditional rice noodles, so I used rice spaghetti) added too much starch to the sauce, and that combined with the additional cooking time the noodles needed thickened it much more than the recipe intended. But the other issue is that the recipe calls for 2 entire cans of coconut milk - the real deal, not the light stuff - which is just overload for me.

Not one to give up after a setback, I do plan to make this dish again with a few adjustments to see if I can rescue the recipe from the pile of papers designated for the recycle bin. Next time I will find real quick cooking rice noodles, use one can of light coconut milk and add extra vegetable stock if it needs more liquid. I will also add more curry paste and a little more ginger, just to hammer home the flavor profile.

Here's the recipe as I made it. Given the rave reviews on the site it's from, I'm holding out hope that I could make it better next time. If you make it and it turns out great, please tell me what you did!

Red Curry Coconut Noodles

2 cans Coconut Milk
2 teaspoons Red Curry Paste
1 Tablespoon Ginger (fresh, Grated)
1 Tablespoon Cilantro (fresh, Chopped)
¼ cups Sweet Thai Chili Sauce
16 oz Vegetable Broth (have more on hand, trust me)
1 package Rice Noodles (I used rice spaghetti - I do NOT recommend it!)
1 whole Onion
2 whole Red or Green Bell Peppers
1 cup Broccoli Slaw
Salt To Taste

Julienne your peppers and onions. Set aside. Start with a large pot over medium-high heat. Scoop the cream off the top of the coconut milk, and put into the pot. The cream will be used as the “fat” instead of oil or butter. Along with the cream, add the curry paste and ginger. Let this simmer for 1 minute.




Then add the rest of what is in the coconut milk cans, sweet Thai chili sauce, cilantro, and vegetable broth. Bring this to a simmer.



Then add your julienned veggies, slaw and rice noodles (on the advice of some of the recipe reviewers, I used only 1/2 pkg of noodles). Simmer this. You will see the broth slowly thicken as the rice noodles absorb it. It should only take about 5 minutes for the rice noodles to be cooked through. (This took me at least 15 minutes due to the spaghetti noodles)




Pull the pot off the heat, and let sit for about 5 minutes. It will thicken during this time. Then, it’s done. Slurp these noodles out of big noodle bowls! Garnish it with a bit more cilantro and some Sriracha.



Note: I also rubbed some tofu with the curry paste and sauteed it to throw on top of the dish as added protein. The dogs loved the tofu. Me, not so much. I'm still working on the whole tofu thing...more on this to follow.