Cold Smoked Salmon Jungle Curry with Pea Aubergines, Stink Beans and Thai Herbs

The first time I made a jungle curry paste I got it in my eye. That was my introduction to getting chilli in the eye, and I can tell you it is probably the single spiciest thing you could put in there. I'd recommend avoiding it. Everything since has been excellent.

Gaeng pa means forest curry. The name tells you where it comes from. It's a curry of the northern and northeastern forests of Thailand, the inland regions where coconut palms don't grow. The Karen people and the hill tribes of the north made curry from what surrounded them: wild game, foraged herbs, jungle vegetables, water. No coconut, because there was none. What you get is the most uncut version of Thai curry there is. Heat without cushion. Spice with nothing to soften it.

I've eaten jungle curry in England and in Thailand and it is one of those dishes that doesn't have a wrong version as long as the heat is honest. I love it with beef, the rich fat doing what coconut milk would do in another curry, rounding the heat just enough. Served with son-in-law eggs and jasmine rice, that's a serious meal. This version uses salmon. It's a fatty fish and it holds its own against something this aggressive. Cold smoking it first adds another layer of flavour and brings a little balance to the intensity. The technique takes thirty minutes of passive time and needs nothing beyond a barbecue and some wood chips.

On herbs: hot mint, cha plu and Thai basil are all in the ingredients list and worth tracking down from any decent Asian supermarket. If you can only find Thai basil, the curry still works. But all three together is noticeably better.

Cold Smoked Salmon Jungle Curry

Serves: 4 | Prep: 20 mins plus 30 mins cold smoking | Cook: 15 mins | Total: 65 mins

Ingredients

For the cold smoked salmon

• 1 whole salmon side, skin on (approximately 700g), pin-boned

• A large handful of wood chips (cherry or apple wood), soaked in water for 30 minutes

For the curry

• 4 tbsp Payst jungle curry paste

• 2 tbsp vegetable oil

• 600ml light chicken stock or water

• 3 tbsp fish sauce, plus more to taste

• 1 tsp palm sugar

• 1 stick lemongrass, bashed and bruised

• A thumb-sized piece of grachai (wild ginger/fingerroot), peeled and sliced into thin strips

• 100g pea aubergines

• 2 apple aubergines, quartered

• 100g tenderstem broccoli, cut into 5cm lengths

• 100g stink beans (sator beans, frozen works fine if fresh unavailable)

To finish

• A large handful of Thai basil, leaves picked

• A handful of hot mint leaves

• A handful of cha plu (betel) leaves, torn (optional but worth it)

• 2-3 fresh bird's eye chillies, finely sliced

Method

1. Set up your barbecue for cold smoking. Drain the woodchips and place them in a foil parcel with a few holes pierced in the top, or scatter directly onto the coals. Light one side of the barbecue only. You want smoke, not heat. Place the salmon skin-side down on the side away from the flame, close the lid and leave for 30 minutes. The surface should look lightly smoked and slightly tacky. Remove, leave to cool slightly, then cut into 4cm chunks.

2. Heat the oil in a wok over high heat until smoking. Add the jungle curry paste and fry for 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly, until fragrant and the oil begins to separate around the edges of the paste.

3. Pour in the stock or water and bring to a rolling boil. Add the lemongrass, grachai, fish sauce and palm sugar. Taste. It should be aggressively salty, properly spicy and just slightly sweet underneath. More fish sauce for salt, more palm sugar if the heat needs rounding out, more chilli paste if it needs pushing further.

4. Add the apple aubergines and cook for 3 minutes. Add the pea aubergines, tenderstem broccoli and stink beans and cook for another 2 minutes. The vegetables should be tender with a little bite still in them.

5. Drop in the cold smoked salmon pieces and cook for 2-3 minutes until just opaque all the way through. Pull it off the heat the moment it's done. It will carry on cooking in the bowl and there's no recovering overcooked fish in a curry.

6. Taste once more. More fish sauce for salt, more fresh chilli for heat. Stir through the Thai basil, hot mint and cha plu and serve immediately over jasmine rice.

Chef's notes

The cold smoking can be done several hours ahead and the salmon kept in the fridge. It takes on a little more smoke as it rests, which is a good thing.

If you don't have a barbecue, line a wok with foil, scatter in a tablespoon each of uncooked rice, sugar and tea leaves, set it over high heat until smoking, place the salmon on a rack above it and cover tightly with a lid for ten minutes. Not identical, but it adds something.

Grachai is available fresh or jarred in most Asian supermarkets. Fresh is noticeably better but jarred works fine.

Visit us at faranglondon.co.uk. Sauces and pastes for cooking Thai at home at payst.co.uk.

For more recipes, signed copies of my cookbooks are available at Payst: Cook Thai and Thai in 7.