Thai green curry with rice noodles

Thai cuisine is hands down one of my favorite things in the world. Not only the flavors are a mixture of crisp, spicy, creamy, sweet, and tangy - but also it brings me back to the beautiful tropical paradise that I fell in love with a couple of years ago when we traveled there. The beautiful land and beautiful flavors are easy to love, and I went as far as taking a chef school lesson while there so I can take the flavors home with me. Let's be real, I can't be there every day so this is the next best thing. Today I felt adventurous, and today I feel nostalgic, so today I'm going to bring us back to the streets of Bangkok with some Thai green curry with rice noodle.

Cooking Thai is not entirely difficult if you already know some basic cooking theories, equipped with the recipe book straight from Silom Soi district, and living in one of the most multicultural places in the world so foreign ingredients are easy to get. But don't fret, thanks to many local grocery stores carrying ingredients from all over the world, and with instructions found here that are easy to follow - you too can make this at home.

What you need:
- a pack of rice noodle
- 3 tbsp of green curry paste
- 1 tsp of tamarind paste
- 1 piece (semi sphere) cane sugar
- 2 cups of almond milk
- 1 small red onion, sliced
- 1 cup of broccoli florets
- 1 Chinese long eggplant, cut into 1 in cubes
- 1/2 of yellow zucchini, 1 in cubes
- 1/2 of green bell pepper, sliced
- 4 garlic cloves, diced
- 1 in ginger, sliced.

Recipe:
- cook onion, garlic, ginger, tamarind sauce, green curry paste, can sugar, in hot oiled pot for 2-3 min. the goal is to cook the spices, break down the tamarind and curry paste. if the sugar is not entirely melted, no worries, it will later.
- add all the almond milk into the pot and bring to simmer. cook for a few minutes until the cane sugar ball is melted.
- add all the freshly cut vegetables into the pot and cook uncovered for about 7-10 minutes until they are all cooked and tender. then reduce to simmer.
- add the rice noodles into boiling water for about 2-3 minutes. I bought the 2 cm thin noodles so that's about the time it takes. The beauty is that these packages tell you how long to cook them depends on thin the noodle is. I also tend to try it in 20-30 sec intervals until it's al dente.
- drain the noodle, run in cold water so the noodles don't get mushy.
- portion noodles into a bowl, scoop cooked curry with vegetables from pot on top. add other toppings like parsley or previously fried shrimps. Serve!

Note:
- Typically the coconut milk is your go-to nut milk for green curry. A can of coconut milk would go nicely and is ideal. However if you have other type of nut milks it's really quite similar. This can be almond, cashew, or soy. So, I didn't go buy coconut milk and this turned out great.
- Mostly you see the Thai green curry in restaurants served with white jasmine rice. That would be great and delicious. I happened to have no rice but I had these rice noodles which you can make pad thai with. Well, my noodles end up mopping up and soaking all the curry sauce and boy you get this soupy spicy herb-y noodle dish that's nothing short of amazing!
- If you don't have cane sugar, regular white sugar is also ok, use about 1 tbsp of it.
- I had a few breaded shrimps left over from the night before. So those were great toppings to add on top. for the recipe on that, see below post: https://www.eatwithjia.com/2020/01/breaded-or-battered-shrimp-dinner-with.html