Massaman Love Potion

...Massaman Love Potion...

 Massaman is all-time favorite for a lot of people I know. Even for King Rama II, he loved this curry so much that he had composed a poem after its delicacy:

มัสมั่นแกงแก้วตา              หอมยี่หร่ารสร้อนแรง
ชายใดได้กลืนแกง                แรงอยากให้ใฝ่ฝันหา

 Which means... 

  “Massaman – a delight, a charming flavor and alluring aroma of cumin. 

A love at first taste that will keep any man dreaming for more.

 *I’m not sure if he’s meant to dream of the curry or the cook. 

**Unofficially translated by myself).

   There’s  a restaurant in Bangkok with Massaman you will definitely be dreaming of after a try – Krua Apsorn - 

    Make sure to call and reserve your curry a day in advance and call again every 2 hrs before you arrive. Take it from me, you don’t want to miss something good.(It happened to me once when they forgot to keep the curry, this gave my boyfriend a bad afternoon, so please take my advice and secure your Massaman)

     Tonight I’m making Massaman for my man and hope he dreams of me. Hee.. hee... hee…

Let’s see what goes in the love potion!

- 7 Chicken Drumsticks (Large), give them a quick shower.

- 500ml Coconut Milk, I use organic coconut milk today, to feel less guilty, even if the food is fatty, it’s at least with organic coconut milk.

     Mix half of coconut milk with 200ml water, over low heat, once slightly boiled, add chicken. This will tenderize the chicken.

        Whilst the chicken is cooking, steam lotus seeds (about 1 ½ cups) for 12 minutes, medium heat. *Lotus seeds needs to be previously soaked in water around 20 minutes.

Make onion flower by using fruit knife to make zig-zag cut around the onion. I used 2 onions

     When lotus seeds are cooked, set them aside to cool and we can now put our onion flowers to steam, about 5-7 minutes, low heat.

     Remove stems in the middle of lotus seeds. They have disturbing bitter taste.

       As usually, mix coconut milk and paste in a sauce pan, before heating. I mix 2 1/2 tablespoon paste with ¼ cup coconut milk.

           Once mixed, put on stove over low heat, add more coconut milk, if the mixture is too dry. Keep stirring until you get beautiful fat layer like this:

             Pour the mixture over cooking chicken in coconut milk and let the love potion does its work. This takes around 25 minutes.

         Soak dried tamarind in warm water, to make tamarind sauce. No picture, I don’t want my camera getting tamarind flavor. I used 2 pods of tamarind and ¼ cup warm water. You might not need the whole thing.

        When 25 minutes has ended, taste the curry and do flavor calculation how much tamarind sauce, fish sauce and sugar you want to add.

      I put 2 tablespoons tamarind sauce, ¾ tablespoon palm sugar and 1 ½ fish sauce. This also depends on your paste too. Some paste has been made with intense flavor and it’s already quite salty or sweet. Always taste your curry before seasoning them.

      Once the love potion comes to the flavor you like, add lotus seeds and onion flowers.

Almost done….

      We don’t eat Massaman with rice this time, but mashed potato! Use any mashed potato recipe you like. I used this recipe: http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/perfect_mashed_potatoes/

, with substitution of coconut milk for milk.

Here we go!

…..Massaman love potion….

Enjoy it and dream of the curry (and me) ;)

Thank you for reading