A Healthy Kind of Crack: Thai Curry Paste

Another great option for creating flavorful food at home without breaking the bank is to make a small investment in some fresh Thai curry paste. It's inexpensive, a little bit goes a long way, it has no preservatives and makes your cooking taste really, really good. We favor the red, but there are other kinds as well.

What do you do with it? Add a spoonful of it here and there to whatever you happen to have at hand.

One of our most common applications involves what we now refer to as "that crack chicken." It's terribly simple. Chop up lots of fresh vegetables, things like carrots and onions, something hardier like cabbage or broccoli if you have it. If your week is like ours often is, make this the one meal of the week where you eat vegetables. Hot red Thai curry paste is a wonderful foil for an otherwise healthy (read: boring) meal.

Slice some chicken breast, that iceberg lettuce of the meat world. It's a blank page onto which we can apply some fiery flavor.

Saute it all in a skillet with some oil, add a couple spoonfuls of curry paste, add a cup or so of water, pasta water if pasta is your desired starch vehicle, though rice is also appropriate, and let the flavors blend together for a couple of minutes.

It's partially the heat that makes this so appealing, but there is also a tremendously broad flavor profile--tangy, sweet, herbal, almost floral--to this paste. Be careful how you use it; it can be incredibly hot. You'll find yourself spooning it into your mouth as quickly as possible, accomplishing the double goal of replacing the burn with more good flavor.

Give this crack a try. It doesn't even involve an unseemly transaction.