How do you usually eat your curry? With plain white rice and a veggie dish? With naan, roti canai or roti pratha (Indian bread)? Yeah, I guess that would roughly be what most of us might be used to.

But since I’m not a big fan of rice, I prefer to eat my curry with toast. It’s incredibly yummy and makes a great breakfast too. Not one of those colon cleansing foods but I assure you, once you try it, you’ll swear by it .

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I have a thing for Indian curry rice. This is what I’ve been having for lunch on the weekend once in a while. Last weekend, we were at the The Curve and I ordered this plate of rice with fried fish fillet and cabbage and drowned it in lots of curry sauce. Heaven!

Although it’s a very simple meal with just two dishes and a papadam (cracker), it’s just the fix I need. You know, like those racing fanatics who can’t resist buying every Nascar jacket that’s available out there. Yep, that’s how I feel about Indian curry rice. I always end up overeating but there’s no way I can resist it !

There’s this fairly new place called Penang Recipe at 1 Utama that we’ve visited a couple of times, once or twice, for their weekday lunch time promo.

Whichever restaurant you walk into these day, you can pretty much find the ubiquitous Nasi Lemak. Penang Recipe’s Pandan Nasi Lemak with Chicken Rendang is a pretty good serving that comes with a papadam as well.

I started out really crazy about their Curry Laksa which came packed with ingredients like huge chunks of chicken, meatballs, taupok (tofu pockets), half a hard-boiled egg and even clams. Well, it’s still pretty good but the portion has shrunk very quickly over a short period of time and I’m not happy about that.

It’s sad how sometimes restaurants start out with such promise and then once business picks up, they scale back on quality and quantity to focus on their ecommerce fulfillment or whatever other business ventures they might be involved in.

For the past few mornings last week, I’ve been having breakfast at this new place I found. Well, I’d read about their $5 breakfasts but not being someone who eats breakfast out very often, I didn’t pay much attention.

But I have a gym partner now who faithfully hangs out with me when I go shopping for groceries and holiday gifts, and one morning, we decided to check out the Otak-Otak Place. It’s a themed restaurant reminiscent of your no-frills school canteen back in the good old 1960’s, complete with old-time songs played on wobbly records.

They have a few breakfast sets to choose from which come with tea or coffee, and my girl friend ordered the one that comes with Chicken Curry and Toast in a basket…

… and English tea with a Jacob cracker on top. So cute!

And I chose to have coffee with Nasi Lemak, or coconut rice with spicy condiments.

I’ve seen Otak-Otak Place franchises located in a few of the major shopping malls around town. Their breakfast is pretty okay for the price and I like that the place is nice and quiet in the mornings.

Our school day lunches have been rather run-of-the-mill of late due to our hectic schedule. So I try to spice things up during the weekends and school breaks. This time I decided to surprise my daughters with Thai green curry for lunch.

This is a dish I can only prepare when I have ample time because it requires quite a lot of ingredients and preparation. Glad I got to use fresh basil from my own garden and lemongrass from my neighbor’s garden .

For the curry paste, I blended these ingredients into a paste:

• 5 large green chillies, or jalapeno, seeded and chopped
• 1 knob ginger
• 6 cloves garlic
• 4-5 medium sticks of lemongrass, chopped
• zest from 1 lime, grated
• 2 medium onions, diced
• 1 bunch cilantro, chopped
• ½ cup fish sauce
• 1 Tsp sugar

The other ingredients are:

• 2 boneless chicken thighs, cut in 1” pieces
• 2 cups thickened coconut milk
• 1 zucchini, diced
• 1 egg plant, diced
• 6-8 long beans, diced
• 1 bunch basil
• 1 cup chicken stock, or water
• a few drizzles of soy sauce
• 1 Tsp lime juice
• 3 Tsp cooking oil

First I heat up the pot with cooking oil to fry half the green curry paste on medium heat for about 5 minutes till fragrant. Then I add the coconut milk and chicken stock followed by the long beans since they take the longest to soften.

I let it simmer for about 5 minutes before adding the remaining green curry paste and coconut milk, followed by zucchini, eggplant, chicken, soy sauce, lime juice and basil, then for another 5-7 minutes on medium to low heat till the veggies are softened.

As usual, I add just enough salt to taste. Remember the fish sauce and chicken stock are salty in themselves, and you don’t want to end up with a sodium overdose.

Thai green curry is the best thing ever eaten over rice. I’m am not a big rice fan though so I prefer mine over noodles. You can see from the first photo that my curry is not too thick so there’s more than enough sauce to make a noodle soup.

If you’re craving a wonderfully exotic curry, there’s no need to wait till the next time you visit a Thai restaurant or go on vacation at a hotel, try cooking this at home instead. It’s not hard but it needs quite a bit of prep time .