This is Nigel Slatter’s recipe and he says he has been tweaking it over several years. Buy green chilles with the heat you want. Tastes great, creamy, hot and vibrant.

Curry Paste

• 4 lemongrass outer stalks removed, fine chopped.
• 10 green chillies seeded and chopped.
• 6 cloves garlic peeled and chopped.
• 6cm ginger, peeled and chopped.
• 3 shallots peeled and chopped.
• 4 tbsp chopped coriander
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp chopped lime zest
• 2 tbsp lime juice
• 2 tbsp Thai fish sauce
• ½ tsp ground black peppercorns

For the curry

• 1 kg Chicken breasts
• 3 tbsp Vegetable oil
• 300g chestnut mushrooms, quartered.
• 2 x 400ml tins coconut milk
• 400ml Chicken stock
• 1 tbsp Thai fish sauce
• 1 tbsp Brown Sugar
• ½ tsp crushed black pepper
• 2 Potatoes, peeled and cubed (helps thicken the sauce)
• Hand full of Basil, shredded.
• Hand full of Coriander (leaves and stalks,) roughly chopped.

Fine chop the lemongrass. Rough chop everything else. Then get all the paste ingredients into a blender and blitz into a smooth thick paste. Add a bit of water to help. If you prefer not to make your own paste, I often use Mae Ploy Green Curry Paste, which is very good.

Cut chicken into thin strips. Add some vegetable oil to pan and brown chicken over high heat. Cook in batches to avoid overcrowding pan. Set the chicken aside.

Finally, add the mushrooms to the pan and brown and set aside.

In a pot, add stock, coconut milk, pepper, brown sugar and fish sauce and bring to a simmer. Add the the cubed potatoes. and ¾ of the curry paste and bring to boil and then simmer for 10 mins. Add the chicken and mushrooms. Then before serving add remaining paste and cook for 5 mins. Then add the chopped herbs.

If using the shop bought paste, I like to add an extra greenness by blitzing some coriander and water and mix this in with the finished sauce.

If you don’t like mushrooms, use green beans instead. Top and tail and cut the green beans in half to make bite size.

Serve with jasmine rice.