Gaeng Som Pla — Southern Thai Sour Fish Curry

Name: Gaeng Som Pla — Southern Thai Sour Fish Curry
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Thai (Southern)
Ingredients: 500 g Firm white fish fillet, in large pieces; 10 Dried red chillies; 25 g Fresh turmeric, peeled and chopped; 5 Shallots; 4 cloves Garlic; 1 tsp Shrimp paste (kapi); 1 tsp Salt; 1 L Water; 3 tbsp Tamarind paste; 2 tbsp Lime juice; 3 tbsp Fish sauce; 1 tbsp Palm sugar; 350 g Mixed vegetables — green papaya, daikon, cabbage or long beans; 150 g Pineapple, in chunks; 600 g cooked Jasmine rice, to serve

The curry that proves Thai food is not all coconut milk. Southern Thailand's is bright yellow with fresh turmeric, savagely sour, savagely hot, and thin as broth — a bowl designed to be eaten in spoonfuls over rice.

Source

Recipe by Southern Thai kitchens · 🏺 Traditional · The peninsula south — Thailand's hottest and sourest cooking, with a large Muslim population

Southern Thai · regional dish — An ownerless regional dish, so no cook is credited. The cited article confirms that kaeng som contains no coconut milk in either of its forms, that the central version is soured with tamarind while the southern version uses tamarind, assam fruit (som kaek) and lime juice, and that the southern version's turmeric is what gives it its yellow colour and the alternative name kaeng lueang. It records fish and shrimp as the usual proteins and green papaya, drumstick pods and Sesbania flowers among the vegetables, and describes the southern style as very spicy, sour and salty. This recipe follows the southern version. Quantities and method here are this book's own.

Background on Wikipedia ↗

Watch it being made · 3 videos

Mark Wiens Fy Yoyo & Min Thai Kitchen

⏱ 45 min🍽 4 servings🔥 240 kcal🇹🇭 Thailand🌶️🌶️🌶️

HalalPescatarianDairy-freeNut-free

Steps

Pound the drained chillies with the salt in a mortar until they break down, then work in the turmeric, shallots and garlic one at a time. Add the shrimp paste last and pound until it is a rough wet paste.
💡 One ingredient at a time, fully broken down before the next goes in. Throwing everything in together gives you a bowl of chunks pretending to be paste. A blender works if you add 2 tbsp of water.
Bring the water to the boil and whisk the paste into it — there is no frying step and no coconut cream here, which is exactly what makes this a southern curry.
Simmer for 8 minutes so the raw edge cooks off, then add the hardest vegetables first — daikon or papaya — and give them 6 minutes.
Add the softer vegetables and the pineapple, then lay the fish on top and simmer for 5–6 minutes without stirring, until the flesh turns opaque.
💡 Stirring is what breaks the fish apart. Push it gently under the surface with the back of a ladle if you need to, but never stir.
Take it off the heat and season with the strained tamarind, fish sauce, palm sugar and lime juice. Taste — it should be aggressively sour and salty, with sweetness barely detectable.
Serve it in a shared bowl with a lot of plain rice. This is a curry that is spooned sparingly over rice, not eaten by the bowlful.

💡 Tips

This is one of Thailand's two kaeng som traditions and the file is honest about it: the central version is soured with tamarind alone and has no turmeric, while this southern one adds turmeric — which is why it is also called kaeng lueang, 'yellow curry'.
Do not add coconut milk to fix the heat. Neither version of kaeng som uses it, and adding it turns the dish into something else. If it is too hot, eat it with more rice — that is how the region handles it.
Prawns work in place of fish and need only 3 minutes. A mixed pot of fish and prawns is normal in coastal towns.
Not vegetarian, and it cannot be made vegetarian by removing the fish — the shrimp paste and fish sauce are load-bearing. A vegetarian sour curry of this style exists, but it is a different recipe built on salted soybean paste.