If you're 'Inta' Thai green curry you'll love this

A fantastic way to get ‘Inta’ making your own Thai curries at home

A while across I met up with Danny Moore, a young Manchester based entrepreneur who has launched his own business (http://www.intafood.co.uk/) this year and who is doing some amazing stuff with ethnic food.

Now being ‘IntaFood’ myself, I stayed in touch with Danny and have been keeping a keen eye on his fledgling business. So when Danny asked me and my chef husband to try one of his new Intafood Thai Curry recipe packs I was delighted – and the results far exceeded our expectations.

When I told the chef a pack was on its way, he was typically cynical. “Why would I want one of those when I can make a perfectly good Thai green curry?” he asked. “I bet they’ll be shit!” (Well he was a chef for 20 years!).

However, before we could even open the package that arrived by post from Danny we guessed what was inside – you could get off just on the wonderful smells emanating from inside the packaging itself.

Inside was a neat little sealed pack containing everything you need (minus the protein and veg) to put together your own Thai Green Curry – and his nibs was impressed. Individually packaged portions of Thai fish sauce, fresh sweet basil leaves (“Wow, these are hard to get and when you can find them you always have to buy them in large quantities”), Kaffir lime leaves, palm sugar, Thai curry paste all combined to give off the most wonderful aroma and get my mouth buds watering – I’m a huge Thai green curry fan!

Recipe suggestions are printed on the packaging and instructions for how to make your own Thai green curry which any novice could follow. Not being a novice the chef used the ingredients of the pack to help knock up his own curry – on a campstove inside our tent on a cold and wet August bank holiday Friday evening in the Peak District!

We’d taken along the chicken, a tin of coconut milk and some aubergine and served our final dish with cous cous rather than our preferred Jasmine rice (it’s easier to prepare in a tent, less washing up and goes down just as well, soaking up the wonderful fragrant sauce beautifully).

And can I say these packs are perfect for the gourmet camper as indeed they would be for anyone wanting to make their own, authentic tasting and fragrant Thai green curry at home.

I was certainly impressed by the finished dish and the chef was pleased with the fresh ingredients and the quantities. “I’d usually have most of these in but you usually have to buy them in bulk, often from a specialist oriental supermarket, and while some things keep or freeze well it can be hard to keep or even get some of the ingredients sometimes, especially the sweet basil.”

Memories of an unsuccessful trawl around several supermarkets to find fresh, sweet basil and lime leaves when we’ve wanted to make Thai green curry before came back to us. “I would definitely use these again,” said the chef. “It’s a shame the shelf life is quite short so you can’t stock up and plan ahead but it does at least mean the ingredients are fresh. The price (£2.99) is great – about right I’d say. My only criticisms are that I would have liked to have seen an indication of how many people the portion size was for – I knew because of my professional experience but it could be confusing for some cooks who wouldn’t know if this would produce a curry for two, four or more. And it’s a shame the packaging was plastic. Otherwise I loved it – I now want to try the other recipe packs in the Intafood range.”

See www.intafood.com for more details or to buy a pack yourself - there's a great offer for new customers too!