I go through lots of coconut milk as I can knock out a decent Thai curry in around 20 minutes and treat is as fast food. Nothing special about my cooking abilities, anyone can.

I've just bought 12 tins from Coop for 50rp each. They were 3Fr, for some reason reduced to 1Fr (I think they are discontinuing this range - this has 60% coconut extract, the others were all 50 or 55!), and at the moment they are also 50% off.

Coop, unlike Migros, do the 50% reduction from the Aktion price, not the full price so ... 50rp each.

(Adrian's handy tip: If this was Migros, you'd pay 1Fr for the non-reduced price ones and 1.50Fr for the 50% off ones - watch out for that when buying reduced aktion stuff in Migros).

Getting my sleeping bag ready and grabbing my coat as I type!

check out the expiry date

*Shuffles feet and looks at floor*

Can you post the recipe..?

Pleaase

Then ignore it. FFS do some people really think they can get ill or die if they eat something one day over it's BBF date? The British govt. are considering banning these dates as they are the cause of tons of food being thrown away every day.

Do what "consumers" have done for thousands of years. If it looks good, smells good and tastes good... guess what?

better still, I say we all go over to his house and we all learn from the master himself.

If you have a ready-made (green, yellow or red - your choice!) curry paste from the cold shelves of an Asian shop or even the non-cold shelves of Globus.
Dead simple version:
1. For two diners, roughly chop up an onion, 3 cloves of garlic, whatever vegetables you like (if green curry, pick green-coloured veggies such as round Thai aubergine and okra).
2. Heat 2 tsp of oil in a medium pot to medium hot. Stir 2-4 tsp of the paste in this (how spicy do you like it?) for a few minutes.
3. Throw in the hardest veggies first (bashed lemongrass stalk, carrot, potato chunks). Add 1/2 cup of stock.
4. Add your meat of choice. Cook for half its cooking time.
5. Add coconut milk. And a dash of fish sauce if you like and 1 tbs of brown sugar or palm sugar. Add enough salt (remember you're eating this with rice, so a tiny bit saltier is OK).
6. Finally add ingredients such as hand-torn kaffirlime leaves, cut green onions or spring onions, Thai basil. A couple of minutes and you're done.

Serve with basmati rice or jasmine rice. Heck, even a wild rice mix makes a nice change!


If you want to make your own curry paste, you can try this recipe:

Tamarind Fish Curry

Ingredients:

90g onion or shallots, peeled and roughly chopped
4 or 5 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
3 or 4 red chillies, deseeded and sliced
3 tablespoons oil
1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
¼ tsp fenugreek seeds
3/4 tsp cumin powder
½ tsp turmeric powder
¾ tsp fennel powder
¾ tsp coriander powder
½ tsp cardamom powder
1 tbs dried curry leaves, crushed, stalks removed
3 stalks lemongrass, bruised
2 tbs tamarind pulp, mixed with 4 tbs warm water, strained (sub: tamarind paste)
1½ cups water
¾ tsp brown or raw sugar
2 tomatoes, cut into thick slices
8 okra, stalks cut off
500g fish: pangasius (sub: tuna, grouper or pomfret)
80ml coconut milk (optional)
1 tsp salt (or to taste)


Method:

Pulse together or pound the onion or shallots, garlic and chillies. (Add a bit of oil, coconut milk or water to help the blades to move if using a hand-held blender.)
Heat oil to medium hot in a medium pot. Add black mustard seeds and fenugreek seeds.
When mustard seeds pop (around half a minute), add the blend of onion, garlic and chillies.
Add cumin, turmeric, fennel, coriander, cardamom, dried curry leaves and lemongrass. Reduce heat to medium-low and stir-fry for 5-7 minutes until fragrant and slightly brown.
Add tamarind juice and water. Increase heat to boil.
Add sugar, tomatoes and okra. Cook on medium heat for 5 minutes.
Add fish and simmer for 5 minutes.
Add salt and coconut milk (if using). Cook for about 10 minutes until fish flakes and okra is tender.

Serves 3 or 4.


Note: You can play around with curry paste ingredients. Add 2cm of galangal, ginger root and a couple of stalks of lemongrass for added flavour. Just slice them thinly and blitz with the base ingredients. Add soaked deseeded red dried chillies if you want to raise the bar for spicyness.

In the case of cheese, the pongier the better IMHO!

Stuff in tins will last way past the expiry date. Keeping coconut milk for a year or more past the expiry date will be totally fine. Honest.

Around 20-30 years minimum. It's a con by the manufacturers to churn over supplies.

U can Prepare some Asian Rice with Coconut milk.

Vegetable rice

Ingredients:
Rice :2 cup
Carrot :2 nos
Beans :a bunch
Potato : 2 medium size
Onion :2 nos
Tomato :1 nos
Ginger and garlic paste.
Mint and coriander leaves
Salt and little chilly if u love the dish to be spicy

Method:

Take a Vessel,Add oil and When oil is heated up,add onion,ginger garlic paste,chilly and fry till the onion become soft and half the quantity.
Then Add tomato,Once tomato becomes soft ,add all the veges and fry for 5 min.Add salt.
Add water(1 cup) Here comes the Queen Coconut milk (2 cup) and rice .Close it with lid.Leave it for 10 min.

After Ten min u get a Lovely aroma.
Vegetable Rice with coconut milk is ready

Preparation time :20 min
Serves for 3


Capsicum Gravy

Ingredients:

Capsicum :2 Nos
Onion :1 no(Medium size)
Salt and chilly

Method:
Add oil in a pan.Add onion,once it becomes soft add diced capsicum.Add little salt and chilly .Fry for 5 min.Till the capsicum becomes soft.Now Add Coconut milk.(3 cups).Close the Lid for ten min.Till the gravy becomes Thick.

This Goes well with Plain White rice or Bread(indian)

Preparation time:15 min
Serves for 2


I can say Coconut adds Flavour and wonderful taste to the dishes.

Happy cooking.

Almost instant green curry instructions. I learnt this at a cooking school in Chiang Mai, so it is authentic. The only contentious point is in using a curry paste - some people like to make their own, but check the ingredients of the pastes in Asian shops - it's not full of rubbish and saves many, many hours of using a pestle and mortar (a food processor ruins it).

In Thailand they use bought paste. It's bought fresh from the market, but all the ingredients are natural preservatives so in those tubs in Asian shops it keeps for years, even once opened.

1. One tin of coconut milk. Keep it upright for a few hours, ideally overnight. Open it very carfully. It separates and you *want it that way*.

2. In a very hot wok or large frying pan, spoon the top half of the coconut milk. This should be thick. As soon as you get to the watery stuff, stop.

3. Once the oil separates from the coconut milk, fry two or three heaped dessert spoonfuls of the green curry paste into it. After a few minutes, stirring quickly, it will suddenly get very pungent. That's how you know it's done.

4. You could add lemongrass (cut into large pieces), garlic and onion now but none are really necessary. I add lemongrass only. Lemongrass, whole, freezes very well. Straight from the freezer rince in hot water, cut and use.

5. Add some Thai fish sauce (this is the Thai equivalent of soy sauce in the way it adds a salty flavour to bring out the taste in the other ingredients).

6. Add the rest of the coconut milk. Add another tin, or milk or water to make as much sauce as you want.

7. Melt along the side of the pan/wok a large chunk of palm sugar (cheap, from Asian shops). The green curry paste is spicy! If you add enough to get all the flavours, you need the sugar to take the edge off the chillies. Thais do this, don't act too butch and not bother.

8. Add chicken (or pork or fish) into the now boiling liquid. Turn down and simmer for around 5 minutes. For fish, one minute should be enough.

9. Turn off heat. Add juice of two limes. Ideally add lime leaves (you can buy them cheaply from an Asian shop and they freeze very well. Fold in half, rip out the stem, and throw in). Also stir in some Thai basil. Dosn't add much flavour but smells nice.

10. Serve on rice. To make it pretty you decorate with some thick coconut milk in white swirls, and add some small green chillies sliced lengthways. But it's not important and adds nothing new to the taste.

If you use yellow curry paste instead of green, add cinnamon sticks instead of lemon grass. Use pumpkin cubes instead of meat or fish. Yumm!

Well and gud if Coconut milk stays good after the expiry date.


Healthy life is also matter

It's tinned. If it had been tinned in the time of the Raj, it would still probably be good to eat.

My old colleague found a tin of Heinz Chocolate sponge in his nan's house when he ws clearing it out.

It was from the 70's and a bit oxidised on the outside.

We ate it and it was lovely. Never did me no 'arm.


Though I did have hair before I ate it....

I can beat that.

When my father was helping to clear out his aunt's house in the seventies they found some homemade jam in the cellar. Various vintages but the oldest was dated 1947. It looked and smelled fine so we ate it. The whole lot was shared amongst the family and not one jar was thrown away.

This was in Yorkshire where of course nothing was ever thrown away.
Nobody got ill and 2 of my aunts are still going strong in their 90's.

Wish OH shared my views. I have to hide things before he throws them away. I swear if it was one minute past midnight on the day marked on the packet he would throw it away.

I worked in a lab in the UK where we measured deterioration over time and at different temperatures in order to determine the expiry dates. The margin allowed between the expiry and the first sign of the product deteriorating was huge.(no company wants to be sued)

Our 15 year old tin of Argentian Dolce de Leche (which was delicious) is worthless in this thread after the last two posts.

@ Adrian

Do you not use any coriander in your green curry, I thought that was a must (I put basil in a red curry)?
I always chuck lots in mine at the end of cooking, but perhaps mine aren't authentic then

He must be my husband's twin
BTW thanks all for the recipes

Nope, no corriander at all. I only use coriander in Indian curries and some Chinese dishes. Oh, and sometimes as a soup garnish.

Doesn't mean using coriander is wrong, just that they don't use it in Northern Thailand when doing green curries. Or the cooking school had run out and lied!