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Although this is in my From My Kitchen set, it's not technically from my own kitchen. I've been staying with my mom the past week because she broke her leg. She doesn't have much in the way of entertainment so I cooked a lot to keep boredom away. The good thing is there's a lot of markets around with fresh produce and ethnic ingredients so shopping was easy. Here's my version of Thai green curry with chicken and coconut milk. Not claiming to be authentic but I wanted something tasty, soupy, and comforting.

1 skinless boneless chicken breast trimmed of fat and cubed into 1" pieces
1 medium onion thinly sliced
1 red bell pepper thinly sliced
several white mushrooms sliced
1 medium zucchini sliced into half moons
half a can of sliced bamboo shoots
1 broccoli cut into florets and stems peeled and sliced
1 can coconut milk
2/3 can of Thai green curry paste or however much you like
small knob of ginger grated
4 cloves garlic crushed
S&B yellow curry powder
pinch of ground coriander
few splashes nam pla
Drizzle of canola oil, or vegetable oil, as long as it has a high smoking point and not strongly flavored

If you want this to be vegetarian, substitute the nam pla for soy sauce (quite a bit more soy sauce because it's less salty than nam pla) and replace the chicken with tofu, or just make it all vegetables.

In a large soup pot I sauteed the onions, peppers, garlic and ginger in the oil until the onions and peppers were soft. The curry powder and coriander went in and also cooked in the oil to release their flavor. In went the mushrooms and cooked until they got a bit of flavor.

Pushing all the vegetables to the side to expose the hot center of the pot, I dropped in the curry paste and let it cook a bit to develop deeper flavor. Then in went a little water, maybe less than half the volume of the vegetables. After bringing everything to a simmer, I added the chicken.

After about 10 minutes, I added the zucchini, broccoli, bamboo shoots, and coconut milk to the pot. The whole thing simmered, covered, for about 15 minutes over medium heat until the broccoli and zucchini were bright green and the soup had thickened a bit. After shutting off the heat, in went sprigs of cilantro and the juice of a whole lime.

I ate this over rice with more cilantro and lemon juice sprinkled all over. I could eat this everyday.

It was so tasty, I made it again. This time I used more chicken, added a chopped white onion, some of my roasted garlic, various "mexican" seasonings, and some Sri Racha hot sauce to spice it up a little.

I started the cooking at 10 AM with the HotPot in its reflector. By 1 PM, the sun was so directly overhead that I switched to my worn Cook-it and left it on for another 2 hours, just for good measure.

Needless to say, it was delicious again. We fried up a number of corn tortillas and added various things like fresh cut salsa, avacado, lettuce, cilantro, lime juice, hot sauce... you get the idea.