Some of the things I regret around Ian’s death feel exceedingly odd.
Nothing about how we managed his care, death or funeral.
But not getting his chicken, lime and coconut milk curry recipe out of him… THAT has bugged me beyond belief.
That was his signature dish, the one he pulled out when we had company. It’s what he made me the first time he invited me over for dinner. I didn’t need to know the recipe – it was his thing. I actually doubt he would have given it to me.
Here’s the thing. I can’t actually remember what Ian’s version tasted like. He’d not made it for quite a while before he got sick, so that memory has faded.
During the week, a friend gave me some limes of her tree. And I’d already been thinking about this recipe more and more recently, as John can now handle those more liquid curries without making too much mess.
So on the very, very limited information I had… I gave it a crack, even though I was quite scared to.
Chicken, lime juice, fresh chili, coconut milk, spring onion. That’s all I had to go on.
Seeing as though I don’t remember what it actually tasted like, I added some other Thai herbs, some fish sauce and palm sugar, since they seemed to fit the profile.
And it worked. It rang some taste-bud bells. Not one hundred percent because a three year old would not accept Ian’s degree of heat (neither did I, quite frankly), and it was a different variety of lime than Ian used so I think that’s part of it, but what I tried was a good start and something else from Ian I can pass on to John as he gets older.