This does involve a fair bit of slicing and dicing, so maybe one for a quiet evening rather than when you're in a rush. It fed two for dinner with enough left over for lunchboxes the next day.
So, step one, thinly slice a purple onion and as much garlic as you like. Step two, dice two large or 4-5 ordinary tomatoes, a fat thumb of ginger and as much fresh chilli as you like. Step three, slice an aubergine into big bitesize peices.
Finally, step four, skin, de-bone and dice a couple of chicken legs (or buy pre-prepared chicken leg meat, or just breasts) and lightly coat with a little cornflour. That's it, all the tough prep work is done!
Get your rice on to cook - I can really recommend getting a ricebot (aka electric ricecooker, preferably with a delay timer function). My favourite rice for steaming is Japanese short grain.
Heat up a large frying pan on the hob with a little sesame or vegetable oil and fry the chicken peices until you can't see any pink on the outside, then add the aubergine and continue to cook until the chicken is cooked through and the aubergine is softened but still has a little bite to it. Take them out of the pan and put to one side.
Reusing the same pan, add a little more oil and stir fry the onion and garlic until softened, then add the tomatoes, ginger and chilli along with a smidge of shrimp paste. Give it a couple of minutes before adding the chicken and aubergine back to the pan, along with a massive pinch of lime leaves, a big squeeze of lemon juice, 2 tbsp of soy sauce, a decent scraping of palm sugar and a splash of water.
Five more minutes in the pan at most and it should be ready, mix in a big handful of coriander and serve with a nice mound of steamed rice and, if you like it, some hot chilli sauce.
