If you were leaving for a week long trip to a remote Costa Rican beach, what essentials would you bring? Sunscreen? Swimsuit? Thai curry paste? Okay, so maybe that last one isn’t exactly what most people would consider essential for a tropical vacation, but, knowing that I get a little nutty if I don’t get my Thai food fix in once a week, I decided to pack a small jar of curry paste with me. Just in case.

After dining out at Sol y Mar our first few nights in Zancudo, we decided to spend an evening in. A homemade Thai dinner was definitely in order! I initially had very lofty goals for my Thai curry. Wild coconuts were falling from the trees all around us in Zancudo (you seriously had to watch your head.) This got me thinking, why not make my Thai curry with fresh coconut milk? I had read previously how to prepare coconut milk from scratch in Cracking the Coconut. Now, I was finally in a position to do so. Well…it didn’t really work as I had hoped. After spending the better part of the afternoon removing a coconut from its outer pod, I sliced my thumb open while trying to poke holes in the eyes to get at the juice. Robert felt bad and offered to help, but I was feeling too defeated to continue with the project. Luckily, the small grocery store in Zancudo sells canned coconut milk.

To get the veggies I needed for my curry, I had to wait for Willy to come to town. Willy is the owner of a fruit and vegetable truck and he comes by every few days. If you need something from him, you put out the “Willy Si” sign that belongs to your cabin and then he’ll know to stop for you. All of the Willy signs are handmade and unique so it was really fun to walk down the road on a Willy day and look at them all. Willy has a huge variety of produce available: lettuce, tomatoes, cilantro, mangoes, cantaloupe, delicious pineapple. Even apples, which, being from Washington State, I had to politely decline. Willy also sells cheeses and wine. For my curry, I bought some broccoli and the mystery root vegetable pictured above. I’m guessing it is some variety of taro or yuca.

Now that I had my coconut milk and my veggies, it was time to start cooking. Cooking in the cabina was much easier than I expected. A mere twenty minutes after I started, my dinner was complete! I served my curry over rice with chunks of fresh pineapple on the side. The mystery root was okay. I was told that it was similar to a sweet potato, but I thought it tasted more like a generic starch. Not bad, but not spectacular. The curry as a whole, however, was really good. As much as I love jasmine rice, I really liked the way that the curry went with the Latin American rice that we had. It turned really creamy, almost like a Thai risotto. Robert and I ate our delicious Thai dinner on the porch of our cabina while watching the sun set over the Osa Peninsula. It was a perfect evening!