This is the second of three recipes using Thai red curry paste. When buying specialty ingredients, using them only one time can drastically increase the per-serving cost of a recipe; finding ways to reuse them knocks it down, but it also gets you into the habit of thinking more than one meal at a time, which is a big help in making great food at low prices.

The reason why we started always having a jar of Thai red curry paste in our fridge is because of a recipe from Kerry Simon for Red Curry Chicken Kebabs with Minty Yogurt Sauce in the July 2008 issue of Food & Wine magazine. This recipe became an instant classic in our house — it’s so easy and so tasty. The chicken comes out fantastic, and the mint yogurt sauce cools the heat of the curry paste and adds some nice sweetness.

We typically eat the kebabs with another Simon recipe from the same article: Seared Romaine Spears with Caesar Dressing. Both go on the grill, and now that the weather is warming up for most parts of the world (or at least in Vegas), this is the perfect menu for an evening of grilling and hanging out with friends.

To feed four people, the Red Curry Chicken Kebabs with Minty Yogurt Sauce cost $2.20 per serving, and the Seared Romaine Spears with Caesar Dressing cost 60 cents per serving when you serve just the lettuce topped with dressing and parmesan cheese. The total cost of the meal is $2.80 per person.

Once I’ve marinated the chicken in the curry paste, I jam it onto the skewers. I don’t do this like shish kebabs, with the meat nicely spaced out, I push the pieces closely together, making a giant meat stick of curry goodness. I find this technique cooks the chicken quite well on the grill…

..as you can see here.

Romaine hearts, sliced in half…

…then, yes, grill them. Just a bit to crisp and singe some edges, and add some smoky flavor to the lettuce.

The finished article, curry-marinated grilled chicken with mint yogurt sauce, and the grilled romaine with homemade caesar dressing and parmesan. By the way, for me, the caesar dressing tastes much better than any I’ve bought in a store!