Paul, for dinner last night I riffed on a super simple recipe I read in Bon Appetit, I think it was. The method: dump a 14 ounce can of coconut milk in a small oven-safe dish, add your choice of curry paste and maybe fresh aromatics, stir, set chicken leg-thigh combos on top, spoon sauce over, bake for about 60-70 minutes, baste a few times. The second I read it I knew: forget the curry paste, this is meant for Lan Chi!!!!
I used two heaping teaspoons of LC and augmented it with just lemon grass left in two whole sticks, just smashed to release flavor. In the time it takes to bake, the chicken releases fat into the sauce, the flavors integrate, the sauce thickens and darkens, and the skin of the chicken gets brown and crisp. The result is OFS. Very complex and almost ridiculously simple--it can be in the oven about two minutes after you pull the package of chicken out of the fridge. I served it on plain white rice and garnished it with fresh thai basil leaves. We didn't leave a drop of sauce in the pan--I didn't serve 100% of it but we went back with two spoons to get every last drop.
Dynamite pairing with an 06 Spatlese.