Green curry doesn't do subtle, and I respect that about it. The first spoonful gives you sweet coconut, the heat rolls in a second later, and by the third bite you're spooning extra sauce over your rice and reaching for a napkin for your forehead. That's dinner doing its job.
Green curry gets its color and its punch from green chilies. A good paste also brings lemongrass, garlic, shallot, and lime leaf, so the sauce tastes hot and bright at the same time. Coconut milk rounds the whole thing out. It shouldn't taste like a sweet soup with a chili dropped in it. It should taste like the paste and the coconut milk had a real argument and called it a tie. I use a store bought paste here and I'm not apologizing for it. Good paste from the store beats a tired homemade batch, and you can tune the heat yourself once the pot's simmering.
Two moves run this dish. Fry the paste in the thick coconut cream from the top of the can until the oil starts to shine on the surface. That's where the flavor opens up. And add the basil at the very end, off the heat, so it stays green and smells like basil instead of turning black in a rolling pot. Get those two right and the rest is simmering and tasting.
Pat the chicken strips dry with paper towels and set them aside. Scoop the thick cream off the top of both cans of coconut milk into a measuring cup. You should get about 1/2 cup. Save the thin milk underneath for step 5.
Put the coconut cream in a Dutch oven or a heavy pot over medium heat. Cook it for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring now and then, until it bubbles and the oil starts to shine on the surface.
Add the green curry paste and stir it into the cream. Cook for 1 to 2 minutes, stirring the whole time, until it smells strong and a little sharp. Open a window if you need to. Curry paste fumes have cleared out many kitchens, and they'll get yours too if you stand right over the pot.
Add the chicken strips and toss them in the paste until every piece gets coated. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes, stirring once or twice, until the outside of the chicken turns opaque. It'll finish cooking in the sauce, so don't try to brown it here.
Pour in the rest of the coconut milk and the chicken broth and stir well. Add the fish sauce, the sugar, and the torn lime leaves. Bring the pot to a gentle simmer over medium heat. Keep it at a simmer, not a hard boil, because a hard boil can split the coconut milk and leave the sauce greasy.
Add the eggplant pieces and the green beans. Simmer for 6 to 8 minutes, stirring once or twice, until the eggplant is tender and the green beans are cooked but still a little firm.
Add the red bell pepper slices and simmer for 2 more minutes. The pepper should soften a bit and keep its color. If you cook it much longer, it goes limp and the bowl loses the crunch that makes each bite different.
Taste the sauce off a spoon. Add more fish sauce if it needs salt, a pinch more sugar if the heat feels sharp, and a small squeeze of lime if it tastes heavy. Pastes vary a lot from brand to brand, so this taste is where you fix the heat too. Stir in a little more paste if you want it hotter.
Pull the pot off the heat. Stir in the Thai basil leaves and the sliced chili, if you're using it, and let the curry sit for 1 minute so the basil wilts in the hot sauce. Fish out the lime leaves if you spot them. Serve the curry over jasmine rice with lime wedges on the side.
Start with 2 tbsp of paste if you're cooking for somebody who claims they love heat and then panics at the table. You can stir more paste into the pot near the end after a quick fry in a spoonful of hot sauce from the pot, but you can't take heat back out. Extra rice and extra coconut milk are the only real rescue, and both water the whole dish down.
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