I come from Indonesia, but you might be more accustomed to Thai cuisine, so I use the term Thai curry in the title because the curries are similar. no, really. just a tad sweeter rather than sour.
So, from this "Indian Spicy" vs. "Thai Spicy" ,
I gather the difference between thai and indian, and I want to enrich it with milk (no, I won't replace coconut milk, but I want to add milk to the coconut milk curry basically) .
how do I do that? or should I add Veloute,Bechamel etc to enrich Thai curry?
or is it not favorable (heh) to enrich a coconut-milk based curry with dairy?
I can't use ghee (hence won't go to Indian route) because it's too expensive in my country. and I will replace butter with BOS (butter oil substitute), real butter are quite expensive here.
any seasoned advice is welcomed. and… I use brown beef stock (roasted beef bone stock), if that matters.
EDIT: I won't use this with rice but congee. yeah, curry congee.
Best Answer
Growing up, my mom (Italian-American) would make curry using a bechamel-like white sauce plus curry powder. She said it was her mother's recipe, and I can only assume it was attempting to recreate a meal that she had using ingredients and techniques that she knew.
There are is an advantage of using a white sauce over using just cream to enrich the sauce -- the starch will keep the sauce from breaking over higher heat, but it can get a bit too thick and keep the other flavors from really coming through if you make it too thick, and I don't know if the flavors meld the same way as with coconut milk. (it's been years since I've had this dish, and I currently avoid dairy)
I've never tried mixing bechamel to something that already had coconut milk ... but I suspect that it could work. I know that I've made a white sauce using vegetable molks before (almond & soy ... coconut is the wrong consistency on its own, but there's 'coconut milk drink' that might work, or you could try thinning it with water)