Spices ready for toasting
My friend Michelena makes incredible Mexican mole, from scratch. Friends beg her for jars of the thick, luscious sauce. (Well, I did, anyway.)
The process takes her two days.
Now, I love to cook, which you’ve probably guessed. But I do not love spending all day in the kitchen, much less two days. I totally respect the love and care that goes into all that toasting and soaking and hand-grinding, but if that’s what I have to do to get a sauce like that… well, I’m not going to get a sauce like that.
One of my two spice bins
You can take the same approach with Thai chile paste, another rich, gloriously flavored sauce that elevates whatever it comes in contact with. Traditional recipes involve a similar amount of toasting and soaking and hand-grinding. The one time I spent two days of hands-on time cooking one meal, it was a Thai feast for Arne’s birthday. The centerpiece was a Chu Chee scallop curry. It was amazing, and he still mentions it now and then. But I’m never making that again.
Another approach, of course, is to buy these sauces ready-made. Most supermarkets – at least around these parts – carry premade mole and Thai curry paste (Doña Maria and Thai Kitchen are by far the most common brands). I’ve bought and used them both, and in fact I like to have a little jar of Thai Kitchen red curry paste around for making quick and simple Thai-inspired soups. With a little doctoring, they can make very tasty dinners. But they’re not even in the same stratosphere as the real thing.
Curry paste in process
But what if you could get close to the stratosphere with much, much less effort? That’s what I’ve tried to do with this yellow curry paste, and I think I’ve succeeded. I modified the recipe from Victor Sodsook’s sadly out of print cookbook True Thai – the same cookbook from which I found the recipes for that laborious long-ago birthday dinner.
I’ve done major streamlining, though, so that the curry paste can be put together in a half hour or less. Most notably, I took out the steps of toasting, soaking, and grinding whole chiles separately from the rest of the spices; instead I use crushed red pepper flakes, added to the spices at the end of toasting, and grind them together with all the other ingredients. In the food processor, not a mortar and pestle. Added water hydrates the chiles as they are ground. I’ve also replaced the shrimp paste with peanut butter, a step Sodsook suggests to make vegan curry paste. (I include instructions for using shrimp paste, if you want to stay closer to the original.)
1/2 cup of finished curry paste
Is the resulting curry as multidimensional, as authentic, as amazing as the original recipe? Of course not. But it is pretty amazing – light-years beyond what you’d get out of a jar. It’s a homestyle curry, with more texture than restaurant curries. If you want a smoother paste, you can make it in a blender rather than a food processor, but the process is much more laborious: You’ll need to use more water so the paste will be loose enough to engage the blades, and scrape down the jar constantly. Still a lot less work than pounding it in a mortar and pestle!
One of the wonders of this kind of flavoring paste is storability. This recipe makes enough curry paste for two batches of finished curry (each making about four servings). Stick the rest in a jar, toss it in the freezer, and next time you want curry you can throw it together in no time.
Simmering curry
Yellow curry is one of the mildest Thai curries, and the most similar to Indian-style curry; in fact, this recipe uses several tablespoons of Madras or other sweet Indian-style curry powder. There’s some heat to this yellow curry, but to my tastes it’s quite mild. I would recommend making the curry paste as written the first time, spicing the finished curry with cayenne pepper if needed, and making subsequent batches with more crushed red pepper if you want it hotter.
Dinner is served.
Homemade Thai Yellow Curry Paste, plus Chicken or Tofu in Yellow Curry
Notes
It takes about 20 minutes to half an hour to create the curry paste, and another 20 minutes to assemble the completed curry dish.
Ingredients
For the curry paste:
- 1 tablespoon whole coriander seed
- 1 tablespoon whole cumin seed
- 3 tablespoons crushed red pepper flakes
- 2 tablespoons creamy peanut butter or 1.5 tablespoons Thai shrimp paste
- 3 tablespoons Madras or other mild sweet curry powder
- 2 tablespoons ground turmeric
- 2 stalks lemongrass
- 2 tablespoons peeled, roughly chopped ginger
- 4 cloves garlic, peeled
- 2 large shallots, roughly chopped
- 1/4 to 1/2 cup water
To finish the curry:
- 1 large Russet potato or sweet potato (about 12 ounces), cubed
- 1 can coconut milk - do not shake
- 1/2 cup (about 1/2 recipe) Thai yellow curry paste
- 3 tablespoons Thai fish sauce or soy sauce (light-colored if possible), to taste
- 3 tablespoons brown or coconut sugar, or more to taste
- 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast OR firm tofu (fried or unfried), cubed
- 1/2 red bell pepper, sliced
- 1/2 medium onion, sliced
- 1/2 pound snow peas, bok choy, spinach, or other greens, cut in bite-size pieces if necessary
- 1 tablespoon lime juice, or more to taste
Instructions
- To make the curry paste, place the coriander and cumin in a small pan over medium-high heat. Toast, watching closely, until they smell fragrant and darken slightly. Turn off the heat and stir in the chile flakes to warm them just a little and release their aroma. Pour the toasted spices into a food processor.
- If using shrimp paste, scoop onto a small piece of aluminum foil and fold up to enclose the paste in a little packet. Place the packet in the now-empty skillet and return to medium heat. Cook, turning occasionally, until the paste becomes aromatic, about 5 minutes. Open the packet and set aside to cool.
- Place the shrimp paste or peanut butter and all remaining curry ingredients in the food processor, including the smaller amount of water. Turn the processor on and let it run, scraping down the bowl occasionally, until the ingredients come together in a moist paste. Add more water by the tablespoon if necessary to get the mixture to process and come together. When it seems close, remove the lid and check the texture - it will never be totally smooth, but you want it as close as you can get it.
- When you're satisfied with the texture, scrape the paste out of the processor. You should have about a cup.
- To create a finished curry, parboil or microwave potato or sweet potato until almost done. Set aside.
- Pour the cream from the top of the coconut milk into a large, deep skillet. (This will be about 1/3 to 1/2 of the can, depending on the brand.) Turn the heat to medium and whisk in 1/2 cup curry paste. When the paste is thoroughly incorporated and starts to bubble, stir in the rest of the coconut milk.
- Add the fish or soy sauce and the sugar. Taste and add more if you want more saltiness or sweetness.
- Stir the chicken or tofu, bell pepper, and onion into the sauce. Simmer until the chicken (if using) and vegetables are almost done. Add the greens and parboiled potato; simmer until the greens are bright green and everything is cooked through to your taste. Stir in the lime juice. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary. Serve with rice.
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