INGREDIENTS

INSTRUCTIONS

(Note that except for the sugar and the use of red chilis this is the
same as the prik kaeng kiao wan)  Follow the same procedure: toast and
grind the dry seeds, and then  blend all ingredients to a fine paste
If you can't get prik ki nu, you can use half a pound of habanero
chilis or one pound of jalapena chilis. If you use the latter deseed
them before use. Note that if you use a substitute you will get a
different volume of paste, and that you will need to use different
amounts in subsequent recipes.  If you can't get kha use ginger if you
can't get bai makroot use lime  zest if you can't get coriander root,
use coriander leaves. Thai  'curries' are typically made using a
'curry' paste. However that is an  oversimplification: firstly the word
used for these dishes in Thai is  kaeng (pronounced 'gang') and it
covers soups, stews and of course  curries. A paste which is used could
be used just as well for a soup  as for a curry.  Secondly of course it
is not true that Thais call them curry: the  word for curry is kari and
it is only applied to a small number of  dishes: the dishes that appear
on western Thai restaurant menues as  'curries' are kaengs, and they
are made not with curry paste but with  a sauce made from prik kaeng
(which in this case could be translated  better as chili paste).  There
are many different prik kaeng in Thai cuisine and from them you  could
make a vast number of different dishes by using different  protein
ingredients, and vegetable ingredients and so on to the  extent that it
is said that most Thai housewives could cook a  different kaeng every
day of the year.  However if you know the four basic pastes listed
here, and the basic  techniques from my next posting, you can make a
vast array of dishes,  if not perhaps quite one per day for a year.  A
rough rule of thumb is that one cup of raw chilis yields a cup or  so
of paste (since there is air in the chilis). Further it will keep
about 3 months in a preserving jar in the fridge.  Since the average
kaeng will require (depending on how hot you make  it) between 2 and 8
tablespoons of paste, and since there are roughly  16 tablespoons in a
cup, you can scale this recipe up to suit your  needs. Suffice it to
say that we make these pastes on a cycle over 8  weeks and make 6-8
portions of each of them. As they say in US motor  advertisements: your
mileage may vary!  Regards  Colonel Ian F. Khuntilanont-Philpott
Systems Engineering, Vongchavalitkul University, Korat 30000, Thailand
From Gemini's MASSIVE MealMaster collection at www.synapse.com/~gemini

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Nutrition (calculated from recipe ingredients)
----------------------------------------------
Calories: 232
Calories From Fat: 20
Total Fat: 2.4g
Cholesterol: 0mg
Sodium: 705.4mg
Potassium: 1475.6mg
Carbohydrates: 51.8g
Fiber: 9.7g
Sugar: 11.2g
Protein: 9.6g