Okay, so, I’m not sure how accurate this is, because I couldn’t get the right chili peppers. Here’s the thing: if you buy thai red chilis in the store, I’m pretty sure that they’re just red birds eye chilis. Which is fine, but from what I’ve read, when you make this, you actually want red spur chilis, which are not nearly as hot and much more fragrant. At least, from what I understand from reading online.
Good fucking luck finding them, though. I couldn’t even find them on amazon.
That being said, this really does end up tasting great, but it is quite spicy. Not as spicy as the green curry paste I make, but it’s definitely got a good amount of heat. I do use some weird ingredients here. You might have to hit up an asian market to find some of them, but I’ll add substitution notes as I go for the stranger things. Galangal in particular is very hard to find.
Ingredients
1 tablespoon shrimp paste (the best stuff is belacan that is sold in dry powder blocks, but you can use the shrimp paste that comes in jars at a lot of grocery stores. If you use that, add another teaspoon of fish sauce)
1 tablespoon fish sauce
8 cloves garlic
2 shallots, peeled and roughly chopped
1 stalk lemongrass, outer bits removed. You should end up with a couple inches of mostly white lemongrass.
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon grated galangal (can substitute an equivalent amount of ginger and an additional tablespoon of lime juice)
1 lime, zested
12 dried red thai chilis, seeds removed (WEAR GLOVES)
1/2 cup cilantro stems (NOT THE LEAVES, JUST THE STEMS), chopped
1/2 teaspoon coriander, ground
1/2 teaspoon cumin, ground
1/2 teaspoon black pepper, ground
1/2 teaspoon turmeric, ground
1 teaspoon kosher salt
Directions
Okay, so, put your dried and seeded chilis in a bowl. Boil 2-4 cups of water in a saucepan, and then pour it over the chilis and let it steep for half an hour. They should soften up nicely. Be aware that this may turn the air in your kitchen into a toxic cloud that makes you cough a lot. Remove the chilis from the soaking liquid, but retain it, because you can use it to loosen up the paste if you need to.
Chuck the peppers and all of the rest of the ingredients (don’t add the chili water) into a good food processor and blend the shit out of it until you have a paste. If it’s too dry, add a few tablespoons of the water to the bowl of the food processor to get it to loosen up so it will blend properly.
That’s it. Add it to so e coconut milk and then serve it over rice and you’ve got dinner.
eatbensmeat 