Thai-ish Red Curry Paste
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008Sometimes I choose my menus, sometimes they choose me. I meant to make red curry paste with my lovely Thai red peppers (shown here while still green!) but kept putting it off. Then I happened upon galangal at Wegman’s, and it was a done deal. Ginger is good in a pinch, but galangal is the real deal, and it’s hard to come by around here.
The recipe is an amalgamation of a bunch of recipes, with more than a few twists to accommodate my inherent desire for maximum taste with minimum work. I didn’t want to bother seeding peppers, so I made up for it by adding in a mild pepper. I used garlic scapes (frozen from my garden a few months ago) in the recipe because I couldn’t find shallots that looked good and was out of garlic.
The taste was quite delightful, and we had a lovely dish with coconut milk, the paste, of course, and stir fried veggies. This recipe makes a lot of paste, so I’ve got a bunch in my freezer in ice cube trays to last me much of the winter!
I saw Kalyn’s Entry for “Grow your own” and I knew I had to participate. Especially since our host, Andrea of Andrea’s
recipes is actually a neighbor of sorts. I love my garden, and always welcome the chance to show off my goodies. And besides, doesn’t it just taste better if you grow it? So the lemongrass, Thai peppers, garlic scapes and mild peppers are from my very own garden.
20 fresh red Thai peppers (2-3 inch long)
1 heaping Tablespoon of coriander seeds, toasted
2 big fresh lemongrass stalks, 1 or 2 outer leaves discarded
1 teaspoon whole white peppercorns
4 teaspoons galangal
8 fresh or frozen Kaffir lime leaves
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro roots or stems
1 mild or small bell pepper
1/2 cup garlic scapes
5 serrano peppers
2 anchovies* (more traditional is fish sauce or shrimp paste, but due to allergies, those don’t work for me) OR vegan fish sauce OR extra salt and a little soy sauce
1/3 cup of water, or as much as it takes to run the blender.
Toast the coriander seeds in a dry skillet over medium heat for a few minutes. Put all ingredients in a Vitamix and blend for 2 minutes or until smooth.
If you don’t have a vitamix, regretfully, there’s a lot of chopping, pounding, and grinding in your future. Pretty much you have to chop everything finely, then toss into a food processor.







Everyone has that go-to meal for long days and times when there’s just no time. This is one of my favorite last minute standbys. It is ready in less than 20 minutes, and it’s a healthy, tasty, simple meal. I really enjoy it, there’s something that’s very ‘comfort food’ about its simplicity for me. And it’s easy enough that my husband has made it, too.
It was one of those moments. We were already hungry, and I was hoping to toss some sauce with veggies or pasta and call it dinner…then, the moment of
And the result? A bold, chunky, satisfying sauce that came together in maybe 20 minutes. DH had the sauce on pasta, we had turkey cutlets poached in the sauce, I had some with steamed broccoli and handful of pine nuts, which was a perfect lunch. Not bad for minimal effort.
This is just squeaking in under the wire. I was on
Pretty much anything would work for the veggie mix. I would definitely recommend adding the mint, cilantro and basil because it gives a nice dimension to the dish. The sauce also works well over steamed broccoli.

Gluten Free By the Bay was one of the trailblazers in the GF blogosphere. It was one of the first blogs I found, and it automatically appealed to me. The pictures, the variety, the traditional Jewish foods adapted to be gluten free…it’s a great resource. I also love the fact that she posts such a great variety of dishes, from yummy desserts to gorgeous veggie dishes. Her posts are all GF, of course, but she also caters to the multi-allergic set and has many dairy/egg/soy/sugar free recipes that are labeled as such, which is always such a help. She also periodically does “recipe roundups” which are fabulous for those of us who want our GF yummies to come right to us without even websurfing!
For this month’s adoption, I made the
I was out getting my garden ready, when I spied this little guy coming out of a crack in our patio. Isn’t he cute? I was surprised for a few reasons. First, he seeded himself; second, we just had a frost, and generally basil aren’t frost tolerant, and third, my husband often holds small martial arts classes on the patio, making him quite a target. Since DH had a class that night, I decided to pick him rather than tempt the fates.


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