I have already posted on a red curry paste and a green curry paste. Now I’ve done a yellow one…. Not that I’m obsessed with Thai curry or anything.
I made up the paste based on the Spirit House cookbooks – and as part of it I had to make my own curry powder – well that was a first. It didn’t come out too bad. It is a milder paste than either the green or red variety. As you can tell from some of the ingredients it is an Indian influenced curry.
Curry powder ingredients
2 teaspoons each of chilli powder, ground turmeric, roasted cumin seeds, powdered ginger, black peppercorns and cardamom pods. (To roast the cumin you just dry fry it for a little while until the aroma wafts out)
1 teaspoon each of roasted coriander seeds, roasted mace and fennel seeds. (If you can’t get whole or ground mace you could substitute a little more nutmeg)
5 roasted cloves
1 nutmeg
1 inch piece of roasted cassia bark (this comes dried in quills) It looks like this.
You just grind all this up together. I did it by hand in a mortar and pestle but a spice grinder would be fantastic for doing this. But not as good exercise.
The only thing I didn’t have for inclusion in the curry powder was powdered ginger – so I compensated for that by putting some fresh ginger into the rest of the paste.
For the
yellow curry paste
Cover 10 dried red chillies with hot water and soak them for 30 minutes. This is what the ones I got from an Asian store looked like. I cut off the tops and tapped the seeds out first but you could leave them in for a hotter result.
Then drain the chillies and chop them as finely as you can.
Grind up 3 teaspoons of roasted coriander seeds, 1 ½ teaspoons whole roasted cumin seeds, 1 teaspoon of white peppercorns (not black), ½ teaspoon of roasted cardamom seeds.
Then add:
1 Tablespoon of roasted shrimp paste – now this smells awful even after you have heated it in a tinfoil parcel. But it is essential for the balance of the end result.
3 stalks of lemon grass – bash it with your pestle and then finely slice just the lower (whiter) parts of the stalk
12 cloves of chopped garlic – yes 12, that isn’t a typo
1 cup of chopped Asian shallots – they look like this
1 tablespoon galangal, chopped (you could substitute fresh ginger but it won’t be quite the same)
2 tablespoons of coriander (cilantro) root and stem, chopped
2 tablespoons of the curry powder you made
This is what the paste looked like when it was finished. Not totally smooth but then my arms were getting tired from all the pounding.
I made up a double dose so I have a whole lot stored in the freezer. So you can whip up a curry in very little time once you have the paste.
As you can see I did a pork curry with cauliflower, courgette (zucchini), tomatoes and capsicum (bell pepper). I fried up the paste (about 2 dessertspoonful’s) for a few minutes together with a spoonful of palm sugar (brown sugar or golden syrup would be fine) until I could smell the flavour changing. Then I fried off some onions and garlic. If you preferred to have a less spicy result you could use half the curry paste.
Then I added the pork fillet (reasonably thinly sliced) and after a few minutes just dumped in the rest of the vegetables. After a minute or so I added a small amount of chicken stock – you could use any liquid even water. For a rich curry you could add coconut cream or coconut milk instead. I seasoned the curry with a little soy sauce and fish sauce and a squeeze of lime (lemon would do).
At the end I sprinkled crispy fried onions and roughly chopped coriander (cilantro) on top.
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