Thai Red Curry Paste is a central ingredient in our Tom Yum Goong soup. You can either buy it at many ethnic grocery stores or large chains that specialize in foods from all over the world like World Market, or you can you can make it yourself quite easily. Like most exotic sounding ingredients, you might think making it is too difficult or beyond your skills, but it is not. Once you have made it from scratch rather than buying it, you will never go back to the store again.
Preparing Red Curry Paste
To make the red curry paste, grind together 12 dry red chillies that have been soaked in hot water, 3 tablespoons of chopped shallots, 4 tablespoons of chopped garlic, a tablespoon of chopped galangal (Thai ginger), 2 tablespoons of chopped lemon grass, 2 teaspoons of chopped Kaffir lime rind, a tablespoon of chopped coriander/cilantro stalks and 20 pepper corns. In the old days, making a paste of these ingredients would be hard work with a mortar and pestle. Now you can drop them all into a food processor and use the pulse control until the mixture has a paste consistency. Our Red Curry Paste is not ready yet. To this mixture, add a teaspoon of cumin and a tablespoon of lightly roasted coriander seeds (3 to 4 minutes), and a teaspoon of shrimp paste. in mortar or blender to a fine paste.
To make your soup tastier, wrap the shrimp paste in foil and keep it on the grill for 2 to 3 minutes. After half this time, turn it upside down, so as to ensure thorough grilling. Adding this grilled shrimp paste to the red curry paste gives it an additional flavor.
Make a fine paste of all these ingredients for complete melding with your soup base. Keep it in an airtight glass jar in the freezer. Red curry paste prepared like this lasts 2 to 3 months, allowing you to prepare mouth-watering Tom yum Goong, or tom yum kung soup.
