This recipe is full of fresh, well rounded flavours that when cooked with coconut milk makes a delicious meal.
Long red chillies are wonderful in the way you can easily adjust the heat to what you want. Remove all membranes and seeds for super mild heat (barely a tingle) that your kids will love. It basically leaves the chillies as a capsicum. Leave one chilli with just membranes and see how you go… you can always add more of the removed seeds and membrane to up the heat level.
If you love heat then just chop the chillies roughly prior to placing all ingredients into the food processor.
Ingredients
1 bunch of coriander, remove the leaves from the stems. Wash the roots very well and then pound with a mallet or mortar and pestle to break up the fibres and roughly chop up the stems.
6 long red chillies, seeds and membrane removed if you don’t want heat and then roughly chopped
1 red banana chilli, roughly chopped
1 knob of ginger – about thumb size, roughly chopped
1 stick of lemongrass, break the fibres with a mallet or mortal and pestle then chop.
1tbs palm sugar, shaved
2 tbs fish sauce
1 tbs light soy sauce
1 lemon, juiced
1 lime, juiced
METHOD
Prepare the Thai paste by placing all the ingredients except the coriander leaves into a food processor and blitz till quite fine. Taste it and see if you have a good balance between sweet, sour, heat and saltiness, adjust as needed.
Once you have a nice balance of flavours then add the coriander leaves and blitz quickly so you still have some larger leaves through the paste.
This is your base paste. From here you cook up 3 tablespoons with some oil in a pan till fragrant, add a small can of coconut milk (tip: skim the thick cream layer off the top and fry this on a high heat till the cream splits then pour in the rest of the milk). Throw in your choice of meat and vegetables and serve with fragrant jasmine rice.
Place remaining paste in a zip lock back and freeze.
- 1 bunch of coriander, remove the leaves from the stems. Wash the roots very well and then pound with a mallet or mortar and pestle to break up the fibres and roughly chop up the stems.
- 6 long red chillies, seeds and membrane removed if you don’t want heat and then roughly chopped
- 1 red banana chilli, roughly chopped
- 1 knob of ginger – about thumb size, roughly chopped
- 1 stick of lemongrass, break the fibres with a mallet or mortal and pestle then chop.
- 1tbs palm sugar, shaved
- 2 tbs fish sauce
- 1 tbs light soy sauce
- 1 lemon, juiced
- 1 lime, juiced
- Prepare the Thai paste by placing all the ingredients except the coriander leaves into a food processor and blitz till quite fine. Taste it and see if you have a good balance between sweet, sour, heat and saltiness, adjust as needed.
- Once you have a nice balance of flavours then add the coriander leaves and blitz quickly so you still have some larger leaves through the paste.
- This is your base paste. From here you cook up 3 tablespoons with some oil in a pan till fragrant, add a small can of coconut milk (tip: skim the thick cream layer off the top and fry this on a high heat till the cream splits then pour in the rest of the milk). Throw in your choice of meat and vegetables and serve with fragrant jasmine rice.
- Place remaining paste in a zip lock back and freeze.