Thai Curry Paste-

We love eating Thai and Indian curries. Dr. J is a bit obsessed with getting the spices down to a science and even has his own coffee grinder JUST for spices.
I find it extremely tedious to make curry pastes as they require a lot of ingredients and a ton of prep work. Not exactly a week night meal.
So here is our secret for having amazing homemade Thai meals, often.
We make a big batch (in this case quadrupling the recipe) and freeze it in tasty balls.
With the paste pre-made it is easy to sauté some veggies, add some tofu, shrimp, chicken or beef- add a can of coconut milk, a dash of cane sugar, hot sauce to taste and fresh herbs to garnish.
Here is the recipe to make a quadruple batch of:

Curry Paste
16 Red Chillies (we use dried and soak them in hot water for ten minutes)
16 cloves of garlic
4 tsp Cumin
4 tsp Coriander
8 stalks of Lemon Grass
3 shallots
2 thumbs sized pieces of ginger
2 thumb sized pieces of galangal (aka- white ginger)
4 tsp of shrimp paste
2 limes juiced with zest
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp pepper
Splash of Fish sauce
8 tablespoons Ketchup or tomato paste (we use Ketchup)
Cilantro to taste- we add a ton because we love it
All of these ingredient can be found at your Asian market.
Here are the dried peppers soaking (the bowl is made by MY NAME IS MUDD)

A quick, dry, pan fry gives the coriander and cumin a nice toasty taste

Lemon grass

Galangal Ginger- has a lovely sent- a bit earthy, piney, and pungent citrusy. It is a fantastic compliment to standard ginger. Also known as ‘white ginger’ here in North America it is much harder to grate or cut. This is what it looks like in its natural root state, peeled and grated. Apparently mixing it with lime juice in a tonic makes it work as an aphrodisiac.

Here you can see the difference in color of the two gingers in the bowl-

Add everything all together into a food processor and make it into a paste.

Although this picture doesn't make our curry balls look appetizing- the final results are tasty.

I imagine they can stay frozen for a few months- I wouldn't know though because we use them up quickly!