Well, I keep going back and trying to make Thai inspired food. I’m determined to crack this and win over people in my household. It’s difficult when I’m the only person in the house that will eat Thai food and flavours but that’s not going to stop me as I’m keen to keep learning.

People are put off on the process as they think you need loads of ingredients. To make this paste you only need a handful of ingredients, the only items I needed for the dish was fresh lemongrass and more shrimp paste as mine was out of date. Other than that everything else are everyday cupboard ingredients from my Indian cooking.

Ingredients- 1 tbsp of coriander seeds, 1 tbsp cumin seeds, 1 1/2 tsp white pepper, 12 dried chillies soaked for 30 minutes in water, 12 garlic cloves, 2 shallots, 1 heaped tsp of galangal, 2 red chillies ( diced) 1 lemongrass stalk, 10 coriander stalks, zest of 1/2 a lemon, 4 lime leaves ( I used dry kafir lime leaves) 3/4 tbsp roasted peanuts, 1 tsp shrimp paste.

Method – heat a small frying pan with the cumin & coriander seeds. Once the kitchen smells nice and fragrant remove the pan from the heat so the seeds done catch and burn.

Transfer the seeds to a pestle and mortar and grind to a nice powder.

Once you’re happy with the powdered seeds add the white pepper and mix.

Ideally the whole process should be done in the pestle and mortar. However, mine isn’t big enough and takes up to an hour so I transferred all the next stages to a food processor.

I started for the garlic gloves followed by the soak chillies.

Then the shallots and ground spices.

Followed by the kafir lime leaves and galangal.

Then the red chillies and lime zest.

Followed by the peanuts, coriander and shrimp paste blitzing each stage obviously.

Then there you have it….the kitchen smells lovely and fragrant. I always taste my food so I was curious how it tasted in its raw form. Wow….what a kick. So many different flavours happening at once. I’ve only used have of the paste in my finished Penang Curry which will give me another meal in the week or it can be frozen for 2 months.

Thank you if you’ve read my ramblings. the recipe again was taken from the legendary Dan Toombs.