Ingredients
1 cup prepared red chilis
10 tbsp shallots, chopped
5 tbsp garlic, chopped
10 tbsp lemon grass, finely
1 sliced
5 tbsp galangal, grated
1 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tbsp cumin seeds
5 tbsp coriander root.
1 chopped
1 tbsp kapi
5 tbsp freshly toasted
1 peanuts, crushed
Directions
follow the same general method, toasting the seeds, then blending
everything together. General Instructions for all: If you can't get
prik ki nu, you can use half a pound of habanero chilis or one pound
of jalapena chilis. If you use the latter deseed them before use.
Note that if you use a substitute you will get a different volume of
paste, and that you will need to use different amounts in subsequent
recipes.
If you can't get kha use ginger if you can't get bai makroot use lime
zest if you can't get coriander root, use coriander leaves.
Thai 'curries' are typically made using a 'curry' paste. However that
is an oversimplification: firstly the word used for these dishes in
Thai is kaeng (pronounced 'gang') and it covers soups, stews and of
course curries. A paste which is used could be used just as well for
a soup as for a curry.
Secondly of course it is not true that Thais call them curry: the
word for curry is kari and it is only applied to a small number of
dishes: the dishes that appear on western Thai restaurant menues as
'curries' are kaengs, and they are made not with curry paste but with
a sauce made from prik kaeng (which in this case could be translated
better as chili paste).
There are many different prik kaeng in Thai cuisine and from them you
could make a vast number of different dishes by using different
protein ingredients, and vegetable ingredients and so on to the
extent that it is said that most Thai housewives could cook a
different kaeng every day of the year.
However if you know the four basic pastes listed here, and the basic
techniques from my next posting, you can make a vast array of dishes,
if not perhaps quite one per day for a year.
A rough rule of thumb is that one cup of raw chilis yields a cup or
so of paste (since there is air in the chilis). Further it will keep
about 3 months in a preserving jar in the fridge.
Since the average kaeng will require (depending on how hot you make
it) between 2 and 8 tablespoons of paste, and since there are roughly
16 tablespoons in a cup, you can scale this recipe up to suit your
needs. Suffice it to say that we make these pastes on a cycle over 8
weeks and make 6-8 portions of each of them. As they say in US motor
advertisements: your mileage may vary!
Regards
Colonel Ian F. Khuntilanont-Philpott
Systems Engineering, Vongchavalitkul University, Korat 30000, Thailand
Servings: 2 cups
Prik Kaeng Panaeng (Paste For A Dry Chili) Recipe brought to you by Recipe Ideas
Categories: Chili
The History of Recipes
It is possible to read the history of `recipes` far back into the far past, in truth as far back as the Egypt of the Pharoahs, and possibly even further. However, these, ancient recipes were just simple hieroglyphic recipes for preparing meals.
The truth of the matter is, the oldest recipe found, according to historians are a few ancient tablets in the Sumerian language which show the baking of bread which is then used to make a drink, quite possibly a form of beer as it is recorded as having made anyone who drank it feel exhilarated and blissful. As we move into Roman times around 25BC a roman called Apicius compiled a number of documents detailing recipes prepared by his fellow Romans. In his publication, Apicius recounts how the meals were split into starters, main meal and dessert, something that is very familiar to us today. He also recounts how the Roman cooks made use of many different herbs and spices, including many that are still in use today for example bay, fennel and parsley. Moving on, there were a couple of recipe books which date from the fourteenth century - one book published under the title `Forme of Cury`, and another, similary called `Curye on Inglish`. Amusingly, they have no connection with the indian food that appears on menues today, but instead recipes for the types of meals on the menues of the upper classes. Later, in the 15th century, people returning from the crusades brought us a variety of spices and herbs from the Middle-East, including spices like coriander, parsley, and basil. These new spices and herbs was responsible for an explosion in recipe manuscripts, some of which are kept safe in private collections. By the advent of the 1900s, cookery books were highly popular mostly due to increased literacy, people having increased leisure time and having more money. Like it or not, the introduction of TV brings us TV cooks and the recipe books that accompanied them. And that neatly brings us to the present day and the internet revolution, permitting us all to search through massive numbers of recipes like those on our web site. |
We hope you enjoy this Prik Kaeng Panaeng (Paste For A Dry Chili) recipe.
