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Homemade Curry for Paradeshi
If you enjoy curry and chile dishes like I do, but have a family that doesn’t enjoy curry so much, then have I got a product for you. Four, actually. They are: (drum roll, please:)
- Mae Ploy Yellow Curry Paste
- Mae Ploy Green Curry Paste
- Mae Ploy Red Curry Paste
- Mae Ploy Sweet Chilli Sauce
You may have noticed a theme in these four items. You’re right! They all contain chiles of some sort. Oh, and incidentally, they are all produced by Mae Ploy, a brand of the Thep Padung Porn Coconut Co., Ltd., of Thailand. I’ve tried them all and I love’em…
First off, most folks in the US don’t eat curry at home because they’re completely overwhelmed by the variety of herbs, spices and seasonings that go into a good curry dish. Indeed, any book you read on Indian cooking shows the range of items you should have on hand, just for a simple vegetable or chicken curry! And there’s mixing, grinding, and on and on. And have you priced fresh spices these days? Yikes! They’re nearly as expensive as gasoline. Easier to just drop by KFC, where the spices were mixed by somebody else.
So I’m always looking for an easy, inexpensive alternative to grinding from scratch, and these products fit that bill nicely.
I’ve listed the curry pastes in increasing order of heat, at least to my palate. I especially enjoy the red one, but for helping to innoculate my benighted family so they no longer have to resist curry, I recommend the yellow paste. It’s got lemongrass, garlic, shallot and galangal as ingredients before any pepper is listed. It’s got lots of other flavors too: Kaffir lime, cumin, cinnamon, mace, turmeric, and cardamom. I used about half the recommended dose in my first simple pork curry, and found that we all wanted more flavor. With a paste it’s easy to add more! The curry I prepared with the yellow mixture contained pork, onions, carrots, potatoes, coconut milk, chicken broth and the seasoning goo. You put the paste in with the meat when you’re browning, and then add coconut milk. I added about 8 oz of chicken broth and cooked that down to a gravy, then added the veggies and simmered until they were tender-done. Served over saffron rice, this dish was better than we can get here in our area Indian restaurants. (Sorry; but sometimes truth hurts.)
Now we’re moving on to the green seasoning mix, which I’ll use in a more Thai-style dish over the weekend when the in-laws visit.
And I use the red paste in “dinners for one” while I wait for my family to build up their curry muscles. Makes the waiting worthwhile.
Here’s the really convenient thing about these pastes. They come in nice-sized small tubs, and inside they’re in a sealed, durable plastic bag. I just snip off a corner of the bag and squeeze out however much paste I want, and put the bag back into the tub. You could empty the bag into the tub, of course; but why? This way it’s no muss, no fuss. Each tub starts out with 400 g (14 oz) of paste, enough for eight or more family-sized dishes.
The Sweet Chilli Sauce is something I’ve used for a long while, as a dip and as a seasoning. Coat a chicken in this stuff and roast it, renewing the glaze every 20 minutes or so, and you’ll never go back to KFC again!
Take it from one paradeshi (foreigner for Hindi-challenged types) to another: Besides being tasty, economical alternatives for the spices, these products store nicely and provide authentic flavor. I recommend them heartily!
Enjoy the Heat!
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