There really is no need to buy curry pastes in a jar, ready made. So long as you have a few of the key ingredients to hand it is very easy and quick to make your own pastes. The below recipe is for a green curry paste, originally from Thailand, home of the green curry.
Green Curry Paste Ingredients:
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 10 birds eye green chillies
- 5 shallots
- a large chunk of ginger (thumb sized)
- 2 large hand fulls of fresh coriander leaves
- 2 teaspoons of crushed coriander seeds
- 5 kaffir lime leaves
- zest from one lime
- 1 teaspoon of cumin powder
- 1 teaspoon of shrimp paste
- 10 fresh thai basil leaves
Method:
First of all do not worry if you do not have all of the above ingredients. So long as you have the coriander leaves, chillies, garlic, ginger and lime you’ll be ok.
Simply place all of the ingredients into a food processor and pulse for a few seconds. You may need to add a small amount of water to help form the paste.
This green curry paste can be used immediately by simply adding to a pan of seared chicken, beef or vegetables along with a tin of coconut milk. Then simply cook on a low heat for 20 minutes or so and you have yourself a tasty green curry!
Alternatively if you are not using it fresh the paste can be stored in the fridge for a couple of weeks if you place it in a sealed container or frozen where it will last for a few months.
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Who doesn’t like salsa? Making your own salsa is one of the easiest recipes to learn and is incredibly quick to make. The beauty of salsa is it’s flexibility to be served with virtually anything from a few potato chips, fresh cut vegetables, bruschetta, served as a side dish or simply enjoyed on its own.
Homemade Salsa Ingredients:
- 6 well chopped tomatoes
- 1 finely chopped onion
- 2 crushed gloves of garlic
- 2/3 well chopped jalapeno chillies
- 4 table spoons of olive oil
- a few fresh time leave
- salt & pepper
Method:
This is a very simple recipe. Simply finely chop all of the ingredients and place in a bowl.
The key to this recipe to get is tasting great is to allow the ingredients time for the flavors to come together. It is best to leave the ingredients at room temperature as excessive cooling can tend to dampen the flavor of tomatoes.
In this recipe we have stated to use Jalapenos however we would also recommend using habanero chillies which give the salsa an entirely different flavor.
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Just a quick update. Thanks to the heat mat i mentioned on my last post most of the seeds i planted just over a week ago have germinated, even some of the bhut jolokia which is pretty impressive considering they’ve only been planted just under two weeks!
The above seedlings are mainly cayenne and are looking extremely healthy. Now they are up an running i’ll probably dig out my grow lights to ensure they maintain their healthy start to spring! I’ll post more details about my lighting set up soon.
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