LUSCIOUS

Sure, you could go out and buy curry paste. You can, and it’s not bad. Sometimes it’s even pretty good, if you’ve got a decent Indian or Thai market nearby.  We recently scoured the Little India neighborhood in Queens and couldn’t find what we were looking for, and it’s hard to find in the large Chinatown markets, too. So of course what does he do? He decides to make his own! This is the man who makes homemade pickles and mustard for me, so I shouldn’t have been surprised by today’s task….but it still amazed me. Again I say, for the Nth time: I’m a lucky girl.

This morning, our trip to Chinatown yielded a couple of very nice codfish steaks that just cried out to be smothered in a sumptuous curry sauce. He provides the recipe for the sauce – starting with the homemade curry paste – after the photos:

water spinach in oyster sauce - that's our story about this veg. you got a problem with that?

curry paste ingredients in our super industrial blender. don't try this with yours - use your food processor!

container o' curry paste. depth of flavor like you can't imagine! my mouth is already watering for future meals.

Swoon. You should be swooning. I'M swooning just remembering it.

So here we go — first make the paste:

• 4 T tomato paste
• 1 small onion, peeled and quartered
• 1.5″ cube ginger, peeled and chopped
• 6 cloves garlic,
• 2T soy sauce
• 2T fish sauce (ours was fermented squid – don’t turn away! it’s what makes it so rich. trust me.)
• 1 tsp shrimp paste
• 1T paprika
• 3T chili powder
• 1 heaping T coriander seeds, ground
• 4 habanero peppers, seeds and all (if you’re brave!)
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1T cumin
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
• 2″ length of lemongrass stalk, chopped

Puree all ingredients in a food processor. The result should be a very thick paste, about the consistency of good tomato paste.

Now make the sauce:

• 1/2 an onion, chopped
• 1.5″ piece of peeled ginger, chopped or grated
• 1.5″ piece of lemongrass stalk, sliced very fine
• 1T butter

Sautee until the onion is soft. Stir in 4T of your delicious homemade curry paste, or to taste. Stir in one can of coconut milk. Simmer for 1/2 hour. You can add more curry paste if you want; the coconut milk really dilutes the heat. Tweak it to suit you – more heat, or more coconut milk. It’s all good.

You could use this delicious sauce over shrimp, or pork, or chicken (that’s what we’re having later this week), or fish. He lightly dusted our cod steaks in flour, and then sauteed them in oil (use butter if you prefer) until they were flaky and perfectly cooked. Place them in warmed serving bowls, and then ladle (be generous!!) the curry sauce over the fish. Garnish with chopped basil if you have it; we didn’t, so we used cilantro. It was wonderful.

To be honest, the fish was just so-so and we wanted to just spoon up the sauce all by itself. Hell, we did! We used thick chunks of really good bread to dip in the sauce, and man oh man. Bliss. The problem wasn’t the technique; it’s just that the fish steaks themselves were kind of meh. But really? You could eat an old shoe with this sauce and you’d hardly notice. The sauce is just so so delicious. I’ll bet I dream about it tonight.