When I first met my husband, I was pretty green when it came to Thai food. Growing up in a small town in the South doesn't exactly foster culinary exploration. But when you marry someone with a fondness for curries, especially "Thai spicy" curries, you adapt. <br />We used to buy those little containers of curry paste that you can get at most Asian supermarkets, but they lack the fresh, complex flavor that a good curry should have. So we struck out on our own. <br />As it turns out, an excellent curry paste is easy to make. The hardest part is tracking down the ingredients. You can find most of these ingredients at any Asian supermarket. For particularly hard to find ingredients, I've included a reasonable substitution. The shrimp paste is an important element in authentic Thai curry paste--in spite of its aggressive fishy smell (prepare yourself), it adds a subtle note of umami that isn't at all overpowering in the finished paste. We highly recommend it, although if you are vegan or vegetarian, feel free to leave it out. <br />We like to make large batches of curry paste, pack the paste into ice cube trays, freeze, and then store the frozen cubes in zipper-top bags for ease of use. It keeps very well this way, and because the ice cubes thaw quickly, you can just throw them into the pan frozen.

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