D.I.Y

Half term, more time to cook, on the mainland......... where the shops are full of ingredients that are either hard-to-get or non-existant at home!  I quite fancied something spicy but simple and I love Thai curries.  I have used a really nice recipe for yellow fish curry in a Bill Granger cookbook and making the curry paste was pretty easy (but for the hard-to-get and non-existants!) because apart from a little roasting of spices everything just got flung into the food processor and bobs your uncle (and he is!).
So pulled up a Thai red curry paste recipe on my phone - 1-2 red chillies, 4 gloves of garlic, thumb sized piece of ginger, 2 tablespoons of tomato ketchup, 1 teaspoon of ground cumin, 3/4 teaspoon ground coriander, 1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper, 2 tablespoons of fish sauce, 1 teaspoon of sugar and 1-2 tablespoons of chilli powder, 3 tablespoons of coconut milk and 2 tablespoons of lime juice.  Even here I could not get the shrimp paste and I reduced the amount of tomato sauce and used a red pepper instead...everything was zapped in the processor then fried off a little before adding the chicken and coconut milk. The result was lovely, although I think I wimped out a bit on the chilli powder.
So go on, if I can do it so can you, do it yourself.