Curry favours

I know it is significantly easier to use a curry paste from a jar, and no doubt some shopbought products are excellent. But with food processors and a fairly ready availability of fresh base ingredients, it’s hard to beat a paste made fresh.

A good portion of Australia is subtropical, which matches South-East Asia’s climate and ideal growing conditions for the fragrant ingredients of curry paste. This version is strongly based on galangal, a rhizome similar to ginger. Galangal is a root that spreads underground and regularly needs thinning. When the root sprouts and is young, it is particularly tender and sweet, with almost lemon and flower-like notes. It’s a long way from the gnarly rock-like root we have become more accustomed to as the plant gets older and the flavour more peppery.

The preparation of this paste and the relatively short cooking period retains the freshness and vibrancy of the young galangal, which can otherwise easily become lost. And while food processors are a reasonable and much faster method of processing the paste, do use a mortar and pestle if you have the time and inclination. The result will be far superior.

Cooking in a banana leaf provides an odd mix of hard grill on the outside while steaming the inside of the package and picking up smoky notes from the fire. If you can’t get access to a good, fresh banana leaf that still has moisture, it might be best to simply rub the paste over the top of the fish fillet and place it directly under a grill.

Galangal can almost directly replace ginger in most recipes. So if you do come across galangal as young and tender as what is pictured here, play around with substituting it in recipes while the going is good.