Food: Grilled dry curry fish.

Serves 2

• 60g dried long red chillis

• 300g galangal

• 60g garlic

• 200g shallots

• 200g fresh long red chillis

• 1 tsp coriander seeds

• 1 tsp white pepper seeds

• 40g shrimp paste

• 300ml coconut cream

• 150ml grapeseed oil

• 60ml fish sauce, plus some extra for sprinkling

• 70g palm sugar

• 3 limes

• 500g fillet white fish, such as snapper • 1 large green banana leaf

• 1 Lebanese cucumber

• 4 kaffir lime leaves

1. Soak the dried chillies in cold water for 30 minutes.

2. Peel and chop the galangal, garlic and shallots. Put a small amount of shallot and galangal aside to serve with the finished dish.

3. Chop the fresh chillies and take the stem off the soaked chillies and shake the excess seeds out of them. Chop them to the same size as the fresh chillies, then combine the galangal, garlic, shallots and chilli in a food processor and pulse until you have a fairly smooth paste. Or you could use a mortar and pestle to make the paste.

4. Lightly toast the coriander and pepper seeds, then grind them in a spice grinder. Add this mix to the chilli paste, along with the shrimp paste.

5. In a heavy-based pot, combine half the coconut cream with the grapeseed oil and cook until the mixture splits completely and starts to brown. Add the shrimp and chilli paste and cook, constantly stirring and scraping the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon. Cook this out for about 10-15 minutes until most of the moisture is gone and the oil starts foaming around the edges of the paste.

6. Add the fish sauce and let the mixture simmer for 20 seconds before adding the rest of the coconut cream and bringing it to a simmer.

7. Once the mixture is simmering, add the palm sugar and cook until it becomes a thick paste. Pull this mixture off the heat and let it sit for five minutes before adding the juice of two limes and adjusting with more sugar and fish sauce as required.

8. Let the mixture cool almost completely before wrapping your fish.

9. Sprinkle fish sauce over the fish fillet and let it sit for 30 minutes.

10. Cut the fillet into two. Gently wet the banana leaf and spread it out with the curved side facing up. Cut the leaf in half and smear some of the curry paste onto it before placing the fish on top and coating with more paste. Repeat with the other fillet portion. Wrap both fillets loosely in the banana leaf. You should be left with two tidy parcels.

11. Place these parcels fold-side down on a medium-to-high grill and cook for five minutes before turning them over and finishing for a further three minutes.

12. Let the parcels rest for a minute before transferring them onto serving plates. Slice the cucumber into quarters lengthwise. Part each banana leaf, then top the fish with half the cucumber, some raw sliced shallot, finely shredded raw galangal and finely shredded kaffir lime leaf. Add half a lime to each plate to finish.