My sister and I were just talking about this this morning. What she told me was she cooks her garlic and shallots, then her meat, then her vegetables (removing each from the pan after cooking before starting the next). She then puts her curry paste in the pan, then the fish oil (I will be using oyster sauce in place of), the coconut milk, some cream and then adds the precooked stuff after the sauce has been heated. I plan on adding some lemon grass when I make the sauce. I also will be using shrimp instead of chicken. Personally, I think red pepper will give it a better taste over green for this dish. Good luck.

My main tip for making it come out right is follow the recipe.
You say you liked what you had at the Thai take out and want to make your own....but want to cut back on the onions, eliminate the bamboo shoots and the fish sauce and you want to know what to do to make it come out right?
hat you want to make is something else, not the dish you had at the restraunt. That's fine, but once you start messing with the recipe, don't expect it to taste like what you had before.
Linda C

There's no substitute for fish sauce. It's not "critical" to the recipe but deleting it will result in subtle changes to the flavor. Using Oyster sauce would produce different results. Not good or bad, just different. It's a matter of what the cook prefers. Sometimes these changes work; sometimes they don't.

If you don't shake the coconut milk before opening you can skim off the cream on the top and saute the curry paste in that. It will improve the flavor.

Carol

Fish sauce gives it a "Chinese" smell. It is very salty so an extra pinch of salt if you delete it. Not a real expensive item and I use lots of it on my rice. The taste is closer to soy sauce then fish. Unless you are on a very tight budget I recommend giving it a try... a dash on some plain rice and you will know if it is acceptable to you. If you have eaten curry in a restaurant it probably had fish sauce in it.

A thousand ways to make curry or more. I have a curry cookbook with hundreds of variations using all types of meats, fruits, vegetables, and grains. I recommend adding curry paste slowly and tasting as you go. I've not used the TK red but I know the green is much hotter then what most people care for.... yummy to me.

Curry is probably the eastern word for soup. A general description but it does not give much clue as to what a dish will taste like. Like soup everyone makes it a little different. I always get curry at The Bentley in Stratford when I go to see a play... over the years it has changed every time I order it... always good, kind of the same, but different.

: )
lyra

There are a million variations on curry for sure but like chinese food would be missing something without soy, thai food would be missing something without Nam Pla [fish sauce] it's their version of flavored salt for lack of a better explanation.

Curry [any color], thai chiles, nam pla, lemongrass, kafir lime leaves, galangal, cilantro, scallions, coconut milk, seem to be the necessary ingredients I've encountered in making basic thai food in my experience.

I'm new at making Thai food too but thats what I've needed to make most dishes so far.

I don't particularly care for fish sauce, as I'm very, very picky about what fish I'll eat - I only like a very few kinds. That being said, if used properly, nuoc mam (I learned the Vietnamese name first, so that's what I always call it) doesn't impart a "fish" taste to the dish. You have to be careful not to overdo it and you wouldn't know there was anything fish related in the ingredients at all. Fish sauce, lime, and sugar are as ubiquitous to Thai food as garlic and basil are to Italian, or lemon juice and oregano are to Greek. They're in practically everything.

Maybe it's because I live in an "immigrant" city, and we have tons of Southeast Asians here, nuoc mam is pretty cheap - $2-$3 for a quart size bottle. And it will last for years, literally, so as long as you can tuck it away in the back of a cabinet somewhere, you don't have to worry about it going bad or having to use it all up right away.

One of my favorite dishes is Pad Thai and another one is the spicey dish made with those long green beans and the fish sauce is critical to both, so I keep a bottle in the house at all times. I've had the one I'm using now for over a year - you only use a tablespoon at a time so it goes a long way.

And I've found that low-fat coconut milk just doesn't cut it. Sad to say, because I try to reduce fat content wherever I can. I don't eat many of my favorite Thai dishes as much as I'd like because of the coconut milk, alth I love them. Green curry hot pot is one of my favorites!

Also, different brands of "red" and "green" curry are as different as night and day. I've had ones that aren't hot in the least, of both colors, and others that will light your mouth on fire! I don't even know the name of the ones I use - the labels aren't in English. I just know what the cans look like lol!!

Lisa