It’s All in the Wrist: Pounding Thai Curry

Saying there's only one way to make a Thai curry is like saying there's only one way to navigate the universe—it simplifies a galaxy's worth of nuance and variety into a single dead star.

"There may be a dish, [but] there is no exact, right way that this dish is going to taste," says Chef Andy Ricker of Pok Pok. "I can take you to eight different places in Chiang Mai, and [a specific Thai dish] would taste eight different ways, and they'd all be good." Thai cuisine, like food from so many other rich culinary regions, is not so much ironclad recipes as a quilt of improvisation and mnemonic notation. "There is no dictated way to make something," he says. "People make shit up, and they run with it. Traditions get built."

But while every small-town Thai grandmother and even non-Thai chefs like Ricker—who has been traveling to the country since the late 1980s and is now fluent in the language—have their own curry pantry list, every recipe follows the same mortar-and-pestle spice route to perfection.

After all, there's tradition, and then there's Tradition. Curry ingredients may be open to debate, but the grinding procedure is an inviolate one. The mortar and pestle are non-negotiable tools, and the proper wrist motion—the joints kept loose, the pestle not pounding straight into the mortar but rather in a down-and-out motion—defines the proper curry paste, a technique Ricker will show off at this year's 7th Annual International Chefs Congress.

"The proper technique when dealing with mortar and pestle is not to grind and not to pound up and down," says Chef Angus An of Maenam in Vancouver, Canada. "It's a combination of motions, of pounding and grinding at the same time." There are a few more rules to abide, too. Pound each ingredient separately. Don't overload the mortar. And make sure you choose your mortar wisely; always use granite, never marble (too slick) or clay (too delicate).

Thai Curry Paste from Chef Andy Ricker of Pok Pok – Portland, OR

Dried Chiles

Lemongrass

Galangal

Kaffir Lime and Garlic

Thai Curry Paste from Chef Andy Ricker of Pok Pok – Portland, OR

Thai Curry Paste from Chef Andy Ricker of Pok Pok – Portland, OR

Thai Curry Paste from Chef Andy Ricker of Pok Pok – Portland, OR

Beyond those rules, it's improv time. Ricker prefers to flavor the paste for his Chiang Mai sausage with curry powder (which has become a staple in pastes but is actually a relatively new inclusion, brought through northern Thailand via the Silk Road spice route a few hundred years ago). He also uses Thai black pepper (called prik thai dum), which was the original spicy addition to Thai curries. Red and green Thai peppers didn't exist until after Columbus and Spanish explorers brought them from Central America; before that, all curries were made with these black peppers. (Conversely, An proudly admits to using "the original Thai chili," Mexican Guajilo peppers, for his paste).

But just like Thai cuisine guru (and mentor to Ricker and An) David Thompson says, when it comes to curries and other Thai dishes, it's just as much about intuition and instinct. And a few minutes of pounding and grinding.

Curry Paste Technique:

1. Start by grinding chiles first (Ricker suggests keeping them whole). "You can read other recipes that will tell you to soak the chiles and chop them into pieces," he says. "You can do that, but it's going to take twice as long. You do it this way, it'll be a much shorter process, and you'll get a better product."

2. You'll also want to keep the chiles dry. Although some curry-makers (including An) prefer to soak their chiles in water, Ricker says this impedes the curry (after all, you're looking first to build a powder, and then add other aromatics to create a paste; a moist chile creates a paste right away). A little salt to turn the mortar into sandpaper, a bit of grinding with the pestle, and you're on your way.

3. Add lemongrass (breaking down the fibrous strands), cilantro root (a staple of Southeast Asian cuisine), and galangal (sliced against the grain).

4. Add kaffir lime peel, which layers the paste with a richly sour flavor.

5. Add onion, garlic, raw shallots, and, in some cases, roasted shallots. Take care to keep each ingredient as big as possible, cutting them only to create flat edges so they don't shift around in the mortar. "You want to go against your intuition" and not dice them up, Ricker says. "With small pieces, you don't have any surface area to hit them [with the pestle] and they will squirt around."

6. Finally, add your remaining spices, such as curry powder and black pepper.

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Chef-owner Andy Ricker of Pok ..