Cut, Copy and Red Hot Paste
A spicy paste to serve as a base for most Thai recipes.
Ingredients
Instructions
Prep
  1. Cut and soak the dried chili peppers.
  2. Slice shallots, lemongrass, galangal and cilantro roots into small pieces.
  3. Slice thinly or grate the kaffir lime zest.
  4. Squeeze out the water from chili peppers. Pound the chili peppers and salt in a mortar.
  5. Add lemongrass and galangal into the mortar. Grind them into rough fibers.
  6. Add garlic, kaffir lime zest and cilantro roots next. Pound to mix it in the paste
  7. Then add shrimp paste.
  8. Add the shallots.
  9. Pound into a fine paste- scoop out the paste and use it as required by your recipe.
Recipe Notes

Do not pound straight down into the center of the mortar; things will bounce back at you.
The pounding process takes around 20 minutes in all. Don’t forget to pound well after each addition.