— Mel Dorling

She was looking for a Thai curry paste without oil, and they do exist, and the brand that you want to look for is spelled M-E-K-A-L-A. I've had it in the past. It's very good. But I said to myself one day, "Why on earth do I want to spend $7.99 for 6 ounces of Thai curry paste when I can make it myself?" So there are a zillion recipes out there. The one that I use is non-cooking, so everything is made with raw, delicious ingredients. So I'm going to show you the ingredients, and then I tried posting the recipe. It's a recipe that's in my head, so I have to write it down. So I will go through the recipe, and then they'll be in the replay that Patrick shows. So the first thing that you're going to need is, these are Italian roasting peppers, but you want to have one medium-size red pepper, and you want to roast it. Can you use canned or jarred roasted red peppers? Of course you can. They're going to be a little bit saltier. They're not going to taste quite as delicious, but you might enjoy those. So that's the first ingredient, is one roasted red pepper. Then you want to have one lime. You want to have the juice of one lime, and then you also want to have the zest of one lime, and this will give a nice balancing flavor to what it is that you're going to make. Now, you're going to want to have ginger, and that would be one to two teaspoons of freshly grated ginger, no skin. I like to peel the skin off, and then I'll use a grater, a Microplane, to get the amount of freshly juiced ginger that I like to use. And then in terms of spices, you're going to use a tablespoon, I'm sorry, a teaspoon of coriander, a teaspoon of ground cumin, and I'm going to say a quarter of a teaspoon, for beginners, of cayenne pepper, because it can leave a very peppery flavor for you. Then on top of that, you're going to add a tablespoon of tomato paste. And I like this brand because it's organic and it's lower in sodium than some of the other ones are. You'll also notice if you're grocery shopping that when you're at the grocery store, brand labels of the store are usually made with different ingredients and will have more sodium in them. So I like this Cento brand. It's made in New Jersey. No, it's boxed in New Jersey, but it's made in Italy. It's a very good brand. I happen to like it a lot. So those are the ingredients, and what I do is I put everything in this little mixer, and then I pull this thing about 25 or 30 times so that I get a nice paste-like texture, and when it is done... So all those ingredients that I just read to you, they give you about 6 ounces just like they would if you bought it commercially in the grocery store. It smells wonderful. It has a glorious taste, and I'm going to say that maybe it costs $2 to make. And here is what the texture is like. It's almost like a paste, just like the commercial one that you would buy, and I like to put it on tofu, and I also sometimes like to add it if I'm making a salad dressing, just to have a little extra texture and a little extra flavor, and I think that that is a really good thing So now I'm going to show you the pan that I made the zucchini in because there was, excuse me, not one drop of oil, and not one piece of parchment paper. And I love parchment paper, but if I can save a tree for 20 minutes in the oven, I'll do it. They cook absolutely beautifully. And again, I've had these for about three years, and I use them several times a week. So the brand again is C-A-R-A-Way, Caraway. Really fun to cook with, and I find that they cook pretty quickly as well. So, pardon the little noise there. All right. So I hope that that answers the question, Mel, for the making your own Thai curry paste. Oh, and it takes maybe 10 minutes. So, while I was getting everything else ready, the red pepper was in an air fryer. Right now I'm using the Old Way brand because it has no Teflon coating. It's stainless steel lined, and I feel a little bit safer using that.