Mommy In Kitchen: Chicken Curry Paste

This is our home recipe passed down from my late aunt. When people from her generation share their recipes, it is usually ~ a small bowl of garlic, a thumb-size of ginger, a bigger rice bowl of chilli and so forth. So, what I am going to share later is purely by this "word-of-mouth" and measurement technique. Of course, adding my own discretion and feedback from family members who had said it reassembled their grandma's (aka my aunt) curry, I take it that this recipe is it!

Hope you all will like it as well. Please bear in mind, alot of ingredients are purely by how much you like the taste. For example, I like lemongrass so I tend to put a little more. Chilli padi, in my case, is reduced as we have young children in our midst who can't take too spicy food.

Ingredients :
~ the outcome is about 2kg worth of curry paste. Usually, I make in this quantity as I need to distribute across a few families : )

Dried chilli ~ 100g
Small onions (unpeeled) ~ 250g
Garlic (unpeeled) ~ 150g
Candlenut ~ 100g
Yellow ginger (also know as tumeric) ~ 30g
Blue ginger (also known as galangal) ~50g
Lemongrass ~ about 8 stalks (3 stalks to add during frying, the remaining to grind)
Belachan ~ 20g
Chilli padi ~ 12
Curry leaves ~ 4 to 5 stalks
3 packets of A1 Chicken Curry paste (230g)

A1 Chicken curry paste

Method :

1) Soak the dried chilli in water to soften it.
2) Peel all the small onions and garlic.
3) Cut 3 stalks of lemongrass into about 6 cm in length for each part.
4) Grind all the ingredients except for the curry leaves, belacan, 3 stalks of lemongrass and the curry paste.
5) Prepare wok and heat up with oil.
6) Fry belacan till fragant. Next, fry curry leaves, small onions, garlic, gingers, candlenut and lemongrass. Next, add in the chilli. Fry till relatively dried up.