Green Curry Paste

It’s hard to describe in words the difference between using homemade curry paste versus using canned paste. There’s a kind of naturalness to it, an elegance that paste from a can just can’t give you. If I were to tell you that you had to pound these ingredients together in a mortar and pestle for 20 minutes, Thai old-style, I might say it’s worth it. Lemongrass and galangal are extremely fibrous (galangal, a rhizome like ginger, is practically like wood), and it takes some serious pounding.