Lest you worry, I have not starved to death. I have, in fact, been cooking and eating for weeks. There have just been a couple of... disruptions to the routine. One I'll be posting about shortly, one being iOS 5. I use the iPad for a LOT of Forkbastard stuff, and not only did I have to adjust to the upgrade, a change I made led to the inadvertent blanking of all my Notes.

Back in the blogging saddle now, though, with a discussion of curry paste. A trip to United Noodles in September led to the acquisition of four epic tubs of Thai curry pastes - one red, one green, one yellow, and one masaman. A few weeks back I had the opportunity to play with two of them, discovering, in the process, that what I thought were tubs were actually tubs with plastic bags full of curry paste in them. Odd packaging decision, that.

Anyway, I started with the masaman, which was a deep brown and considerably less spicy than I thought. I used it in a fairly standard, pork-based stir-fry/coconut milk curry over noodles. The flavor was surprisingly muted, but had some nice savory and fermenty notes to it.

The yellow curry had some more heat to it, and I used it, along with some aromatics and coconut milk, to braise a large hunk of pork shoulder in the same way I do carnitas or pot roast - braising the meat, reducing the braising liquid, tossing the cooled and shredded meat in the reduced sauce.

It went into pseudo-banh-mi, using these really nice torta rolls I found at Costco. They're broad and rectangular, but not terribly thick. A quick toasting of the cut side readied them for the pork, some pickled vegetables, a basil oil-and-yogurt spread, herbs, and hot peppers. It turned out really nice - not quite a substitute for a warm, crunchy baguette, but a lot easier to work with and build at home.

I haven't tried the red and green pastes yet, mainly because I've used red and green curry paste before, and wanted to see what the other two were like first. Plus, I'm going to need more coconut milk.