"Brett Maguire" <brettwmaguire at yahoo dot com> wrote in message
...
[...]
> Again following the instructions in Cracking the Coconut,


Brett, did you read the link I gave to Kasma's article? At the time her
book, "It Rains Fishes," came out, that was the most detailed description
out there. Cracking the Coconut is newer, and I haven't read it, so I don't
know the level of detail. Also, it seems her method sounds a little
different from Kasma's.


I have
> always started my pastes with garlic and added shallots at the very
> end.


Kasma suggests that a beginner start with dry spices, then go from toughest
(like lemon grass) to softer and wetter things. In between each, she
suggests you remove them from the mortar, and only at the end should put
them all back together and pound to a smooth paste.


(The latter, incidentally, is what causes my paste to decorate
> the walls and my clothing.)


How big is your mortar? That might influence things. My new one is 4
inches deep, 6 1/2 inches across the inner bowl. (My old one was much
smaller, but I still didn't get much splashing.)


When you say that the garlic and shallots
> are the easy part, Peter, do you mean that you mash both of them
> together, and if so, at the beginning or the end?


I've never pounded them for a Thai curry paste; I've pounded them for other
Thai dishes and for Indonesian pastes. I do garlic and shallots together.
I start pounding softly, straight up and down. After they break down a bit,
then I pound harder. It doesn't splash much for me when I do it like that.

If I were you, I'd try Kasma's way of one ingredient at a time. When you
get the hang of it, you could move on to more ingredients at once. I also
wouldn't worry about the rhythmic sounds until you get the hang of it. And
btw, she suggests that it takes about half an hour, so maybe you are going
to fast?

I'm sure other's have better info than I.

Peter