On Thu, 4 Apr 2013 13:45:17 -0700 (PDT), Timo >
wrote:

>On Friday, 5 April 2013 04:49:28 UTC+10, Janet Bostwick wrote:
>> What's the difference between chili paste and garlic chili paste --
>> aside from the garlic? They look the same in the container. Can I
>> sub garlic chili paste for chili paste in tiki masala without a big
>> boo-boo?
>
>The short answer: yes.
>
>The longer answer: Not really enough information, since there are quite a few similar-looking pairs of chili paste and garlic chili paste. For dishes with (enough) garlic, the ones that are similar except for the garlic work fine as substitutes (I do this with Vietnamese chili pastes). Some Chinese chili/garlic-chili pairs can look superficially similar, but be quite different, and won't be good substitutes (for a fussy "good" - for an unfussy "good", probably good enough). Same for Indian chilli paste. But for Chinese and Indian, chilli pastes come in multiple varieties, and can vary a lot in flavour, so a recipe that just specifies "chilli paste" isn't precise enough - chilli paste can be a poor substitute for a different chilli paste. Even more so if substituting Vietnamese/Indonesian chili paste for Chinese or Indian, or similar.

O.k., got it. My city is just beginning to put supplies for Indian,
Thai foods on the shelf. Actually, not a wide variety of Chinese and
Japanese either. I found Mae Ploy Red Curry Paste at the restaurant
supply store ( they had yellow and green as well). The rest of the
selection was a smattering of Japanese and Chinese this and that. I've
only been through Whole Foods twice and I don't recall them having
much of a selection either. I'll sub for now and keep looking. This
is the recipe.
http://tinyurl.com/c2e7fmf

thanks again
Janet US