My favourite food of all time - apart from Caribbean because it is my 'home' food, is Thai food. The complexity of flavours and the blance of sweet, sour, salty and spicy is just heavenly and the spicier the better as far as I'm concerned. Though try this at your peril - on holiday in Thailand I did have to leave food on my plate (usually anathema in my books!) after a red hot dish of chilli chicken, where every spoonful was covered in so called 'mouse shit' chillies. it blew my head off!
Whilst on that holiday me and Nick took part in a cookery course at the Chiang Mai School of Cookery, where we learned how to cook authentic thai dishes. As my options for produce are rather limited in Witney, when we decided last minute on saturday to cook a red curry I cheated and bought the paste ready made. There is however no shame in this. Whilst browsing the many markets - including the floating one at Damnoen Saduak - it was a perfectly normal sight to see the various pastes being sold fresh by the weight.
Anyway, buying the sauce in a jar is no substitute, either buy the paste, or make the paste. The taste, colour, smell and texture of your finished dish will be far superior to anything you could buy in a jar. So all you then have to do is marinate your chicken (or beef/pork/fish) in some fish sauce, palm sugar, and soy sauce. Next fry the paste until it releases it oils, add the chicken and vegetables (I used green pepper and onion), then pour in the coconut milk, add a few kaffir lime leaves and cook until the chicken is done. Finally garnish with some basil (sweet thai basil if you can get it, normal basil if not) and some shredded lime leaves. Serve it with some jasmine rice and voila - a restaurant quality meal in under 1/2 hour!
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