Nam phrik kapi

A thin salty dip built on shrimp paste toasted first, with everything else pounded in raw.

Not vegetarian — contains fish sauce, shrimp paste.

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons shrimp paste
• 12 bird's eye chillies
• 8 garlic cloves
• 4 tablespoons lime juice
• 2 tablespoons palm sugar
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 6 pea aubergines, halved
• 4 tablespoons water

Method

1. TOAST THE PASTE, AND POUND EVERYTHING ELSE RAW. That is the whole difference from the nam phrik num on this site, where the chillies are grilled and peeled and the dip is smoky and thick. Here only the shrimp paste meets heat; the chillies and garlic go in raw, so it is sharp, thin and fierce.
2. Wrap the shrimp paste in foil or a banana leaf and toast it in a dry pan 3 to 4 minutes a side, until it darkens and smells nutty rather than ammoniac. Untoasted, it tastes raw and overwhelms everything.
3. Do it with a window open. There is no polite way to say what this smells like while it is happening.
4. Pound the garlic and chillies to a rough paste in a mortar, with no salt -- the paste and fish sauce bring plenty.
5. Toasted shrimp paste in, pounded through until evenly distributed.
6. Palm sugar in and worked with the pestle until it has completely dissolved into the paste.
7. Lime juice, fish sauce and water in, stirred rather than pounded. IT IS MEANT TO BE THIN -- a loose dip you spoon over rice, not a thick paste you scoop.
8. Pea aubergines in whole at the end, lightly bruised, so they pop between the teeth.
9. Taste: salty first, sour second, hot throughout, with the sweetness only holding it together. If it tastes mild it is wrong.
10. Serve with rice, fried mackerel and raw and blanched vegetables to dip.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Thailand · All recipes