Curries of the modern day bear little resemblance to those of days past, due to the fast food type being so much easier to master . They are often watery, thin and over seasoned. The intensity of heat is always there but with no balance. Due to  heat being the easiest flavor to work with. Often alot of heat masks the imbalance of the underlying curry paste. Curry tins are not only preservative laden but are designed in accordance with mass production and what works best with preserving. The average tinned red curry is not even close to the flavor balance that is described in your average Thai recipe.

Tinned Coconut cream cannot separate and release its oils and perfumes due to stabilizers and whatever other rubbish they put in it to make it last an eternity. The end result is far removed from the flavor of fresh coconut milk.

There are three components to achieving greatness in a curry. Coconut Milk Consistency, Curry Paste Balance and Seasoning.

Coconut Cream / Milk:
Only the white coconut meat or flesh is used to make milk and cream. 1 Coconut gives about 250g of meat and you want to mix this with 200mls to 1 liter of warm water and let it soak . It depends on what curry your working on, your audience, and what ingredients your cooking in the curry.

Cream is only the bright white layer that rises to the top once you squeeze it through a muslin cloth or we have a hydrolic pressing machine at the restaurant which takes the hard work out of things. It also allows us to use no water whatsoever when a really thick cream is called for.It does not matter how much water you use, a single coconut will yield the same amount of cream. The only thing that will change is when you use less water to the weight of the meat, the coconut cream will become thicker but than it becomes harder to extract.

The extracted cream is used to fry the curry paste in.You want the correct amount of cream to curry paste your frying. To much and it will tend to stew and not fry-off the paste.  To little and when the uncooked paste absorbs the cream it will not release enough of its oils to fry the paste and it will scorch.

When speaking about the amount of water you use to coconut flesh, this is in relation to the thickness of the milk and how strong you want the perfume and taste of coconut to be.
Some get confused between milk and cream. Coconut cream is not what you get from the first pressing and milk from the second. What could be said is you will get most of your cream from the first pressing. The more times you press the coconut flesh the thinner the milk becomes. Don’t concentrate on the number of pressings but rather how thick you want your milk to be for the particular curry your working on. To thick and the paste becomes cloyed and the particles of herbs and flavors become trapped in pockets. To thin and the curry becomes watery, course, prickly and unrounded. When too thin a coursness is produced where the garlic, galangal and genrally speaking ‘heat’ swamps the rest of the more subtle herbs and flavors contained in the curry paste. This is the most common mistake found today when dealing with fresh milk. Why? Because the thinner the milk the less coconuts needed. It comes down to labor and cost saving. Many than make up for this by pouring in extra fish sauce and sugar. So the end result is a curry that tastes of sweetness, saltiness and heat but lacks any body or depth of flavour. The better cook may even balance this seasoning and heat correctly. But where is the coconut flavor and perfumes that weld everything together and the multitude of fresh herbs contained in the paste???

Seasoning:
You want your seasoning to be somewhere within the range of 5% to 20% of the total milk and cream used. Generally speaking. Depending on what curry your working on and try not to substitute white sugar for palm sugar. It may be easier to work with but it has no depth and body of flavor like palm sugar does.

Pastes:

Curry pastes require alot of trial and error and becoming very familiar with the Thai herbs flavors and what particular time of year it is. Certain curry’s require a predominance of a particular herb or group of herbs or shrimp paste etc.

How herbs and dry spices play off one another can only be learnt by passing years and tasting, smelling, tasting. I like to nibble on the paste with my front teeth and gently dab my tongue back and forth as I’m making the paste. To get an idea of how the paste is developing. There is no exact fixed rules but there are guide lines. The overall goal is to learn the craft of making pastes so you can achieve the flavour that you as a individual want or what you feel you audience wants. With tins the decision is already made for you and its not going to be in your favor.

The correct amount of curry paste to cream and milk must be used so as to provide thickness and strength of flavour.

These are a few general points that break off into a multitude of decisions and skills to be learnt when your designing and shooting for a curry that has the ability to really be enjoyed. Regardless of what culture your from, when you taste a Royal Thai standard curry or a modern day adaption that has obeyed these old principles, then you will know it. The same as a good painting, a classic car or a great piece of music sang in a foreign language.