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Saffron was one of the first spices I introduced to my daughter. She loved it. This recipe is so flavorful and eye-catching to a little one’s eyes. The flavor is also sweet and mild, making it a great introductory spice for baby.

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This recipe for ramp vinaigrette can be refrigerated up to six weeks. Use it on fresh spring greens, pasta salad or even as a sauce for seared northern blackfish.

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Green Curry — or in Thai, Kang Keow Wann — means kang, a stew-like dish; keow, green; and wann, savory or sweet. Modern Thais often translate this last word as sweet, thus justifying why they add sugar to the curry. The original recipe is not sweet. However, in most Thai restaurants today, sugar has been added into the Green curry, which absolutely infuriates my friend, the former cooking teacher. Please do not add sugar into the curry.

This curry paste recipe is an adaptation of the one which originally appeared in my cookbook “Cracking the Coconut.” Based on a classic recipe, I tweaked it to balance the flavors of the ingredients, while maintaining the integrity of the original. I used several kinds of chilies because the Thai bird chilies used in Thailand are not available in the United States.

I suggest you follow the instructions as closely as possible to the way they are written. Dry roasting the dry spices and then grinding them produces an intensely aromatic fragrance. Substitution for original Thai ingredients such as lemongrass, galangal and kaffir lime rind will change the taste of the paste. In fact, even if your curry paste is made with these ingredients, it will not taste the same as the ones made by traditional cooks in Thailand. One reason is that there is no getting around Mother Nature’s products raised in different soils and climates. This affects the final taste of the ingredient. Therefore, I simply adapt and alter as I go when I use them in America, just as I did with the chilies.

Lastly, pounding the paste using mortar and pestle is the only way I know that can produce the consistency of a truly exceptional curry paste. As you pound, be patient. When the paste is pureed, creating almost a suction-like feel when you pound, it is done. Another way to tell is to lift the pestle and smell the paste. It should have a fragrance of an entirely new entity, rather than any one of the ingredients used.

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