Krung Thep At Home: Classic Curry Pastes, Seductive Thai Sauces

Curry pastes crafted from recipes that reach back a century, sauces that tingle with the taste of Thai traditions: Damansara Heights' Krung Thep can help you recreate Bangkok's sultry soulfulness in your own kitchen, with a new range of bring-home ingredients for your personal pantry.

Chef Piyanat Yowabut (call him Chef Gug) and his team have cooked up a storm with these house-made pastes and sauces, thundering through our taste buds with various chillies, a sumptuous shower of spices and a distinctive drizzle of herbs.

Chef Gug's secret to these sauces is authenticity - he reveals that his inspiration comes from a Thai cookbook that's estimated to be 100 years old, with its recipes believed to be even older.

Born in Khon Kaen, one of the four major cities of Thailand's northeastern Isan region, Chef Gug consistently believes in constructing his bases from scratch; these pastes and sauces are painstakingly prepared with a pestle and mortar, faithful to generations-old practices.

Krung Thep's efforts should make home cooking breezier. 

"For the red, green and yellow curry pastes, we precook everything," Chef Gug says. "The curry paste is cooked, the spices are in there already. Just heat up with water or chicken stock, then add in meat, seafood or vegetables with coconut milk."

The sriracha and pad thai sauces are even simpler to use. "You can eat them with omelettes or snacks like fried chicken," Chef Gug recommends. The sriracha sauce showcases a blend of chillies, pickles, garlic and cucumber, while the pad thai sauce features Thai-imported tamarind and palm sugar.

Each freshly made sauce or paste is sold at RM15. Delivery is RM5 within 5 kilometres and RM10 for 5-10 kilometres. "The curry paste can be kept for maybe a week in a chiller; the sauce lasts in your fridge for up to one month," Chef Gug advises.

For extra tips on cooking like a chef with these pastes, click here for Chef Gug's recipe video on whipping up aromatic, creamy green curry chicken. Krung Thep promises the pastes are worthwhile for budding home cooks as well as professionals.

"If you were to buy all the ingredients that make up our base individually, it wouldn't be cost-effective at all, unless you’re cooking for a family of 20 or in batches for six months," explains Krung Thep's general manager Peter Lamb. "All the ingredients on their own cost quite a lot, because each base has more than 10 ingredients. So we hope to offer value for money in an accessible way.

"We recognise the new trend for dining at home and for home chefs. Many people have turned to cooking as one of their pastimes, producing their own food. We feel that Thai food is one of the most desired in the world, but it is one of the hardest to master. So we hope our pastes and sauces will help people effectively prepare Thai food in their homes."

Alongside the pastes and sauces, a pick-up and delivery menu of ready-to-eat dishes is also now available. This selection focuses on cheerful, casual meals, with rice, noodles, curries and vegetables for a convenient lunch or dinner.

All of these are contributing to the evolution of Krung Thep - when the restaurant fully reopens in the future, expect a venue that strives to be safe for dining in while also catering to customers who favour takeaways and deliveries for the time being or who want to shop for cooking ingredients. By then, Krung Thep's repertoire will comprehensively span its cherished specialities of regional Thai cooking as well as crowd-pleasing favourites.

Krung Thep online:
krungthep.my
facebook.com/krungthepkl
instagram.com/krungthepkl

Krung Thep is one of over 100 restaurants participating in Eat Drink KL's Faith For The Future. Purchase a cash voucher at eatdrinkkl.com/faith and enjoy a 10 percent discount off your bill when you redeem the voucher within four months. The restaurant will receive your payment within three working days. Click here to read about Faith For The Future.

This post first appeared on eatdrinkkl.com