Most Oriental restaurant suppliers have tins of the various Thai Curry pastes, Red, Yellow, Green, and Masaman. You can make up a cury using the normal ingredients, meat, veggies, coconut milk, and then add enough of the ground curry paste to meet your particular style or Scovil number of curry. All of the Thai restaurants I've been in here in the states tend to cut the *HOT* waaay down in curries served to those just came in off the street, but they will make your curry as hot as you wish, once you let them know that their usual curries are too tame for your taste.

I know that the stuff they serve over here is much cooler than what I ate in Thailand, and it took me a while to get used to what we ate over there. During this same period, I had a chance to get down to Singapore, and went on a bar grawl with my Kiwi friends. Their havit is to get almost too drunk to stand, stop off at the nearest curry cart, oder some of the hottest stuff on the menu, and when they can taste it, they figure they're set to hit a few more bars.

Dave