Mango & Sweet Potatoes Curry from Laos

I made this really interesting curry last night in my soapstone cooking pot, after a similar curry we had in a Laotian restaurant in Madison. This is a pretty simple recipe and very easy to make. What made it interesting for us was the chili pepper I used for the sauce. I had picked out this extremely hot chili from the farmer's market from a Vietnamese person and he told me this was very hot (it looks like a Caribbean pepper). I got 5 for a dollar and hadn't had the chance to try it before. By now, they have dried pretty well, and I thought it would be perfect for a curry laden with coconut milk. I blended the following for the sauce: Peanuts, peanut butter, some tamarind paste, few shreds of coconut, the hot chili, some sugar, lemon grass and kafir lime leaves. The sauce became so hot with the pepper - I only used a few spoonfuls of it for the actual dish and have stored the rest as my favorite hot sauce. The chili turns out to be much more hotter than a Habenaro pepper!

I cut two sweet potatoes, one zucchini, squash (an Indian variety of winter squash - but any squash would be good), and half a mango, sautéed them for a few minutes. I added some water and let the vegetables soften before adding a few spoonfuls of the hot paste. Once the vegetables were completely cooked, I added a can of coconut milk and simmered for a few more minutes. In spite of adding an entire can of sweet coconut milk, the dish turned out to be still pretty hot and delicious :)