In a pot that has a lid, pour the rice and the water together and put on high heat with the lid on. Bring the water and rice to a boil. Once the water starts a hard boil, turn the heat off and just let the rice sit. DO NOT LIFT THE LID, just leave it alone no matter how tempted you are to look.

In a large pan, pour the can of unsweetened coconut milk and turn the heat up to about 3 to warm the milk but not too hot where it burns it or causes it to stick to the bottom of the pan.

Add the curry paste and whisk it into the coconut milk until all of it is dissolved into the milk. Taste this and if it is not hot enough, add a little more till you get the right "heat" for your taste buds.

Now, if you don''t have an coffee bean grinder, go out and get one. They are the best $10 you will spend for your kitchen.

Put the black pepper corns, allspice seeds, cumin seed into your coffee bean grinder and grind away till it is a rough powder. Grinding your own spices, you will notice a much stronger taste and aroma to your food. Whenever possible, grind your own spices, it really brings the dish your cooking alive.

Dump all of these ground up spices into your pan with the coconut milk and whisk them into the milk.

Add the curry powder, 5 spice powder, ground mustard, nutmeg, and cinnamon. If you have the mustard seeds, grind them in with the others in the coffee grinder. If you have whole nutmeg and cinnamon sticks, then you can grate them into the pan as well. Again, fresher is always better.

Peel and finely mince up the 5 cloves of garlic and add it to the pan and stir, spreading it around evenly in the coconut milk mix.

Using a fine toothed grater, grate the ginger into the milk mix. About 3/4 of an inch is good to start. Stir into the milk and taste. If there is a "soft" ginger background taste then that is all you need, if you like a stronger ginger taste, you can grate more into the milk. This is a spice filled dish, so you can give and take with the spices, add more that you like and not as much of what you do not like.

Bring the pan to a soft boil constantly whisking as it comes up to temperature. Do not stop stirring or this will burn.

Once you have a soft boil for about 10 seconds, pull it off the burner and set it aside to cool. Bringing this to a soft boil allows all the spices to release their flavor without over cooking them where they become just a "big lump of blah." You want to be able to taste all the individual spices and with every bite you will taste a hint of this or that , making it an adventure for your pallet.

Next, wash the snow peas and drain, cut the stem ends off as well as trimming off the other pointed end. You may have a string in some of the peas, pull the string off. Then cut the snow pea pod in half or thirds if you have a large pod. Get all these cut up and put into a hot pan with 2 tablespoons of coconut oil and stir fry till pods are limp, but still maintain some crispness. At that time put in the soy sauce, stir it in. When the sauce begins to stick to the bottom of the pan, pull off the heat and pour the entire contents into the coconut mix sitting on the side.

Put the pan back on the burner, use the 3-4 table spoons of water to deglaze the pan, scraping the bottom and making an emulsion, pour the shrimp in with some of the coconut oil to prevent sticking and start stir frying just enough to get a little "bark" on the shrimp, but do not fully cook the shrimp. Add the drained can of straw mushrooms and the remaining soy sauce. Stir fry for about 5 more seconds, pull off the heat and add it to the coconut milk mixture in the other pan.

Pull the pan containing everything to the heat and bring it up to a quick boil, constantly stirring so that the milk does not burn. I find using a silicon rubber spatula so you can scrape the sides of the pan as well as the bottom of the pan to be the tool of choice at this time because things can burn really quickly.

Once the shrimp is 95% cooked, pull from the heat. Residual heat will finish cooking the shrimp to perfection.

Pull the lid off the pot of rice and with a fork, stir up the rice to "fluff it up."

Lay a bed of rice on a plate and then add 5-6 shrimp on to the rice and spoon on the coconut curry milk adding snow peas and straw mushrooms.

There is also the ice cold glass of Thai Tea which blends well with the coconut curry which is the natural choice.

BUT....

A nice buttery chardonnay with a nice oak taste on the pallet is perfect with this.

OR...

You can go wild and have a glass of cold salted sake in a cedar cup. The mixture of the aromas from the dish combined with the cedar salted sake is incredible. Just close your eyes and you will believe you right there overlooking the ocean.

Bon appetite !