Can dried shrimp be used as a substitute for shrimp paste in a recipe for thai curry paste

Scottish,

Use equal amounts of ginger to substitute for galangal. And yes, it is the best substitute available from your average non-Asian grocery store.

If you can get your hands on dried, powdered galangal, however, you can do better. Add about half the amount of ginger, and around midway through cooking add a teaspoon of powdered galangal for every tablespoon of fresh in the recipe. The combination of fresh ginger and powdered galangal will be very close to fresh galangal in flavor.

Also, if you make a field trip to an Asian market, peeled galangal cut into chunks freezes quite well.

Since regular Thai soy sauce is light in color (to reportedly match the color of fish sauce when it's first marketed there), all types of dark soy sauce are thick. (In Thai, thin soy sauce is called white soy sauce ซีอิ้วขาว and thick soy sauce is called black soy sauce ซีอิ้วดำ.)

According to the company's product page, there are six dark soy sauce products by Dek Somboon or Healthy Boy, the most popular brand in Thailand. There are two types: salty and sweet, in different colors depending on quality and price:

• Salty: (from the most expensive and best quality) Brown, Yellow, Orange
• Sweet: Green

The red and white labels are also sweet but not common in everyday cooking; they are light and mostly used for some specific sauces.

I don't even buy the sweet one because it's rarely used (except as dipping sauce). I would not stir-fry with the sweet sauce either. Pad see-ew and pad kee mao should use the salty kind or even light soy sauce. And you can always add sugar if you want.