Can I Make The Butternut And Sweet Potato Curry Milder?

Our answer

Nigella's Butternut And Sweet Potato Curry (from AT MY TABLE) is a Thai-inspired vegan curry that uses a home-made curry paste. The paste contains ginger, garlic, turmeric, coriander, cinnamon and 3 fresh red chillies. Normally the "red chillies" sold in supermarkets in the UK are a medium heat variety, such as the Dutch (also known as Holland or finger) chillies, so you can reduce the number of chillies to two or one for less heat. You could also switch to a milder variety, such as Fresno chillies (these look a little like jalapeno chillies but are red in colour). Also bear in mind that the coconut milk will temper some of the spiciness of the curry paste. However, we would not reduce the chillies too much as this will reduce the vibrancy of the curry.

A lot of the heat in chillies is contained in the white ribs on the inside of the chilli, rather than the seeds themselves. So if you are splitting the chillies open to remove the seeds to reduce the heat, then you should also remove the white membrane-like ribs from the inside of the chillies before using them.