Food

Edit: Didn't refresh the page.

I never cooked a curry dish in my entire life.

Leaving on the side the recipes for the moment, what basic set of spices do I need to gather for Thai/Indian currys? Where do I get them in North/East London? I want an authentic place..

For Indian dishes, you don't need an 'authentic' place to buy spices. Bog-standard TRS or similar bags, which you can get just about everywhere, will do. Obviously, you can go to Green Street or Southall. There are various Indian/Pakistani shops in NE London which have a larger selection, such as Lajpur Foods in Cazenove Road. Much missed is VG Foods in Stoke Newington High Street, which closed a few years ago. They had everything.

The basic needs: Fresh garlic and ginger. Turmeric/kurkuma, chilli, coriander, jeera (cumin), garam masala (spice mixture) powders. Standard curry spicing is one unit turmeric powder, half a unit chilli powder, and two units coriander powder, but you can vary that to your heart's content when you're more experienced. Coriander seeds and jeera seeds. Also dried red chillies and fresh green ones. (I like bullet chillies the best.)

Less basic: Cardamoms (green or black), cinnamon or cassia (powder and bark), curry leaves, black mustard seeds, tamarind (not technically a spice but used like one), kalonji seeds, ground nutmeg, asafoetida, fennel seeds, fenugreek seeds, panch phoron (spice mixture).

For Thai, it's worth going to one or several of the South Vietnamese shops on Mare Street to find lots of other leaves and ingredients that are used in SE Asian cuisine.

Basic: Galangal (root), shallots, fresh lemongrass, coconut milk, chillies, chilli powder, garlic, lime zest, coriander seeds, jeera seeds.

As I'm vegan, I obviously don't use it, but fish sauce is a common ingredient. I'd recommend avoiding it, not only because of the vegan thing, but also because as with anchovies it can lead to lazy cooking and not working on the flavour properly, which isn't what you want when you're just learning to cook in a particular style (not that I think it'll take you long to pick this up, as you're evidently an excellent cook).