Can I use nut meal or nut butter as a curry base? Does anyone have experience trying to form a curry with nut starch?

Can I make it work at all? Will I need less oil because the nut carries some of it's own?



Background for this:

For the last few years I've been making a Japanese style curry using the "fry flour and spices, then slowly add liquid while stirring" approach, and I have found the results very satisfying, and would like to share them around.

One possible target for this largess is trying to avoid flour in her diet, and my better half suggested substituting nut meal. 

I'm a little worried about nut meal being too course to form the proper emulsion, but if I blend it down too much I'll have nut butter instead.
I think it may work in some sense, but the results will be pretty different. Nut butters don't have a lot of starch in them. They thicken a liquid just by dispersing their solids. So 1 tablespoon of nut butter isn't going to have near the same thickening power as 1 tablespoon of flour. If you add enough to thicken it substantially, it will taste strongly of whatever nut you use (which may be good).

If your friend is specifically trying to avoid gluten, there are many other things you could use to thicken your curry. Rice flour would be an excellent choice, or cornstarch, or xanthan gum.