RMD: Curry recipes

kalmar · Post by **kalmar** » Wed Dec 13, 2006 6:52 pm 0

More oil, more heat!

piku · Post by **piku** » Wed Dec 13, 2006 7:31 pm 0

kalmar wrote:More oil, more heat!

It is complete. I couldn't get it to go quite as red and slimy as Giles' pictures, but then again I had no ghee and shitty Co-op spices that have as much flavour as sand.

On the plus side the results are pretty nice. It has flavour, I can taste things

Next time - better spices, ghee and a non-stick pan. Hard to fry stuff when you're mortally afraid of it sticking and burning.

Frying the chicken separately was a winning idea though.

lis0r · Post by **lis0r** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 2:04 pm 0

gilesgoat wrote:And I am still asking myself, with some fear, what they do with those paint bucket size buckets of pre-fried dark brown dried onion I saw in a specialist supply store for curry houses.

They're absolutely awesome for throwing into dhals, etc.

piku · Post by **piku** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 5:49 pm 0

My "Curry Secret" book has turned up.

Tomorrow many bottles of spices will mysteriously appear in our shopping basket.

And so begins my aim to cook every recipe in the book, for purely educational purposes of course.

I can vouch for adding leftover curry sauce (the gloop in the bottom of the pan after you've fished out the meat and lumps) to pasta.

piku · Post by **piku** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 9:45 pm 0

The secret, after making something out of this book, is the following

* Shitloads of oil. If your food isn't swimming in its own oil slick, there's not enough
* Lots and lots of corriander leaf
* Many fiddly and complex stages. You're making curry, it's an art about as complex as raising the dead.

It took bloody ages to cook. First I had to boil onions and garlic in a pan for half an hour. Then boil half the onion/garlic stuff with some tomato mush and more oil for a further 20 minutes, skimming off the skin that appears.

Next there's the cooking of the chicken in the other half of the onion gloop along with more oil and some turmeric.

Finally, pick out the meat and put it in a new pan along with more oil, the curry sauce, some spices (which took ten minutes to grind down) and at the right moment a handful of corriander and a chopped tomato.

For those of us not wanting to die of a clogged artery, skim off the oil slick before eating.

That plus poppadoms and a large bottle of Cobra ==

About an hour's cooking and preparation for ten minutes of eating

I do have leftover curry sauce to reuse, and leftover complete curry though.

it had the correct colour, texture and flavour. The curry must be smooth and non lumpy, it's as vital as all that oil.

I think I will now have a NCOT and open the Christmas biscuits.

There is the small matter of the washing up and cleaning

Mine'sAPint · Post by **Mine'sAPint** » Sat Dec 23, 2006 12:11 am 0

Good to hear the Curry Secret worked out for you! I hope you made extra base sauce so next time it doesn't take so long

Kronos · Post by **Kronos** » Sat Dec 23, 2006 12:55 am 0

I always fry stuff with butter for a curry as I always have it in the fridge, but yes you really need a good non-stick pan for frying off stuff with butter (and ghee to as it's clarified butter IRC). Adds a lot of creamyness to the sauce which is nice.

piku · Post by **piku** » Sat Dec 23, 2006 1:13 am 0

I made ghee. My god it tastes good. It has to be really bad for us though, nothing this nice tasting can be healthy

It's butter with all the minging bits and funny aftertastes removed (i.e water and milk solids, it's just refined fat now).

Orava · Post by **Orava** » Sat Dec 23, 2006 1:51 am 0

There are a lot of Indian cookery books out there. Aim for one that tells you how to prepare the mixes yourself.

Some of the earlier Curry Club ones are great as they do not assume you can buy anything ready-made but instruct you on all there is to curry.

"250 Favourite Curries & Accompaniments" is a favourity of mine and it contains in it the recipe for the original Vindaloo.

Another un-prepossessing favourite of mine is "Classic 1000 Indian recipes". Very authentic Indian cuisine, perhaps dis-appointing if you are after a UK restaurant curry. But it tells you everything, even how to make poppadums and stuff from scratch.

Orava · Post by **Orava** » Sat Dec 23, 2006 1:56 am 0

piku wrote:I made ghee. My god it tastes good. It has to be really bad for us though, nothing this nice tasting can be healthy

It's butter with all the minging bits and funny aftertastes removed (i.e water and milk solids, it's just refined fat now).

Roasted potatoes made with ghee are superb, give it a try.

Our local Tesco sells huge tin things of ghee, btw. It has a lovely floral smell to it, give it a sniff when you open a tin! Keeps forever too in room temperature, unlike butter.

Ratsoap · Post by **Ratsoap** » Sat Dec 23, 2006 3:47 pm 0

My dad now makes a yearly christmas curry consisting mainly of brussel sprouts and pickled eggs, after I made a joke about it one year. It's quite nice. I'll post up the recipe on boxing day.

rowan · Post by **rowan** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 7:15 pm 0

I reckon I'm going to have to try this soon...
http://www.123curry.co.uk/123curry/asp/main.asp

zip accident · Post by **zip accident** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 7:50 pm 0

In the coffee making thread, gilesgoat wrote:

Anyway, don't ask me why (I have no idea) curry is still not taking up in
Italy, blame Indian people why they never tried to move in Italy and open
a curry house

Maybe it was the English, not the indians, at fault there?

I don't know whether that's all true, but it does seem to fit with most of what I've been told.

<edit>

Site wrote:

The development of the curry industry in Britain has been peculiarly Anglo-Asian such that many people brandish â€˜authenticityâ€™ as if it were the Holy Grail. According to Camellia Panjabi â€œNinety nine per cent of Indians do not have a tandoor and so neither Tandoori Chicken nor Naan are part of Indiaâ€™s middle class cuisine. This is even so in the Punjab, although some villages have communal tandoors where rotis can be baked. Ninety five per cent of Indians donâ€™t know what a vindaloo, jhal farezi or, for that matter, a Madras curry isâ€.

Arnel · Post by **Arnel** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 7:05 am 0

I visited my brother about a year ago, and his gf made us all an absolutely delicious Chicken Tikka Masala. It was really, really tasty, and quite spicy, too!

I promptly jotted down the name of the cookbook it came from - Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible (Amazon UK link) - and ordered myself a copy when I got back to Vancouver. I've been feeding it to my friends here quite regularly, as decent curry is quite hard to come by in Vancouver, and they all love it!

It's quite involved - you need to marinate the chicken in the spices for a good 8 hours before cooking it, so I usually start it the night before. I also made my own Garam Masala, which takes quite a bit of effort (unless you have a coffee grinder which saves a ton of effort with a mortar and pestle!)

If anyone's interested, I'll post the recipe here (not sure if that's okay, with it being ripped straight out of a book)... but I do heartily recommend picking up a copy of the book.

Neil.
a.k.a. Arnel

spinlizard · Post by **spinlizard** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 9:41 pm 0

Prior to tonight my culinary adventures had ventured little beyond varients of beans on toast and the odd pasta mix. Tonight however I took a daring leap in the dark and cooked a proper curry. From scratch.

I emerged from the kitchen sometime later, hot, sweating, slightly dishevelled, and bearing the spicy scent of exotic tradewinds.

Even though I say it myself, it was a blinding success! I just made a chicken madras that looked, smelled, and tasted just as good as any we've had from the takeaway, if not better.

It took me 2 1/4 hours mind. No cheating, no jars of curry mix, no pre-prepared curry paste. I did everything from scratch. Absolutely worth it though. The depth of flavour was simply awesome.

I've got enough of the base left over to use for another couple of nights so the cooking time will be down to less than half the above.

I am bursting with pride!

I bought all the spices, ghee and fresh fenugreek from this place
http://www.spicesofindia.co.uk

Recipe wot I used:
http://www.curryhouse.co.uk/rsc/madras.htm

Using this as a base:
http://www.curryhouse.co.uk/rsc/sauce.htm