Curry Making

[PrincessB]

There is a great book called 'The Curry Secret' that is based on this idea of a base onion/garlic/ginger base to which you add the flavourings to make whatever curry variation you like

I've got a copy of this book and it does allow you to make something similar to a restaurant curry, with the caveat that you'll end up with stuff that tastes similar to a curry from 20 years ago.

It is a very confusing book to follow as it continually jumps around referencing other chapters, just cooking the base sauce is hard work as you are forever flicking forwards and backwards through the book.

I found 'An Indian Housewife's Recipe Book' more accessible to cook from. It also has some gems which we still cook regularly such as Okra and chips as well as some well thought out spices for the saag. I note this book has been updated 25 years years after the original came out so there are two versions.

B.

[Halicarnassus]

Some of the best curries I have made have been done in the slow cooker. Ever present ingredients include frozen spinach blocks and lashings of garam masala powder. If I need to thicken I use cornflower. Just bung it all in and come back in a few hours to dinner.

[JMN2]

Supermarket curries are a pale imitation of the curry house offering, and I don't think I could replicate the proper CTM tarka dal mushroom pilau peshwari naan onion bhaji offering so I have stayed away from trying to cook curries. Cooking some chicken and onions and emptying a jar of supermarket CTM ready-made sauce is so different and bland and meh.

[saechunu]

600g onions (about 6 large onions)
6 cloves of garlic
6 pieces of ginger (dice sized)
2 tablespoons of tomato puree/
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoons turmeric
1.5 teaspoons chilli powder
1.5 teaspoons ground coriander
1.5 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoons garam masala
3 teaspoons vegetable oil

Add the onions garlic and ginger to about 800ml water and boil for 30 minutes.

Add the rest of the ingredients and boils for another ten minutes then puree.

About all this boiling...

A number of years ago I remember seeing an episode of this:
https://itvstudios.com/studios/uk/progr ... -best-dish
...where a contestant made a curry in which he just boiled everything up to form the sauce. The watching judges commented that the lack of frying, for the spices in particular, would not end well, and sure enough they judged the curry as being pretty ropey and dispatched the fella home.

Having seen John's recipe above, I now wonder if the contestant was maybe attempting something similar.

Also, I wonder what effect, if any, the lack of frying has on John's sauce above? I'd always been led to believe that sauteing/frying were needed.

And, I wonder if in a restaurant kitchen setting, where they tend to use very intense heat, the above boiled stock sauce would effectively get fried off anyway once it was chucked in the pan with the ingredients that had already been fried? That certainly seems feasible. Which might make the boiled sauce work better there than it would in a home kitchen its much tamer temperatures.

On this same theme, I read a few reviews of The Curry Secret book mentioned above, and one of the comments against a review stood out as it picked up on this boiling thing:

"The secret is the garlic, salt and oil combination added to the onions, you are right its not in this book.

For 4 people.

Saute gently 4 chopped onions in a LOT of vegetable oil. Make a paste in a blender with 6-10 garlic cloves, fresh ginger and water and a LOT of salt. Add to the onions and turn heat up for 2 minutes then, then add all your spices, tomatoes etc - 1/2 pint of water, some plain yogurt and cover and simmer for 25 minutes.

Then reduce for 15 minutes. This is your base. You wont get the restaurant flavour by just boiling everything in water. And you wont get that flavour unless you use a lot of garlic and salt!"

Any comments from the experts?!

[redsturgeon]

I must admit, I was a bit sceptical when I saw this recipe and I personally do not use it for my own curries as a rule but for the lad's korma it seemed to work, he liked it and he is very fussy when it comes to his korma. Personally I can't stand the stuff but he thought it tasted pretty much as the take away/curry house stuff and that was the objective.

I have also used it as the base for a jalfeizi when I had some left over from a batch made earlier and it tasted fine to me.

I usually fry my onion down, either chopped very finely or as a paste with the ginger and garlic. It is the same with spices though, I used to read that you should fry the spices but then I saw some Indian on Stein's programme adding water with the spices so as not to burn them, so I'm not sure now.

John

[DiamondEcho]

Supermarket curries are a pale imitation of the curry house offering, and I don't think I could replicate the proper CTM tarka dal mushroom pilau peshwari naan onion bhaji offering so I have stayed away from trying to cook curries. Cooking some chicken and onions and emptying a jar of supermarket CTM ready-made sauce is so different and bland and meh.

IME/O UK supermarket curries are pitched at a demographic that has perhaps minimal first-hand experience of authentic Asian food, and so are tailored to British tastes*. Heavy on meat, generally very mild spicing, extremely rich via the likes of added cream. No bones, no skin, you can eat the lot. Don't get me wrong I really enjoy a good Brit curry, but beyond the underlying broad spice-palette it hasn't a huge amount in common with what you'll find in Asia.

Another example is if you order a Brit seafood curry it'll usually be prawns. In Asia IME the typical seafood curry would be fish [or squid], usually dense oily fish, skin on bone-in, and cut in pieces say 2-3cm thick 'cross-ways', so each disc-shaped piece has a length of spine at say 12 O'clock, and the ribs running off it below. When it's cut like that it can withstand cooking, whereas a skinned fillet of a British white fish would perhaps completely disintegrate during cooking.

The typical Brit curry-house offerings can get closer to the authentic thing. But odds on that curious [and delicious!] British invention chicken tikka masala will be prominent on the menu. In one way you might be able to make a case that a proportion of what you find in a Brit-Indian restaurant is what you might expect to find at say an Indian wedding feast. It is certainly not everyday food over their way.

I have cooked up a curry from the fresh base spices, but have found you have to take great care with the measurements/proportions. IME it's not hard to get something or other over/represented in the mix. You also have to use the freshest spices possible, most lose pungency quickly, and veeery quickly after being ground. For that reason and for simplicity I tend to buy premixed curry powder and pastes for curries.
I'd recommend anyone with a visit to or stop-over in SE Asia buy some pre-mix powder/pastes. They're cheap and authentic. I actually usually prefer a Malay curry blend over Indian, it's a bit more aromatic/less of a blunt-tool [less cumin?]. This is the versatile curry powder I like:
Baba [Baba's] brand - http://www.malaysianfood.net/ordermsiancurry.htm comes in 100 or 250gm bags, cheap as chips.
Pantai paste - good brand for Thai pastes, example > https://www.amazon.com/Pantai-Green-Cur ... B00V4RXIGQ
If buying similar to these I'd also suggest picking up some freeze-dried coconut powder, again cheap as anything in SE Asia, and weighs almost nothing in your luggage. Such as Kara coconut cream [or milk, your choice how you mix it] powder - http://www.kara.com.my/c/coconut-cream-milk-powder Costs S$0.70 in Singapore, = 40p, makes 300Ml of milk, 150Ml of cream.

p.s. @RedS -' 'It is the same with spices though, I used to read that you should fry the spices but then I saw some Indian on Stein's programme adding water with the spices so as not to burn them, so I'm not sure now.'

Agreed you have to cook-off the spices. a) it helps develop and bring out their aroma b) it spreads their flavour into the cooking oil which then permeates the ingredients added later. IME if you don't cook off your spices their flavour is very 'blunt', really quite harsh and one dimensional.
When cooking off spices I use oil but also sometimes later add some water, that is if the spices absorb the oil leaving a dryish pan, and/or if it's getting too hot and risking burning the spice. You could of course just add more oil, but risk ending up with a finished dish swimming in it.

[I8UButler]

I am not a fan of the boiling method - have got The Curry Secret. I make batches of a base mix which is chopped onions, garlic, ginger, turmeric, ground cloves, white mustard seeds and cumin (I fry the spices before adding the onion. I add a chicken stock pot and cover with boiling water and fry it down - I used to use Ghee but sunflower oil is just as good, really.

You can add a tin of chopped tomatoes or some puree depending on what sort of curry you want but the above is my base sauce. When done, whizz it up with a hand blender until smooth or however you prefer and freeze until use. That's my base curry sauce.

Then you can add whatever else you want to make the curry of your choice - cayenne, paprika, chillies, coriander, cinnamon, cardamom or whatever. Korma - just add ground almonds, cinnamon and coconut milk to the base sauce. When doing chicken or lamb (especially tikka) I marinate it overnight in yoghurt, lemon juice and whatever spices before frying up and then adding the sauce.

I make my own garam masala too which is easy and v. nice.

Having said that, Iceland do a frozen Atomic Vindaloo which blows your head off and is actually really very good indeed and cheap as chips.

I need some chilli heat now.

[DiamondEcho]

Interesting stuff. Like you^ if I've time I'll pre-marinate the meat in the spices in the fridge, even a few hours helps. But I also find the flavour settles into a more subtle palette if cooked and left to infuse too. So ideally I might pre-marinate one evening, cook in the morning, and very gently re-heat for an evening meal. IME if you've time for either the pre or post step it adds to it.

[sg31]

The Curry Club used to do books of recipes that produced very acceptable restaurant like curries. From what others have said the technique may be similar to that used in 'The Curry Secret'. Various base sauces are made and then frozen in appropriate quantities, these can then be used to throw together a very authentic restaurant curry in about 20 minutes just by adding a few extra spices.

My wife bought me the first book about 30 years ago

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Curry- ... 0861888685

I spent a weekend preparing all the base sauces and it was then very easy to knock up a very good curry very quickly. We had great fun trying a lot of the curries just to see how good they were. The downside was the my wife and I both put on weight at an alarming rate.

We got out of the habit and life changed so I haven't revisited the books for a long time.

If you really want to make curry often, the various curry club books are worth considering.

[tea42]

I make regular visits to Asian Veg/Grocery stores. You can buy jars of minced garlic and ginger paste, minced garlic and decent sized sensibly priced bags of spices. I got my garlic for the allotment in an Asian store. I went round several stores and picked out just two of the biggest garlic bulbs at 50p for two, split them up and planted them in December. They are producing huge plants which make those of people who bought £5 Isle of Wight garlic bulbs look like wimps!

Aldi curry pastes are excellent, especially the Jalfrezi and Madras, inexpensive too.

[JMN2]

I have never used curry paste but today's plan is to marinate chicken in a small amount of it, with grated ginger and garlic. Fry onions in oil, add chicken marinade mixture, add rest of the paste, add coconut milk.

[johnstevens77]

[Of course this is very ersatz compared to what you can do with proper spicing.John[/quote]


Thanks for that John, I was about to bow a fuse there! I also use Madhur Jaffrey on occasions.

john

[JMN2]

I have never used curry paste but today's plan is to marinate chicken in a small amount of it, with grated ginger and garlic. Fry onions in oil, add chicken marinade mixture, add rest of the paste, add coconut milk.

I made a mistake of following the instructions on the paste jar and loosened up the paste with a little amount water before adding the coconut milk, ending up with a sauce that was too thin to my liking. Schoolboy error which I'm going to put right today.

I haven't seen a single kebab shop or curry house nearby, all they have here are fish and chips shops and Greggs. Chips with gravy. Corned beef pease pudding bap roll. My body is screaming out for spices and heat!

[JMN2]

Making a Mossaman curry from a paste today. Chicken, coconut cream, onion, spring omions, garlic, ginger, green beans, carrots. Little bit of rice on the side.

For portion control I will immediately take away a half and freeze it.