A Curry Odyssey Episode 10: Mum's Tangy Sweet Curry

I love it when I can combine two themes into one post: In this case, we have the latest installment in the Great Curry Odyssey, as well as another fast, healthy meal for you crazy NaNoWriMo participants.

By fast, I mean quick to prepare. So long as you can get this ready and leave it to stew for a couple of hours, then it won't take you away from your frantic writing pace for long.

This is the one that started it all; my Mum's famous Tangy Sweet Curry. It's by and large more of a British dish than an Indian one, but if you can get your hands on a good pre-mixed curry powder then there's no reason why this shouldn't stand in for a regular Indian feast. Takes about 15 minutes to prepare. Serve it up with bread rolls and you don't even have to spend time cooking rice.

Tangy Sweet Curry
(Serves 4)Ingredients
500g Stewing Steak, tenderised and cubed
Olive Oil for frying
8 Garlic cloves, minced
2 Onions, sliced
Freshly Ground Pepper and Salt
1T Flour (Use Potato Flour to make this Gluten-Free)
150g Tomato Paste
1/3 Cup Water
1 C Beef Stock
2t Curry Powder
2t Honey
1 Apple, cored and chopped
1 Kumara, peeled and diced
Heat the oil in a large pan. Soften the garlic and onions. Add the meat, season with the salt and pepper and flour and brown. Add the tomato paste and water.
Into your beef stock mix the curry powder and honey, then add to the pot.
Add the chopped apple and kumara. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.
Boil up some peas, steam a few carrots and some broccoli, and serve with buttered bread rolls.

A Curry Odyssey Episode 8: Chicken Masala

The Great Curry Odyssey continues!

I'll have to tell the truth here. All that hard work with the spices and the grinding and the frying and the blending and all that was never going to catch on. I think it's like Marmite or Chicken & Waffles; you really have to be brought up with it for it to make sense. That's not to say I've given up, mind you, or that I won't plunge into the hard work of real curry again. But for now, I'm not ashamed to say that I'm going to be looking for some shortcuts.

(Yes, you're right, I am ashamed. I'm weak and broken and deserve to be given the task of grinding coriander seeds and lemongrass to paste by hand for a thousand years with tennis elbow, but hey, that's not going to happen, is it?)

So for my first stop on the road to curry-shortcut-ville, I took the Garam Masala turnoff. I know that this is a vagary, but it is also a redemption of sorts. Garam Masala can be as unique as the person blending it. You can either pick it off the shelf at a supermarket, buy it pre-ground from your local Indian or Asian grocer, or, if you have the talent and the tastebuds, you can grind your own. Essentially Garam Masala is a blend of ground dried spices, and can include anything from coriander seeds to turmeric to cinnamon to cumin.

I got a nice pre-blended one from the little Indian grocer who used to be across the road, but which went out of business some months ago. It's probably going a wee bit stale, but it still suits us, and that's the one I used in this recipe.


Gluten-Free Casserole Chicken Masala

(Serves 6)
Ingredients
3kg Chicken Pieces, thawed, skin on
Freshly Ground Pepper and Salt
4T Potato Flour
2T Garam Masala
1/2 a whole bulb of Garlic, minced
4T Avocado Oil
2t Balsamic Vinegar
Olive Oil for frying
1/2 C White Wine
150g Tomato Paste
3 Onions, sliced
1 400g tin Chopped Tomatoes

Toss the chicken in the salt and pepper, flour, Garam Masala, garlic, avocado oil, and vinegar.
Fry in batches in a heavy pan.
Place the browned chicken in an oven dish.
Deglaze the pan with the white wine, then add the tomatoes and onions. Pour over the chicken.
Bake, uncovered, at 200C for 1 1/2 - 2 hours.
The meat should be falling off the bone. Serve with rice and steamed veges.

A Curry Odyssey Episode 7: Beef Rendang

It's been a little while since I updated The Great Curry Odyssey, and there is a very good reason for this; specifically, because I haven't had a chance to spend the afternoon making curry.

The more I go down this track, the more I like the idea of Curry Paste.

But a couple of weeks ago, at the Hutt Riverbank Market, my eagle eyes picked out a tiny stall where a man and his son were selling ingredients for real, authentic, make-it-from-scratch curry, including galangal, kaffir limes and leaves and, what really caught my eye:

Lemongrass.

My Nana has a lemongrass plant in Coromandel, where the stuff grows wild. Down here it's a delicacy, and more importantly, it's the key ingredient in one of my favourite curries, Rendang.

If you're in Wellington and you want to know why Rendang is my favourite curry ever, head down to Satay Village on Ghuznee St, and order the Chicken Rendang, with a side order of Roti. If you're not a curry person, order it in mild, and I guarantee you will still be impressed.

So, with grand delusions in my head that I might have even a ghost of a chance of creating a rendang to rival the best in Wellington, I bought a bunch of lemongrass and started scheming out dinner for the night.

For once (as is the way with the Great Curry Odyssey) I did a bit of research, trawled through several rendang recipes online, cross-referenced these with what I actually had on hand, and composed the following hybrid recipe.

For a first time, it came out pretty well, though it didn't have a bar on Satay Village. Being beef, not chicken, and not having lovely oily rotis to go with it probably didn't help. It was hotter than I anticipated, but we took it to a shared dinner, and thankfully Uncle Ian and Liz E Bear, who both like spicy food, gave it the thumbs up.

The curious thing is that that man and his son have not been at the market again since. I wish I was a travelling curry ingredient salesman, bringing galagnal to a new farmers market every week. That would be the life for me, indeed.

Of course, I'd need to a) grow galangal first, and b) know what galangal was, and what to use it for. That would help, I imagine.

Beef Rendang
(Serves 4)

Ingredients

500g Skirt Steak, diced
4 cloves of Garlic
2 small Onions
3 small dried Chillis
2t crushed Ginger
5 stalks of Lemongrass
1/4t Fennel seeds
1/4t Coriander seeds
1 whole Nutmeg
2T Brown Sugar
3 whole Cloves
1/4 Cinnamon stick
400ml can of Coconut Milk

Chop and fry the garlic and onions until just soft (You might not need to fry these. Between the market and dinner time I had forgotten I had lemongrass for rendang, and I had started making goulash. But hey, I'm just relaying what I did to get here). In a bowl, mix up the garlic and onion with the chillis, ginger, and lemongrass, chopped. Blend to a paste by whatever means is most practical. I would've liked more of a paste than what I got here, but I was rushed (what with having set out to cook a goulash, and now trying to throw together my rendang research on the fly).
I decided to use the Jamie Oliver Ball Thingy to mix up my masala, using it to pulverise the fennel, coriander, and nutmeg (which I think I grated in).
In a pot, heat the paste, then add the masala. Heat for a minute to bring out the flavours, then add the beef and brown, tossing in the curry mix to coat it.
Add the sugar, cloves, cinnamon, and coconut milk. Bring to the boil, reduce to a simmer, and leave to cook down for a couple of hours. The rendang should come out almost dry, but with lovely tender, spicy chunks of meat.
Serve over rice (preferably rice boiled in beef stock), with nice hot, oily rotis if you can get them.

Previous Posts in the Great Curry Odyssey:
Butter Chicken
Naan Bread (For Comedic Value Only)
Curried Lemon Chicken
Lamb Korma
Raita
Roti Bread

A Curry Odyssey Episode 6: Roti Bread

Back to the Great Curry Odyssey! It's lucky I'm getting so much mileage out of that big day when I made the Lamb Korma, because I haven't really cooked a proper curry since.

I have plans to try a Chicken Tikka Masala next, so if anyone can direct me to a good recipe to look at I'd appreciate it. A big shout goes out to BamBam for the loan of the Food of India book. It's the ultimate inspiration in print.

Moving onto Roti bread, then. What's great about this is that unlike my disastrous attempt at making Naan breads, this recipe for Rotis came out perfect first time. Seriously, I've never made these before. Following a link on my Key Ingredient: The Back Burner feed, I found this step-by-step photo recipe for making your own rotis from scratch. Lubna at the Yummy Food blog has gone to all the effort, but I didn't want to steal her photos, so I took my own. It's all her recipe, though. And it works, first time.

Before I launch into it, I'll make one quick comment. The roti we get when we order Indian or Malaysian or Thai tend to be a bit greasy, and are generally quite delicious. These ones, on the other hand, are dry and crunchy. However, I'm sure that this comes down to balancing your ingredients to suit your tastes and health needs. Quite simply, add more salt and oil for a more flavoursome, indulgent bread, or leave them as they are for a healthier option than you'll get from the local takeaways.

Roti/Chapati/Indian Flatbread

(Makes about 6, depending on how big you want them)

Ingredients
2 C Hi-Grade Flour
Extra flour for dusting
Water to mix dough, as required
2-3 drops of Oil for kneading
Pinch of salt
More Oil or Ghee if you have it
Combine flour, salt and oil, then add water slowly to form the dough. Knead until this becomes soft and elastic. Cover and leave to rise in a warm place for 15-20 mins.

Divide the dough into 5-6 roughly equal portions. Dust with flour and set aside.
Take one piece of dough and roll out flat on a floured surface.
Brush with a little oil (or a little more, depending on your taste) and fold the corners in...
...and in...
... and in ...
... then flour and roll out again.
Heat a wide heavy pan. Place the rolled roti on the pan. Cook until the top starts to look a bit dry, and turn before it starts to burn.
Press down on the roti with a kitchen tea towel or paper towel as the other side cooks to get a nice even puff.

Now you can brush your roti with more oil or ghee and either put aside in a warm place (ie, in a warming drawer) or serve up straight away with hot curry and cold raita.

More of the Great Curry Odyssey

A Curry Odyssey Episode 4: Lamb Korma

Freshly Ground will be operating in Auto-Publish Mode for the next two weeks or so, as we will be away in the blue yonder, many miles from cellphone coverage and internet access. Please feel free to leave comments, but don't be offended if they don't turn up here until April.

Have a good couple of weeks. I hope you find the stuff I have lined up as appetising as I did cooking and eating it.

A Curry Odyssey - Episode 4

When I set out looking for recipes for the next stage in my Great Curry Odyssey, I was completely blown away by the sheer volume and variety of different korma recipes out there. It seems that 'korma' is really just a vague, generic term for a type of curry that has a nutty base with some tomato paste thrown in for good measure, and which, in more northern areas of the subcontinent, utilises saffron, while this is substituted for turmeric further south.

More than this, I cannot tell you.

So, in my quest for the ultimate mash-up, which I hoped would turn out like the kormas I have enjoyed in the past, and not like those which I have not enjoyed, I engaged in a very practical bit of culinary engineering to create the recipe below.

It went basically like this: Of all the ingredients I've read in all the dozens of recipes I've googled, how many of these do I actually have on hand?

Based on that, and the lovely lamb I had picked up at the market that very morning, I dived into my first ever attempt at an authentic, ground-up korma curry. I also made raita and roti bread, and even my own tomato paste, all of which I'll also cover in future installments of the Great Curry Odyssey. It was a busy kitchen that Saturday afternoon.

(Yes, other men watch sport. I cook. Get over it.)

The results: I wouldn't be overstating it to say that this recipe came out this side of superb, what with it being a first try and all that. I think that with a bit more practice I could probably pare back the prep times and wotnot, but the results were well worth the effort. You can't get a meal with this sort of depth and texture by dumping a few spoonfuls of curry powder in a pot and leaving it on the stove for an hour, that's for sure.

Lamb Korma

(Serves 4)

Ingredients

For the Cashew Sauce:
2 Cloves of Garlic
1t Fresh Crushed Ginger
1/8C unsalted Cashews
1 dried chilli, chopped (more or less according to your taste for fire)
2/3C Water
Pulverise all of the above together to make a paste and set aside.

For the Masala:
1/2 Cinnamon Quill
1/2t Coriander Seeds
1 Whole Green Cardamon Pod
2 Cloves
1t Olive Oil/Rice Bran Oil
Pulverise all of the above together and set aside.

For the rest:
400g Fresh Diced Lamb (Stewing)
1 Onion, chopped
25g Butter
1/3C Plain Yoghurt
1T Tomato Paste (I used the paste I had made that very same day! Watch this space.)
Fry the onion in the butter in a large pan. As the onion starts to soften, add the Masala of spices and mix thoroughly.Add the yoghurt and tomato paste and turn the heat down.
In a second, smaller pan, brown the meat in batches over a high heat. Remove the meat as it becomes seared all over, and when all the meat is done, return it all to the small pan and add the onion mixture.
Finally add the cashew sauce in stages, adding a bit and allowing the mixture to reduce before adding more. This should be about 1/4C at a time.
Simmer gently, stirring occasionally, until reduced to a lovely, sticky consistency with delicious tender chunks of meat - probably about 2 1/2 hours.
Serve with the fresh raita you just pulled out of the fridge, and the rotis that you just pulled from the frying pan. If you really feel the urge, you can do something resembling a vegetable or two to go with this, but after all that work, you probably just want to sit down and enjoy a lovely spicy curry with hot roti bread and cold, minty raita. I know that's all we did.

A Curry Odyssey Episode 3: Curried Lemon Chicken

OK, before I get onto whether or not this recipe is breaking the rules of the Curry Odyssey, I have a more worrying issue to address. Part of the reason why I was so keen to get right into making curries this year was because I had discovered, just across the road from where I work, a little Indian Food Grocer, who carried all sorts of obscure ingredients for authentic Indian cooking.

In particular, they sold jasmine rice in bulk, at about half the cost of getting it at the supermarket, as well as things like whole cardamons, fengureek seed, and a whole raft of uncommon spices and flours. Now, they're closing the doors.

This recession bites, and not in a good way.

So, can anyone in the Wellington area direct me to another good supplier of the raw ingredients I need to make my Curry Odyssey something worth writing about? Because a year of variations on a theme of "2T Curry Powder" will get boring pretty quickly.

But on the more serious side of this issue, I think we all need to ponder, at least briefly, how we treat our small local businesses, and ask ourselves whether we care for them like they deserve.

Because if we find that the only place we can go to buy food in ten year's time is a giant supermarket, and we all end up eating the same bland mass-produced meals, because all of the little stores that catered to the business end of our taste-buds have closed down, who will we have to blame?

Moving on, were there any rules to the Curry Odyssey? For example, could I only make curries that were recognised as classics and had a proper Indian name, or can I still make stuff up? Experience would suggest that I am not really enough of an expert in the field to fudge it, but when has experience ever taught anyone anything useful?

Also, am I allowed to post stuff that I actually cooked and photographed before I even made the decision to begin the Great Curry Odyssey? Well, the best thing about playing your own game is that you can make up the rules as you go.

I therefore decree, that YES, I can make stuff up if I want to, and YES, I can post in whatever temporal order I feel appropriate. And since the impending death of my local Indian supplier has left me somewhat bereft of inspiration right now, I present for your eating pleasure...

Mysterious Curried Lemon Chicken

(Serves 3)

Lemon chicken might be a Chinese thing, but I have a lemon tree, so as far as I'm concerned, Lemon can go with anything.

Even Chicken.

And Curry.

Yip.

Ingredients:

6 x Scored Chicken Drumsticks (ie, duplicate this recipe once for every 500g of Chicken Pieces you might want to cook), marinaded as below;

For the Marinade:
4T Soy Sauce
Zest and Juice of 1/2 Lemon
1T Garam Masala
2T Olive Oil
1T Minced Garlic
1T Honey
Freshly Ground Pepper

Marinate the chicken for at least 1 hour, preferably 6, in an oven dish that fits the pieces snugly.
Bake, uncovered, @ 220C for 45 mins to 1 hr, until the chicken juices run clear. Switch the oven over to grill for the last 10 minutes. Meanwhile, prepare the sauce, and boil a pot of jasmine rice.

Lemon Sauce Ingredients:
Juice of 1 Lemon
Shaved Lemon Zest
1/2 Cup of Water
2T Malt Vinegar
1 Cinnamon Quill
6T Brown Sugar
1t Vanilla essence, or the scrapings from 1 Vanilla Pod

Put all the ingredients in a small pot. Bring to the boil and turn down to a simmer, gradually reducing the sauce until it thickens. Remove the cinnamon quill after about 5 minutes of simmering. When the sauce is ready, scoop out the solids.
Dish the chicken over the rice and drizzle the sauce over everything. Serve with a nice crisp green salad.

A Curry Odyssey Episode 2: How Not To Make Naan Bread

Nothing makes a curry go down better than a nice, fresh, hot naan bread.

I don't know how I got it into my head that I could make good naan bread, though. Particularly not when I went with the first recipe I found, which was on a site specially for New Zealand's Over 50s. (On that note, I went to buy spraypaint at Repco today and got asked for ID, to prove I was at least 18. Not many 31-year olds have that honour.)

I should've been suspicious of the apparent simplicity of the recipe, and the lack of any real detail of the important techniques required to make it come out right.

I also might've failed to read and follow instructions very well, but you're probably aware by now that following recipes is not my strong point.

So I'll spare you the details, and just lament my failure on this one. If anyone can point me in the direction of a good naan recipe, with complete and helpful instructions, I will be eternally grateful.

Because curry without naan is a bit like a burger without beetroot - what's the point?

(To all of you non-Kiwis who don't get the idea of beets in burgers, you really need to try it. Seriously. Yum.)

I started with real yeast...
mixed up all the ingredients, including flour, yoghurt and egg...
kneaded it the old fashioned way, at which point I realised I could have used the breadmaker like I usually do...
let it rise, and then cut it into triangular pieces...

at which point it all went wrong.
Mainly I think this had to do with a lack of rolling, because I somehow thought that even though the breads at this stage were short and fat, not long and skinny, they would somehow magically become long and lean and luscious like a naan should be.

Also, my habit when making bread is to handle the dough as little as possible at this stage so as not to make it go... er... flat. Yeah, my mind really wasn't in it.
I even sprinkled them with garlic salt and olive oil, in the hope that they would miraculously turn out how I envisioned them.
They didn't.

Ideally, a naan is oily and chewy and a little bit crunchy and should look something like this:
When my naans look like this, I'll be happy. Thanks to Mr Malique for the image (Copyright Mr Malique). Meanwhile, I've got some nice garlicky short loaves in the freezer which might make nice sandwiches...

So, the Curry Odyssey ran into its first hurdle, but though we stumble, we shall not fall. Onwards and upwards, I say. And thanks to everyone who has sent me recipes so far. I will get to all of them, I promise.

A Curry Odyssey Begins: Butter Chicken

As per my last post, I have set foot on the the road to becoming a Dad Who Can Cook a Mean Curry.

I started with this recipe, via Steph at A Year of Crockpotting, because it looked easy. I adjusted the quantities and ingredients to suit the size of my family and to accommodate availability of local ingredients, whipped it together in half an hour and popped it in the Crockpot. Gotta love the Crockpot.

The end result was, we all agreed, a jolly passable Butter Chicken. I used Chicken Breast, because that's what we had, but of course it's not best suited to use in the slow cooker, so thighs or even drumsticks would probably have been better.

I also added the brown sugar in the last hour of cooking, because while the curry had a lot of flavour, it was spicy but not sweet. I suspect that perhaps coconut cream and even plain yoghurt in the US are sweetened, which would have compensated, but since ours aren't, I added brown sugar. What are you going to do? I said I wanted a toned-down, sweet and creamy curry, and that's what we got. Nomnomnom.

As a sidenote, I tried making Naan bread as well. That didn't work out quite so well, and will be covered in Episode 2 of the Great Curry Odyssey. Meanwhile, I'm still open to any great curry recipes you might have to offer. Thanks to Le Laquet for the Dahl recipe. I'll put it on the list!

Butter Chicken (Slow-Cooker Recipe)

Serves 4

Ingredients

600g boneless, skinless chicken breast

1/2 an Onion, Sliced

3 Garlic Cloves, Finely Sliced

7 Cardamon Pods

1 t Curry Powder

1/4 t Kaitaia Fire/Other Tobasco Sauce

1 t Garam Masala

1/4 C Brown Sugar

1/2 t Crushed Fresh Ginger

2 T Butter

50g Tomato Paste

200ml Coconut Cream

1 T Lemon Juice

1 Cup Plain, Unsweetened Yoghurt

3 T Cream

Slice the Chicken into roughly 2 inch slabs and drop it in the crockpot. Add the chopped onion and garlic.

Either sew the cardamon pods together, or wrap them in a little cheesecloth with some cooking twine,

like so:

Mysteriously, my cheesecloth vanished during cooking, which seemed to defeat the purpose, and means that we all ate at least a little of it in the process. But somewhere in the leftovers (tomorrow's lunch) I'm going to find a little piece of string and a whole mouthful of cardamon. Nom...nom...nyuk.

Add these to the crockpot, along with the dry ingredients and the ginger. Stir it all up. Add the tomato paste, butter, coconut cream and lemon juice, stir it all in and turn the crockpot on to high for 3 3/4 hours, or on low for 7 hours.

In the last 15 mins, stir in the yoghurt and cream.Serve with Jasmine Rice, fresh chilled cucumber, steamed veges and naan bread - preferably better than the ones I made!

Who has a great Butter Chicken Recipe?

I love a good curry, but I can't cook one to save myself. I'm not talking about whipping up a bit of beef with curry powder and tomato soup and raisins, either; I mean something that might be thought to resemble a genuine dish of Subcontinental persuasion.

Of course, we run into a problem. Just like Chinese food, which any self-respecting Chinese person will tell you cannot be bought at any New Zealand fast food outlet that claims to be selling Chinese meals, the Indian food we can buy here sits somewhere between the genuine article and the sweetened, watered down versions dished up by such institutions as the Tulsi chain of restaurants.

And here I must make a confession. I think that I prefer the Kiwi imitations of Indian cuisine. Tulsi actually make a pretty nice curry, as far as I'm concerned. Supermarkets sell various brands of pre-prepared curry dishes, whose genuineness-to-flavour ratios are also suitably skewed, but you know how I feel about pre-packaged sauces. Some of the poorest people in the world can whip up delicious curry meals out of hardly anything, so why should we have to pay exorbitant prices for the branded stuff? Cooking from scratch, that's the thing.

I'll mention here, of course, that I'm sure those poor folk don't have access to as much meat, or as much dairy, or even the yoghurt and tomato paste and coconut cream that we have the luxury of picking up at the store, and for that I am a) greatly appreciative, and b) even more admiring of how fantastically they must be able to cook.

Please, noone raise the fact that Indians by and large eat very little meat, and that in comparison, the menu items offered in your average New Zealand Indian restaurant do not by any means reflect this. That's a whole can of worms I'd rather not open.

So we've established that what we call Indian food here is not what an Indian family would call dinner; in fact it might be what they would call junk food, and laugh at us, in the same way that we would laugh at someone who deepfried a kumera and called it a hangi. Nonetheless, it's a curry of this calibre that I would like to be able to cook up at home: something fragrant and sweet but not too spicy, because some of us here (though not I) have delicate palates. And besides, I like to taste the complexity of a dish as full of different tastes and textures as a curry, and too much heat can actually be counter-productive to the enjoyment of the meal. IMHO.

I'm currently looking at trying this one by Mallika (Image Copyright Quick Indian Cooking 2007), which strikes me as awfully authentic and might be a whole lot more curry than we're hoping for;

And this one, which is at the other end of the scale, coming from a TVNZ breakfast show, and is probably as tame as a tortoise in a torpor;

And finally this one, for the slow cooker, by the crazy woman who used her crockpot every single day of last year. (Image Copyright A Year Of Crockpotting 2008)

Can anyone recommend any more good curry recipes, be they Butter Chicken (our favourite), Tikka Masala, Korma, Rogan Josh, etc? Since I've just very recently discovered Jasmine rice, which goes beautifully with curry, I intend to make more curries this year, particularly when the days get shorter and the nights colder.

So please post your favourite curry recipes in the comments, either as a comment or as a link, and I'll get back to you when I've tried it out.

Thanks!