Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

Galangal is a spice from the ginger family and the root looks like ginger root.

It is used a lot in Thai, Indonesian and Malaysian cooking and has similar properties to ginger when used culinary dishes. For this reason, you can often substitute ginger for galangal if you can’t get hold of galangal. But you should be able to find galangal in shops and supermarkets that sell a complete range of spices.

Galangal is native to Java and southern China and is now grown widely in South East Asia.

Galangal used to be a common spice in Europe but is seldom used there nowadays.

As well as the culinary uses, galangal also has some medicinal applications.

Galangal is used as an herbal medicine to treat upset stomachs and loss of appetite.

Galangal is also used in cattle medicines and as a horse stimulant.

And galangal is also used in perfumes, tea and in brewing.

The results are in for the 2007 British Curry Awards.

At a lavish ceremony at London’s Grosvenor Hotel last Sunday (21st October), Chris Tarrant hosted the awards.

The following were 10 regional winners:

Scotland / Northern Ireland: Britannia Spice, Edinburgh
North East: The Valley, Corbridge, Northumberland
North West: Indian Ocean, Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire
East Midlands: Mem Saab, Northampton
West Midlands: Lasan, Birmingham
Wales: Bengal Dynasty, Shotton, Flintshire
South East: Aziz, Oxford
South West: Rajpoot, Bath
London Central & City: La Porte des Indes, W1
London Suburbs: Brilliant Restaurant, Southall

The “Newcomer of the Year��? award went to Asha’s restaurant, from Birmingham. This award goes to the best restaurant that has been open for less than 3 years.

A special “Personality of the Year��? award went to Cyrus Todiwala who owns the Café Spice Namaste restaurant in London.

And another special award, for “Outstanding Customer Service��? went to Edinburgh’s Roti restaurant.

Chris Tarrant effortlessly hosted the awards and related the amusing tale of his arrest, earlier this year, by 4 policemen at a Nottingham Indian restaurant after he jokingly threw a spoon at a fellow diner.

The ceremony wasn’t just about presenting awards. There was also entertainment from Honey Kalaria and the Diva Dancers and illusionist Shahid Malik.

If you like a good curry, why not visit one of the winning restaurants to see what a top curry is all about?

Hi, Ray here again.

I’m getting pretty good at this cooking game so I chose two recipes to try in one day! I don’t think I’m getting too cocky because the second recipe is really simple and the first is pretty easy as well. Tonight it’s chicken biryani and onion bhajis.

I needed to get chicken, yoghurt, chickpea flour for the recipes. My local Indian supply stores did not have chickpea flour so I used pea flour instead.

I firstly prepared the marinade for the chicken and left the chicken marinating whilst I started on the bhajis.

I cooked the onions and left them to cool and then made up the flour mix ready for frying.

After the chicken had marinated, I fried up the onion rings and put them into a low oven to keep them warm.

Then a quick frying of the spices and then in went the chicken pieces, quickly followed by the rice and water. I’m glad I used my biggest frying pan – it was almost full to overflowing.

Whilst the chicken was cooking, I heated up the oil for the onion bhajis. Once the oil was hot enough, in went 3 bhajis. 2 of the bhajis held together but one broke up into fragments – not to worry. I put the cooked bhajis onto a plate and put them into the oven with the warm onion rings. Then in went the rest of the bhajis – I had made the mixture into 6 bhajis because 12 would have been tiny. These bhajis cooked the same as before, with one of them breaking up.

I kept stirring the biryani whilst cooking the bhajis.

When everything was about ready, I grabbed some coriander leaves and chopped them up.

I served up the biryani with some bhajis on the side and sprinkled some coriander over the top.

The assembled dinner guests were very pleased with my efforts. The biryani had a lovely, delicate, spice taste and was cooked to perfection - and the bhaji was yummy.

The meal rated a good 7 out of 10.

I would definitely recommend that you try this meal.

We received an email asking why we did not have any Japanese curry recipes on the website.

The simple answer is that nobody has submitted one to the website yet.

So we asked the writer to give us a couple of curry recipes to start with and did some reading up on Japanese curries.

Curries are very popular in Japan and most homemade curries are made with a bought roux. The word roux has various meanings in culinary circles, but the one that applies here is that it is a base for gravies (curry sauce is a gravy). The roux is bought from a shop in a packet (it is dry) and is added to the dish as it is being cooked. There are lots of different types of roux, ranging from mild to very hot, so you can choose the one you like.

Our emailer supplied us a recipe for a Japanese Curry Roux and it is on the website in the “Pickles, Chutneys, Spices, Pastes and Salsas” category. He also gave us a recipe for a Japanese Chicken Curry and this is also on the website in the “Chicken Dishes” category.

A lot of Japanese curries have vegetable ingredients, such as potatoes and carrots, as well as meat, with the most popular meats being chicken, beef, pork and fish.

Japanese curry is traditionally served on rice or noodles.

Japanese curry? Oishii (delicious).

Hi, Ray here again.

I was browsing the Curry Focus recipes when I spotted the one for paratha. Being a big fan of this type of bread, and having a delicious supply from my local Indian store, I decided to try to make them myself.

The number of ingredients is pretty small (6 altogether) but I was a bit wary of the number of words in the method part of the recipe – there’s a whole page of instructions.

Still, I had everything already in the kitchen so paratha was the next cooking experiment.

I sieved and mixed the flours and made the dough pretty easily. Then I rubbed the dough with a little oil and then put it into a plastic bag for half an hour.

Now the work really began. It took me about 40 minutes to roll and prepare the paratha. Then it took me about 45 minutes to cook them, one at a time. I tried a couple of them whilst I was cooking and wasn’t overly impressed. Not to worry, I wrapped up six of them in some foil and put them aside for heating up later.

That evening I prepared a stunning dhal, which is the subject of my previous recipe review. And I heated up the paratha to have with the dhal.

Whilst the small dinner party of 3 thoroughly enjoyed the dhal, the paratha were a different store. The paratha somehow managed to be dry and pretty tasteless.

The paratha only rated a paltry 4 out of 10, which was a shame seeing that it took so much time and effort to make them.

I won’t be making paratha again so the local Indian store can look forward to my weekly visits for some time into the future.

Time to try another recipe from the Curry Focus web site. I chose the dhal recipe because it looked so easy and I like dhal.

Everything was in the pantry except for the lentils and I just picked them up from my local supermarket.

This really is an unbelievably easy meal to cook.

I washed and drained the lentils and put them on to cook.

Whilst the lentils were cooking, I prepared the onion and garlic and measured out and mixed the spices.

I drained the lentils after they were cooked and fried the onions and garlic. Then in went the spices.

Soon the lentils were added to the frying pan and everything was going along nicely. I noticed that the dhal kept drying out (maybe I had the heat up too high) so I added some boiling water a few times (just a little as I didn’t want the dhal to turn into soup).

Then I cut off some of the coriander plant that I’ve got growing by the kitchen window and chopped up the leaves for the garnish.

It was really that easy.

The recipe said that that it served 4 but it was really only enough for 2. Luckily there were only 3 of us for dinner and I padded it out with a few paratha.

And what was the verdict? Delicious! It rated an excellent 8.5 out of 10 with a “spice” heat score of medium to hot. Pretty good. And I’m under orders to cook it again soon – I won’t be complaining.

Mustard

Mustard is a plant that is widely grown around the world. It is a common crop in Hungary, UK, India, Canada and US.

The mustard seeds are usually either ground into a powder and mixed into a paste, to be used as a condiment, or fried whole until they pop and release their taste into the oil.

The seeds can be black, brown or yellow and they have a sharp and fiery taste. The black seeds are the most pungent with the yellow being the mildest of the three.

Mustard seeds are widely used in curry powders and pastes in Indian cooking

Mustard is used in poultices to give a soothing, warm feeling and has applications in soothing stiff joints.

Curry Leaf

The curry-leaf tree is native to India and grows to a height of about 4 metres (12 feet) tall.

The leaves are very aromatic and are used as an herb in cooking. The leaves give a mild curry taste with an herb aroma and a hint of citrus and some mild bitterness.

The leaves are used in Indian cooking much like bay leaves and are often added to curries that contain fish or coconut milk.

The leaves lose their potency very quickly so use fresh ones wherever possible. The leaves are typically fried in oil to release their fragrance and taste.

Despite it’s name, curry leaf is not usually part of commercially made curry powder.

The 2007 British Curry Awards

Curry is the favourite UK food with more than 25% of the population eating Indian food. Every week, 2.5 million UK customers eat Indian food.

And the UK exports (yes exports) curries around the world, including Asia. The extremely popular Chicken Tikka Masala dish is a UK creation and is acknowledged as the most popular curry in the world.

The 2000 British Curry Awards will be hosted by Chris Tarrant on 21st October at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London.

The curry industry employs over 100,000 people in the UK and there are around 9,500 Indian restaurants with a turnover of £3.2 billion. There were only 500 curry restaurants in the UK in the mid 1960s.

More that 18,000 nominations were received from the public and these were for more than 3,000 restaurants, with the highest number of nominations for a single restaurant being 1,400.

The judges have compiled a of the top 100 restaurants and there is a separate list of 15 restaurants in the “Best Newcomer” category.

The full list of the Top 100 and Best Newcomer restaurants is:

SCOTLAND / NORTHERN IRELAND

Ashoka, Ashton Lane, Glasgow (Tel. 079 3271 3212)
Britannia Spice, Commercial Street, Edinburgh (0131 555 2255)
Cinnamon, Comber Road, Belfast (0289 048 0680)
Nazma Tandoori, Bridge Street, Aberdeen (0122 421 1306)

NORTH EAST

Aagrah, Aberford Road, Garforth, Leeds (0113 287 6606)
Jinnah, Malton Road, York (0190 446 8202)
Last Days of the Raj, Kells Lane, Lowfell, Gateshead (0191 482 6494)
The Spice Cube, Newgate Street, Newcastle (0191 222 1181)
The Valley, Station Road, Northumberland (01434 663434)
Valley Junction 397, Archbold Terrace, Newcastle (0191 281 6397))
Vujon, Queen Street, Quayside, Newcastle (0191 221 0601)
The Valley Connection 301, Market Place, Hexham (01434 601234)

NORTH WEST

Passage of India, Monton Road, Eccles, Manchester (0161 787 7546)
The Millennium Saagar, Sherwood Terrace, Douglas, Isle of Man (01624 679871)
The Viceroy, Rigg Street, Carlisle (01228 590909)
Mumtaz, Great Horton Road, Bradford (01274 571861)
Indian Ocean, Stamford Street East, Ashton-under-Lyne (0161 343 3343)

EAST MIDLANDS

Ashoka, Melton Road, Leicester (0116 261 1331)
Chamelee, Sycamore Street, Leicester (0116 277 1179)
Tamarind, Wellingborough Road, Northampton (01604 231194)
Mem Saab, Wellingborough Road, Northampton (01604 630214)
Voujon, Cambridge Street, Wellingborough (01933 222265)

WEST MIDLANDS

Agra Palace, Abbey Green, Nuneaton (02476 350515)
Lasan, St James Street, Birmingham (0121 212 3664)
Rajnagar, Lyndon Road, Solihull (0121 742 8140)
Sonargaon Tandoori, Daventry Road, Cheylesmore, Coventry (02476 504670)
The Raj Spice, Halesowen Street, Warley (0121 559 5537)
Turmeric Gold, Spon Street, Coventry (02476 226603)
Pickles Fusion, Stratford Road, Henley in Arden, Solihull (0156 478 4466)

WALES

Juboraj Rhiwbina, Heol-y-Deri, Cardiff (02920 628894)
Bengal Dynasty, Chester Road East, Shotton, Deeside (01244 830455)
Bokhara Brasserie, Court Colman Manor Hotel, Pen-y-Fai, Bridgend (01656 720212)
Cardamom, Cowbridge Road, Cardiff (02920 233506)
Cinnamon Tree, Tonteg Road, Treforest (01443 843222)
Mumbai, Mill Lane, Blackpill, Swansea (01792 402402)
Sheesh Mahal, Stepney Street, Llanelli (01554 773773)
Anarkali, St Helens Road, Swansea (01792 650549)

SOUTH EAST

Aziz, Cowley Road, Oxford (01865 794945)
Café Masala, Thorpe Bay, Southend (0170 258 9494)
Dhanmondi Tandoori, Petersfield Road, Bordon (01402 477666)
Dil Raj, Ock Street, Abingdon (01235 553305)
Elaichi, Millbrook Square, Wantage (01235 772010)
Emperor of India, Windsor Road, Maidenhead (01628 624100)
Green Spice, Green Street Green, Near Dartford (01474 708428)
Hook Tandoori, Hook, Hants (01256 764844)
Jaflong, Market Square, Bicester, Oxon (01869 323210)
Jalsa Ghar, Stortford Road, Great Dunmow (01371 873330)
Light of India, Townwall Street, Dover (01304 210666)
Magna Tandoori, Argyle Road, Bognor Regis (01243 828322)
Mahaan, Montague Street, Worthing (01903 205449)
Maharani, Norwich Road, Ipswich (01473 232266)
Miah’s Garden of Gulab, Wokingham Road, Reading (0118 966 7979)
Pasha, London Road, Waterlooville (023 922 30222)
Poppadom Express, Oxford Street, Southampton (023 806 32444)
Spice Merchant, London Road, Beaconsfield (01494 675474)
Spice Merchant, Thamseside, Henley on Thames (01491 636118)
Taj Cuisine, Sherwood House, Walderslade Centre, Walderslade (01634 686648)
Taj Mahal, High Street, Crawley (01293 529755)
The Darjeeling, South Street, Farnham (01252 714322)
The Raj of Kent, Biddenden Road, Tenterden (01233 851191)
Viceroy of India, St Leonards Road, Windsor (01753 858005)

SOUTH WEST

Balti House, Commercial Road, Weymouth (01305 783515)
Taj Mahal, St Peter Port, Guernsey (01481 724008)
Anokaa, Fisherton Street, Salisbury (01722 414142)
Jaflong, Burford Street, Lechlade on Thames (01367 252956)
Mahabharat Balti House, Mill Street, Kingsbridge (01548 857072)
Mahabharat, Torwood Street, Torquay (01803 215541)
Rajpoot, Argyle Street, Bath (01225 444527)
Taj Mahal, The Causeway, Chippenham (01249 653243)
Viceroy, Middle Street, Yeovil (01935 421758)

LONDON CENTRAL & CITY

Durbar Tandoor, Hereford Road, W2 (0207 727 1947)
Gaylord, Mortimer Street, W1 (0207 580 3615)
Mehek, London Wall, Moorgate, EC2 (0207 588 5044)
Sitar, The Strand, WC2 (0207 836 3730)
Le Taj, Brock Lane, E1 (0207 247 0733)
Bombay Brasserie, Courtfield Road, SW7 (0207 370 4040)
Chutney Mary, Kings Road, SW1 (0207 351 3113)
The Cinnamon Club, Great Smith Street, SW1 (0207 222 2555)
Tamarind, Queen Street, W1 (0207 629 3561)
La Porte des Indes, Bryansdon Street, W1 (0207 224 0055)
Café Spice Namaste, Prescot Street, E1 (0207 488 9242)
Benares, Berkeley Square, W1 (0207 629 8886)
Amaya, Motcomb Street, SW1 (0871 223 8036)

LONDON SUBURBS

Shampan 3, Falcon Wood Parade, Welling (0208 304 9569)
Joy, Brighton Road, Surbiton (0208 390 3988)
Shampan 2, Chatterton Road, Bromley (0208 460 7169)
Tower Tandoori, Tower Bridge, SE1 (0207 237 2247)
Akash, Stafford Road, Wallington (0208 647 5592)
Brilliant Restaurant, Western Road, Southall (0208 574 1928)
Day of the Raj, The Broadway, NW7 (0208 906 3363)
Grapes Tandoori, Uxbridge Road, Hayes (0208 569 1911)
Jaflong, Northolt Road, South Harrow (0208 864 7345)
Nazmin’s, Garratt Lane, Earlsfield (0208 864 7345)
Sheesh Mahal, London Road, Twickenham (0208 892 5471)
Sipson Tandoori, Harmondsworth Road, West Drayton (01895 435515)
Spice Merchant, Belmont Road, Uxbridge (01895 252925)
Sree Krishna, Tooting High Street, SW17 (0208 672 4250)
Planet Spice, Selsdon Park Road, Addington (0208 651 3300)
Chilli Chutney, Streatham High Road, SW16 (0208 696 0123)

NEWCOMER

Asha’s, Newhall Street, Birmingham (0121 200 2767)
Aziz Pandesia, Folly Bridge, Oxford (01865 247775)
Café Rasoi, High Street, Heathfield, East Sussex (01435 860770)
Jal Khabar, Maryport Street, Devizes (01380 723600)
Kardamom Lounge, High Street, Stony Stratford, Milton Keynes (01908 567481)
Mint Cuisine, Stoney Lane, Yardley, Birmingham (0121 789 8908)
Saffron Club, Glossop Road, Old Bath, Sheffield (0114 276 6150)
Spice Lodge, Montpelier Drive, Cheltenham (01242 226300)
Spice Route, Atlantic Wharf, Cardiff (029 204 88820)
Voujon, Newington Road, Edinburgh (0131 667 5046)
Zouk, Leeds Road, Bradford (01274 258025)

Why not try out one of the nominated restaurants and find out just how good they are? You may already be lucky and have one of the restaurants as your regular curry house.

We’ll keep you posted on who gets the awards in just over a week.

Time to try out another yummy curry recipe. The last few have been chicken curry recipes so this time I’ve gone for the Beef Curry recipe from the Curry Focus web site.

Apart from the beef, I already had all of the ingredients except for the fresh coriander and chillies. So a quick trip to the meat counter at the supermarket with a detour, on the way back, to my local Indian supermarket. I couldn’t resist the paratha that were lurking on the counter beside the till so that was my impulse purchase of the day.

The beef curry recipe is really very simple.

I cut up the meat and trimmed off the worst of the fat whilst the oven was heating up, before coating the beef in flour and frying to seal the meat. I used my big, heavy frying pan.

Then the beef went into a casserole with the sliced onion, cardamom pods, bay leaves and garlic with enough water to cover the lot.

I made the spice paste, prepared the garam masala gravy and chopped up the coriander before sitting down and reading a book for 90 minutes.

Then I was up onto my feet again. First I got the basmati rice ready to go into the microwave.

I fried the onions and then added the garlic, ginger and fresh chillies. There wasn’t much oil left over from frying the beef so I added 2 more tablespoons to do the onions.

The rice was already underway when I added the spices for quick frying before transferring the beef from the casserole into the frying pan, adding the garam masala gravy and simmering the beef.

The rice finished cooking and the paratha went into the microwave whilst I added the coriander and started dishing up the meal. Everyone got a neat mound of rice with a good serving of beef curry, garnished with a sprinkling of fresh coriander, with a generous portion of paratha.

The dinner guests were hustled up to the table and the eating began. It was great. Everyone loved the meal and I got a lot more praise than I felt I deserved seeing it was such an easy recipe to follow.

We gave it a rating of 7 out of 10 and everyone wanted to know what I was planning to cook next.

I’m not sure which curry will be next but I do know that it will be one of the Curry Focus recipes.

Fennel

Fennel is an herb and also a spice and has leaves and seeds that have a sweet and aromatic taste similar to anise. In fact, there is no different word for fennel and anise in some languages, such as Amharic and Hebrew.

Fennel originated around the Mediterranean and gradually spread to India, where it is widely used in cooking. It is a basic ingredient of five-spice powder and is used in a lot of fish recipes.

Fennel is used in some natural toothpastes and, in India, is chewed as a breath freshener.

Fennel has some medicinal applications, mainly as a gas-relieving agent and has been used to aid pain relief and as a diuretic. It is also used to improve the taste of some natural herbal medicines.

Fenugreek
Fenugreek, like fennel, is an herb and also a spice. Fenugreek has a strong, aromatic and bittersweet taste similar to burnt sugar.

Fenugreek originated in India and around the Mediterranean region.

Fenugreek is used in five-spice powder and is widely used in curry powders, particularly the hot vindaloo powders.

Similar to lots of spices, fenugreek is used as a digestive aid. The spice reduces the sugar levels in blood and is used to help treat diabetes. Fenugreek also lowers blood pressure and helps relieve congestion and reduces inflammation. It’s a very useful spice.