Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

Fenugreek is a spice that is widely used in curries, being an essential spice in five-spice powder and in curry powders.

But as well as adding flavour to curries, fenugreek also has medicinal applications.

A quick survey of the Internet finds that fenugreek is used to treat diabetes (type 2), high cholesterol, inflammation, indigestion, skin disorders, ulcers, menstrual aches, colds and sore throats.

In addition, fenugreek is used to induce labour and stimulate breast milk production.

Other, non-medicinal, uses of fenugreek include its use for weight control and for enlarging breasts.

As with all medicines, you should talk to your doctor before starting a new treatment. Fenugreek is definitely not recommended for pregnant women and your doctor should have the latest information available.

But using fenugreek in your curries is probably safe, as well as being tasty.

You can find out more about the health benefits of fenugreek from the Internet. The following are some links that you can start from.

Fenugreek

Therapeutic applications of Fenugreek

Fenugreek Seed

Fenugreek for Health

Once again, Xmas is nearly upon us and plans are being made, and finalised, as to who hosts the traditional family meal and where to go and what to do over the holiday period.

Most families seem to be pretty much the same. We’ll spend most of Xmas day snacking and drinking before the main meal of the day arrives. And, yes, it’s turkey again. And, as usual, the turkey will be huge.

So what do you do with leftover turkey?

I don’t know about you, but I get fed up with turkey sandwiches.

What I like is turkey curry. It’s really easy to make with Thanksgiving turkey leftovers because the turkey has already been cooked. All that has to be done is heat up the meat in a good curry sauce and then serve it on rice. Maybe heat up a couple of paratha from the freezer, if you’ve planned ahead a little. The whole cooking process only takes about 20 minutes, and that includes cooking the rice.

There’s a great turkey curry recipe on the Curry Focus web site.

Why not try it out? It’s easy and the results are delicious.

The Balti curry was invented in Birmingham (in the West Midlands region of England) in the 1970s, by Pakistani and Kashmiri immigrants. Balti cafes opened in Birmingham, during this time, serving cheap food and they became very popular.

A Balti is the pot where the curry is cooked and is also the metal dish in which the curry is served. A typical serving dish is shown below.

The main regional cooking influence of Balti curries is Punjabi (the large Punjab region is spread over the border of Pakistan and India).

A Balti curry is cooked quickly over a high heat and is served, sizzling hot, in the Balti dish. Knives and forks are not usually used to eat the curry. Instead, naan bread or chapattis are used to scoop up the curry.

There are a lot of Balti restaurants in central Birmingham in an area that is called the “Balti Triangle” (the sides of the approximate triangle are Ladypool Road, Stoney Lane and Stratford Road). This area has the highest concentration of Balti restaurants in Birmingham. Most Balti restaurants are unlicensed but diners are free to bring their own wines and beers to accompany the delicious curries.

Nowadays you can get a Balti curry in most parts of the UK, and even further afield.

Why not try making your own Balti curry? There’s a Curry Focus recipe for Balti Chicken that you can try. If you have your own favourite Balti recipe, then why not give us the recipe so we can share it with everyone?

Hi, time to turn my hand to another recipe from the Curry Focus website. I went vegetarian again and picked the Spiced Potato and Cauliflower, listed on most curry menus that I’ve seen as Aloo Gobi.

There are very few ingredients and all I had to buy was the cauliflower and poppyseeds.

I cut up the cauliflower and soaked it in water for about an hour. Later I worked out that this is probably to give some moisture in the later cooking of the cauliflower and potato.

I chopped up 3 large potatoes into small cubes and boiled them for 5 minutes before straining them and leaving them to the side.

I heated up the oil and fried the cumin for 30 seconds before adding the onion and cardamom seeds for a quick stir-fry for a minute.

Then in went the cauliflower, and potato, which were mixed well in the largest frying pan that I’ve got – it’s a brilliant heavy frying pan with a lid.

Then it was just a matter of cooking the curry. The recipe originally said for 12 minutes but there cauliflower was nowhere near cooked after 12 minutes. Maybe I didn’t cut up the cauliflower small enough. In the end it took just under 30 minutes for the cauliflower to be cooked and still have a bit of crunch left. So I changed the recipe accordingly.

Finally, I added the poppy seeds and mixed them in well.

I served up the aloo gobi, with some paratha that I cooked when the curry was nearly ready, to the waiting diners.

The dish was quite tasty and wasn’t really spicy hot. The overall rating was 6.5 out of 10.

It’s probably better to have this dish as a side rather than as a main. And there wasn’t much colour to it.

So next time, and there will be a next time, I’ll cut up the cauliflower into smaller pieces, serve it as a side dish and garnish it with some fresh coriander (I’ve added the coriander to the recipe).

Curry powder is a mixture of spices that have been ground into a powder. When cooking, you use curry powder instead of the individual spices.

There’s an article describing curry powder here in the Curry Focus blog section and there is also a recipe for making curry powder here.

You won’t find too many recipes that tell you how to use curry powder – most recipes get you to use the individual spices. But the recipes do exist and here’s a good recipe for a Hot Lamb Curry.

Most recipes that tell you how to make curry powder are basically the same in that you take a selection of spices, heat them and then grind them into a powder. The recipes are simple and you can experiment with the spices that you use in order to find the best curry powder for you.

The cooking purists say that you should never use curry powder and that you should use fresh spices every time that you cook a curry.

But there’s nothing really wrong with using curry powder, whether you’ve made it yourself or bought it from a supermarket.

I usually add fresh spices to my curries but sometimes I use curry powder.

If you find a recipe that you want to try with curry powder, then just substitute the curry powder for the spices. Add the curry powder early on in the recipe to make sure that the spices are absorbed into the food. I’ve seen advice that you just sprinkle curry powder onto a meal, just like salt or pepper – in my opinion, this is bad advice and should be ignored.

Avoid the temptation to make a huge batch of curry powder unless you’re going to use the powder in less than a few weeks because spices go stale, no matter how carefully you store them. You can read an article about looking after your spices in the blog that is titled “How To Keep Indian Curry Spices Fresh”.

Why not try making your own curry powder instead of buying it from a shop or supermarket? Yours will have no preservatives, will probably be fresher and may even taste better.