Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

Making a curry without onion is almost unthinkable. Nearly every curry starts with cooking onions. Some curries have a lot of onions and some have only a small amount of onions. But the onions are always there.

Onions have been grown around the world for thousands of years and their taste varies from sweet to very pungent (Indian curries usually use more pungent onions). And their aroma also varies from almost nothing to a pungency that makes your eyes water.

Why do some onions make your eyes water? It’s because they contain enzymes that begin to break down when you cut the onions. The enzymes create mild acids that are unstable and turn into a gas. The gas contains sulphur and moves through the air and reaches your eyes where it reacts with the water in your eyes to form a mild sulphuric acid. Not surprisingly, the acid irritates the nerves in your eye and makes them sting. The eyes react to the stinging by producing tears that dilute the acid and clean out your eye.

Not all onions are this strong. But if they are, or you cry easily when cutting onions, you can take some avoiding actions. Try cutting the onions under a running tap so that the gas reacts with the tap water and not your eyes. Alternatively, you can cut up the onions in a bowl of water to have the same effect. Most of the enzymes are concentrated in the root of the onion so you could cut off the root last (and under running water).

Once the cooking has started, the eye-watering problem is gone.

But you should take care when cutting up onions so as not to rub your eyes with your fingers because that is really going to hurt. If this happens, wash out your eyes with lots of water.

Onions are a key component of curries. Most recipes start with instructions to heat up the oil, over a medium to high heat, and cook the onions until they are soft (onions soften and have a golden colour when they are cooked but some recipes tell you to keep cooking the onions until they are black and crisp). The onions are often cooked with ginger root and garlic.

After being peeled, onions are usually finely chopped, coarsely chopped or sliced. All things being equal, finely chopped onions take less time to cook than coarsely chopped onions. Curries will be browner and darker the longer the onions are cooked – you should only cook the onions until they are soft (around 10 minutes, depending upon the heat of the oil) unless you are told otherwise.

Deep fried, or blackened, onions are sometimes used as a garnish for curries such as on a Do Piaza (or dopiaza).

And onions are good for you. They contain anti-cholesterol, anti-cancer, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory components that are effective in treating a wide range of diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and even the common cold.

Next time you make a curry, make sure that you have a couple of good onions nearby.

Here is one of the simplest recipes that you’ll ever encounter. It’s for a delicious Indian sweet and, as usual, you can see the Jaggery Caramlised Walnut recipe on the Curry Focus website. If you’re not sure what jaggery is then you can see an article on it here.

The only ingredients are jaggery and walnut halves and you use twice as much jaggery as walnuts.

The Curry Focus recipe has 50g (2 oz) of walnut halves and 100g (3 ½ oz) of jaggery, and this is a good amount to try first.

I buy my jaggery from my usual Indian supermarket where it is sold in 500g (1 lb) balls or blocks.

I slice off the required amount of jaggery from the ball, chop it up a bit and then put it into a small saucepan over a low to medium heat.

Whilst the jaggery is melting, I put some greaseproof paper over a dinner plate.

The jaggery needs to be stirred regularly and prodded with a wooden spoon to take out any remaining lumps.

Once the jaggery has melted, I add the walnuts and quickly mix the two ingredients together and make sure that the walnuts are fully covered with the jaggery.

Then the mixture is poured onto the greaseproof paper and I spread the walnuts out evenly with the spoon.

The jaggery-coated walnuts are then put into a cupboard for a while until they cool.

I store the caramelised walnuts in an airtight jar until they are needed and store the leftover jaggery ball in another airtight jar.

It’s all as easy as that.

I serve the caramelised walnuts in a little side plate at the end of an Indian meal. Most people only eat one piece because the pieces are very sweet.

It’s delicious - I rated it at 7.5 out of 10. Try it.

There is no simple answer to this question.

There are lots of types of paprika.

Traditionally, paprika is made from red bell peppers. The peppers are allowed to dry and then the stalks and the inside veins are discarded. The pepper fruit and seeds are separated from each other and separately ground into powder. This process is done for different types of bell pepper and the resultant powders are blended to produce the required taste.

Some peppers are dried over fires to give them a woody flavour.

And some pepper powders are mixed with powders from the fruits of other members of the capsicum family to give a paprika with heat (bell peppers, by themselves, have no heat as recorded on the Scoville heat scale).

So you can get hot, sweet or bittersweet flavours of paprika depending on the peppers used and even where the peppers were grown – the same plants produce different flavour peppers in different parts of the world.

Indian cuisine uses paprika mainly to add a red colour to a dish while the Hungarian cuisine uses paprika a lot to give their dishes flavour, as well as colour.

Tamarind is extracted from the pods of the evergreen tamarind tree.

The tamarind tree is a tropical tree that originated in east Africa. The main growing place is now India but the tamarind tree is grown in such diverse tropical locations as the Caribbean, Mexico, northern Brasil, Hawaii and Florida.

The tamarind pods have a brown, sticky pulp that is the extract. Once extracted, the pulp is squeezed into flat blocks. The blocks are processed to produce tamarind paste and concentrate.

Tamarind does not have much of an aroma and has a sour, fruity taste.

Tamarind is added to curries (such as vindaloo) as well as pickles and chutneys to make best use of the sour taste.

Tamarind sauce, served in Indian restaurants to accompany other dishes, is made by mixing tamarind concentrate with water.

Hi, Ray here again. Time to try another delicious recipe from the Curry Focus team. This time it’s Chicken Bhuna, another great chicken recipe.

All I had to buy was the chicken and I also picked up a pack of frozen chilli and garlic paratha (yum).

I had avoided cooking this recipe because there were so many lines in the method part of the recipe. But I’m getting used to cooking nowadays and making the dish was really easy.

I did the usual and prepared everything before I did the cooking. This time one of the guests volunteered to help so I them chop up the onion and ginger whilst I prepared the chicken.

Then a little plate of spices followed by the garlic and green chillies – I only used 2 green chillies because one of the dinner guests didn’t like spicy hot curries.

Then the cooking started.

I heated the butter and mixed in the garam masla. Then I coated the chicken in the mixture. I didn’t need to do the chicken in batches because my large frying pan was big enough to hold everything with ease.

The oven was already preheated by the time I had coated the chicken. I put the chicken and half a can of tomatoes into the casserole, mixed them up, put the lid on the casserole and put it all in the oven for 20 minutes.

Halfway through, I cooked the onion and ginger in the butter (there’s a lot of butter in this recipe – yum).

Then in went the plate of spices for a stir-fry.

After that I added the cup of water and simmered for 5 minutes before adding the rest of the ingredients.

I then tipped everything into the casserole, with the chicken, and mixed it all up and finally popped the casserole back into the oven for the last 25 minutes of cooking.

When this was happening, I chopped up the bell peppers and started cooking the rice.

And then I messed up – I forgot the chopped fresh tomatoes and left them happily in the fridge. I didn’t realise this until the next day when I was reviewing the recipe. Doh!! Never mind, I don’t think it detracted from the curry.

When the rice was nearly ready, I quickly heated up the paratha.

I served up the chicken bhuna on rice, garnished it with the sliced red peppers and served up a plate of paratha for the assembled dinner guests.

It all went pretty well with the bhuna having a wonderful flavour. Except the guests thought that the garnish of uncooked red peppers was a bit odd. The peppers “lacked flavour� and would have tasted better if they had been quickly fried to soften them up. There are critics everywhere!!!

One guest commented that a bowl of raita would have gone down well with the bhuna – the bhuna was only a medium “hot� but they felt that the tastes would have complemented each other. Maybe they were right – I love raita.

All in all, the meal was voted a success and scored a rating of 7.5 out of 10 with a medium heat ranking.

Another successful meal from the Curry Focus website.

The poppy seeds that are used in cooking either come from the Blue Poppy or the White Poppy. Whilst the seeds are very similar, the white poppy seeds are the ones that are used in Indian cuisine.

Poppy seeds have a nutty flavour that is at its best when the seeds are toasted. It only takes a few minutes of toasting to release the full flavour and sweet aroma.

The seeds are usually ground to a powder and used to thicken Indian curry sauces. Otherwise, the seeds can be sprinkled over dry vegetarian or meat dishes.

Poppy seeds are very hard and are tough to grind. You can even buy a special poppy seed grinder. If you are going to grind poppy seeds, don’t forget to toast them first to release the full flavour.

There are medicinal uses for poppy seeds including cough medicines and treating toothache and earache. The seeds themselves are used to stimulate the appetite. The dangerous derivatives such as heroin, morphine and codeine come from poppy pods and stems, not the seeds.

Hi, Ray here again.

Time for another yummy vegetarian curry from the Curry Focus website. This time I’ve gone for the Mushroom Curry because it looks easy to cook as well as great to eat.

I had everything already in the house except for the mushrooms so there wasn’t too much to buy for the meal.

I bought the 450g (1 lb) of mushrooms and it was a huge bag. Surely these were too many? Never mind, I know they won’t go to waste.

Before starting to cook, I cleaned and chopped up the mushrooms.

Cooking the curry itself was a breeze.

I heated the oil and did a stir-fry on the first lot of spices before adding the onion.

Once the onion was ready, in went the spice powders for a quick stir-fry.

Then in went the chilli, garlic and ginger for another stir-fry.

All this stir-frying made me think that I was cooking a Chinese meal but the delicious Indian spice smells wafting around the kitchen reminded me what I was cooking and had me almost drooling.

In went the tomatoes and into the microwave went the rice for the dish.

Finally, the mushrooms entered the frying pan. The pan was almost overflowing with the mushrooms and I had to stir the mix pretty carefully to make sure that I didn’t spill any.

I did a quick taste test after 5 minutes of cooking the mushrooms and realised that it was going to be a spicy hot curry. This didn’t bother me but I knew that a couple of the diners wouldn’t cope too well. So I quickly raided the fridge and got together a bowl of yogurt with diced cucumber – a pretty rough and ready raita.

After 10 minutes the curry and rice were ready. I served them up, with the bowl of raita, and sprinkled some coriander over the top.

Another Indian curry was ready for the assembled dinner guests.

And I must say that it went down really well, despite the heat.

I loved the curry and it scored an overall rating of 6.5 out of 10. Not a really high score and the curry being very spicy hot contributed to this score.

But I do recommend that you try this curry for yourself. If you don’t like your curry too hot then you can miss out green chilli to keep the temperature down a bit.

Kaffir, or makrut, lime is a lime that is originally from Southeast Asia and is now grown in such diverse places as Florida and Australia.

The kaffir lime is green in colour and has the shape of a pear.

The rind and leaves are both used in cooking, particularly Thai cuisine.

The leaves give a particularly tangy citrus taste and are used in curries, soups and salads.

The rind has a slightly bitter citrus taste and is grated and used in curry pastes and fish cakes.

The`zest (fruit part of the rind) is used in Creole`cooking to add its distinctive citrus flavour.

It’s best to use fresh kaffir lime leaves and rind wherever possible because the flavour is quickly lost from the fruit once it has been cut open, You can freeze any spare leaves and rind quite easily just by putting them in ordinary freezer bags.

Kaffir lime rind is used medicinally to treat digestive problems and the rind is used in some tonics that are reputedly good for the blood.

2008 has kicked off with a bang for those of us at Curry Focus, with it being our busiest month to date. We would like to share some of the articles that have been added in the last few weeks..

Indian Naan Bread

Naan (or Nan) is a leavened (it rises using yeast) flatbread that can be eaten with most curries.

Many hundreds of years ago, the Moguls brought naan bread to India (the Moguls came from Persia and the Persian word for bread is naan).

Nowadays, naan is almost a mandatory part of an Indian meal. It’s usually eaten with the main curry dish and is often used to scoop up the curry, instead of using knives and forks….. Read More

Dill. What Is It?

Dill is an herb that grows to about 60cm (2 ft) in height.

The leaves are slender and feathery and grow to a length of about 15cm (6 in) in length.

The leaves and seeds are used in cooking.

The fresh dill leaves are sometimes called dill weed.

In Indian cuisine, dill is used to make curry powders, masalas and to flavour spinach and other leafy green vegetables. Dill seeds have a flavour that is similar to caraway seeds….. Read More

Mango Lassi Recipe Review

Hi, Ray here again.

I don’t know about you, but I love a good mango lassi. It’s a very refreshing drink and there’s an easy mango lassi recipe on the Curry Focus website.

I had previously spotted cans of mango pulp at my favourite Indian supermarket so that’s where I got the mango pulp. The smallest can was 850g (nearly 2 lbs) so I had enough pulp to make the recipe 8 times….. Read More

Nigella. What Is It?

Nigella is a spice that is mainly used when cooking Indian flat breads, such as naan, and vegetarian dishes.

The spice has a strong taste that is similar to oregano.

The Nigella spice is the seeds of the plant called Nigella Sativa. The seeds are tiny and black in colour. The seeds themselves don’t have much of an aroma but the oregano aroma is released when the seeds are fried or crushed. The taste is a bit like cracked pepper and is bitter…. Read More

Top 5 Recipes for January

1 Chicken Curry
2 Easy Chicken Curry
3 Chicken Curry (Kodi Kura)
4 Balti Chicken
5 Chicken Jalfrezi

Why not tell us the recipes that you like? You can submit a new recipe here and a restaurant here.