Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

A karahi is similar to a flat-bottomed wok and is the traditional cooking utensil for Indian curries.

Traditionally, a karahi is made of cast iron but nowadays you can buy a karahi made out of stainless steel or coated with non-stick material, such as tefal.

A karahi has relatively deep sides and is ideal for deep frying, or shallow frying, lots of different foods and dishes. Stews that are cooked in a karahi are themselves sometimes called karahis.

A karahi can be large or small enough to hold a single portion of food. A single portion karahi can be used as a serving dish

To confuse matters, a karahi can also be called a kadai and a dish cooked in a karahi can also be called a kadai.

Curry Focus has good karahi and kadai recipes. There’s a Karahi Chicken and Fenugreek main dish and a Kadai Paneer side dish.

A lot of good hardware stores stock kaharis but, if you’re having difficulty finding stockists, you can buy online on sites such as Amazon. Just go here to see a selection.

Hi, Ray here again.

My girlfriend wasn’t going to be here for my weekly curry so it gave me an opportunity to try a great Pork Vindaloo recipe that had been given to me by my flatmate’s mother. A vindaloo is a very hot curry (although not as hot as a phal).

I had to buy the pork and also some ground cloves and nutmeg. So I went to my favourite Indian supermarket and found the spices pretty easily amongst all of the bins of flours, lentils and spices. I always enjoy shopping at this supermarket where the spice smells are almost intoxicating. I already had some dried chillies at home but found a huge bin of dried Kashmiri chillies so I bought a few for the vindaloo. I also strayed into the freezer section and grabbed a packet of frozen aloo paratha to accompany the curry.

Making the vindaloo was really very, very easy.

I made up the marinade, cut up the pork and then put it all into a bowl that I covered with kitchen film and put into the fridge. Then I went out for the day whilst the pork was marinating.

I cut up the onions a couple of hours before the planned eating time and fried them to perfection.

Then I fried the pork. I was a bit dubious about there being no oil left in the frying pan once the onions had been taken out but there was enough marinade inside the pork to make sure that the pork didn’t stick whilst frying.

Then I turned down the heat, added the cooked onions and marinade, covered the frying pan and left the vindaloo to simmer for 90 minutes.

I checked, and stirred, the vindaloo every 15ish minutes.

After 75 minutes the rice went on and I started to cook the aloo paratha in my second frying pan (the paratha are cooked in the frying pan without any oil – they just take about 2 minutes to cook on each side).

It all came together and I served up the meal to the waiting diner (my flatmate).

And the vindaloo was stunning. It is a spicy hot curry – be warned – and does taste of vinegar (all vindaloos taste of vinegar). The pork was very tender and had a good texture as well as heat. I thought that it was one of the best vindaloo curries that I’ve ever eaten (and that includes my favourite Indian restaurant in Thornton Heath). Even my flatmate enjoyed it and he doesn’t really go for vindaloos.

We gave the vindaloo a high rating of 8.5 out of 10 with a heat rating of hot.

If you like vindaloo then I definitely recommend that you try out this recipe.

And we got a double bonus because the recipe makes enough curry for 4 people and there was only 2 of us – so we have pork vindaloo for dinner tomorrow night – result!!

Hi, Ray here again.

I few weeks ago I made a great aubergine curry (here is the review of the aubergine curry).

At the time, I also ventured into making naan bread.

What I found out was that making the dough is easy but you do need to experiment a little with the final parts of the process so that the results are great. Most recipes are forgiving if you overcook the dish by a few minutes but baking bread does not have a huge margin of error.

I couldn’t get hold of fresh yeast anywhere, even in my local Indian store that usually stocks everything, and more, that I ever need. So I bought a jar of dried yeast. But nowhere on the label was there any clue as to how much dried yeast equals fresh yeast. I did a long search on the net and eventually found out that 4 teaspoons of dried yeast equals an ounce of fresh yeast. And I also learnt that yeast is sold in units called envelopes (I won’t bore you with the details – do some searching on the net if you want to find out more). I have updated the recipe on the website with this vital information.

Back to the recipe.

I mixed up the ingredients and added the water to make the dough. The dough was a bit dry so I ended up adding a couple of teaspoons more. I suppose that my measures might have been slightly off.

I put the dough into a plastic bag and left it for 3 hours to rise. I couldn’t figure out how to oil the bag without making a huge mess so, instead, I spread some oil over the dough and popped it into the bag.

The dough rose pretty well.

On went the oven.

Whilst the oven was heating up, I divided up the dough and rolled out the first naan. I only rolled out one because I had been warned not to roll the dough too thin or too thick. If the naan is too thin then it will be crisp and burnt but if the naan is too thick then the inside won’t be cooked properly. So I needed to experiment a little to see what worked.

The first naan was a bit thinner than 6mm (1/4 inch).

In went the first naan and I hovered around the oven wondering what was going on inside. I sneaked a peek after 5 minutes and the naan had puffed up and looked good. After 9 minutes the outside was all brown and it looked burnt in a couple of places so I took it out of the oven. It was awful. Burnt, dry and crisp with no dough inside the crust at all. I tried a small piece and it was terrible. The naan went outside for the birds.

I made the second naan the same thickness to see if it was the cooking time that was the problem. After 6 minutes I pulled out the naan from the oven. It was better than the first one – a better flavour – but still nothing inside the crust and too crunchy. Another naan for the birds.

The third naan was thicker, being the 6mm (1/4 inch) that the recipe called for. I pulled the naan out after 6 minutes. This time the dough in the middle wasn’t cooked properly but the flavour was better. Lucky time for the birds again.

The fourth naan was the same 6m (1/4 inch) thick and this time I baked it for 8 minutes. It was perfect with a good browned outside, a well cooked inside and a great taste.

The fifth naan was again 6mm (1/4 inch) thick and this time I cooked it for 10 minutes. It was pretty good but the crust was a bit too crunchy. It wasn’t nearly as good as the 8 minute naan.

So I had found the correct thickness and cooking time for naan in my oven. Ovens do not have a uniform temperature so you will probably need to experiment a little with your first batch of naans to find what works in your house.

The naans are smaller than the ones made in Indian restaurants – about half the size. But I don’t think that this is a problem because I always find that I either end up leaving some naan when I dine out or, even worse for my waistline, I keep eating the naan when I’m full just because I’ve bought it. If you do want bigger naans then just use more dough – but keep the thickness correct.

If you like naan bread then I definitely recommend try out this recipe. The overall rating for the final naans that I made was 9.5 out of 10 – stunning.

But I do recommend that you find out the recipe that works for you before inviting dinner guests to try them.

April has been a productive month for the CurryFocus.co.uk website with a major upgrade to the recipe search feature of the site.

We’ve changed the way that the recipe search works so that now you’ve got more chance of finding a recipe that you’re looking for.

The search now looks for alternative spellings and alternative words for the main recipe names and ingredients.

For example, if you look for saag, then the search looks for saag, saagwalla, sag, sagwala, sagwalla, spinach and spinage. All of the words, except for spinage, mean the same and spinage is a commonly used bad spelling of spinach.

You still only see a recipe once in the results list, no matter how many times words are found in the recipe.

We hope that this change to the search helps you find a great recipe for you to try.

More changes to the web site are in the pipeline. We hope you like them.

And chicken recipes are top of the charts yet again.

Top 5 Recipes for April

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

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

Hi, Ray here again.

Curry time again so once more I scan through the Curry Focus recipes. This time I was immediately attracted by the word “Easy” in the Easy Chicken Curry Recipe. And it looked an easy dish to prepare.

Out of the freezer came a couple of chicken breasts and I picked up some tomato paste and a bottle of cream when I was in the supermarket.

There wasn’t too much to do after cutting up the chicken, garlic and ginger.

I stir-fried the chicken for 5 minutes until it was well sealed.

Then I stir-fried the garlic, ginger and spices. I had to keep everything moving around the frying pan so that it wouldn’t stick.

Then in went the tomato paste, cream, chilli powder and salt.

A gentle simmer for 5 minutes before adding the chicken and simmering for 20 minutes.

I put the rice into the microwave not long after the chicken started simmering and chopped up the fresh coriander.

When it was all ready, the easy chicken curry was served on the rice with a garnish of fresh coriander.

The dinner guests soon devoured the curry. The overall opinion was that it was creamy and that the sauce was a bit runny. The curry had a great taste and there was a bit of a bite from the spices. Half of the dinner guests didn’t really like creamy curries but half did. Overall the curry rated 6 out of 10 and the heat rating was “medium to hot”.

The curry lived up its title. It was a very easy curry to make.

So if you like a creamy curry then why not try out the recipe? You’ll love the result.