Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

It’s been almost a year since I started trying out the great recipes on the Curry Focus website.

In the first few weeks I followed the recipes very carefully, and was sometimes quite apprehensive as to what would be served up at meal times.

In those weeks I was testing myself as much as the recipes and couldn’t adapt during the cooking process if I made a mistake.

And I couldn’t see that certain recipes were wrong or not quite right.

A year onwards still has me carefully following the recipes because I want to make sure that the recipes on the website work.

But now I’m a lot more adaptable and improvise as I go along.

If a recipe doesn’t work then I figure out why and then try it again with revised ingredients or cooking times.

But all through these months I only cooked one thing at a time. A chicken curry or a beef curry or a lamb curry or a vegetarian curry.

So last weekend I decided to make a meal – not just a single dish.

I chose the saag gosht as the main because it simmers for 90 minutes as the final stage and this would give me plenty of time to make the other dishes.

Before starting to make the saag gosht, I mixed up dough for some naan and left it to rise.

Then I made up a batch of mango lassi and put it in the fridge to cool.

Whilst the dough was rising and the mango lassi was chilling, I prepared the ingredients for the saag gosht and then settled down and read the paper for a couple of hours.

After a good read, I started to cook the saag gosht.

Once the saag soght had started to simmer, I rolled out the naan breads and baked the bread. I had preheated the lower oven and popped the ready naans into the oven to keep them warm. I baked all of the naans even though I only needed 4 for dinner and put the extra naans aside to cool – once the naans were cool I popped them into individual plastic wraps and put them into the freezer to keep for another day.

I infused some saffron threads in hot water (in other words, I put about 10 saffron threads into an egg cup, poured in some boiling water and left them for 10 minutes).

Then I made some Aloo Gobi (cauliflower and potato) as a side dish.

By now it was time to cook the rice so I popped it into the microwave after having mixed the infused saffron with the rice and water.

Everything was ready at dinner time.

We had saag gosht on saffron rice, with a side dish of aloo gobi, naan bread and a delicious drink of mango lassi.

It was great.

Everything worked well. No drama during the cooking.

I’ve come a long way in a year but am not complacent. I’ve still got a lot to learn. But it’s fun and the results are yummy.

Passatta is a cooked tomato contentrate.

Some passatta recipes have tomatoes cooked with pork, bacon and vegetables and the resultant liquid is kept and used in cooking.

Vegetarian passatta would obviously not include any meat.

Some people just peel and remove the seeds from tomatoes and then put the remaining tomato thorough a food processor to make a puree that can be kept in the fridge for a few weeks.

If the recipe that you are following only uses a small amount of passatta, you can get away with using tomato paste, or puree, that you buy from a supermarket.

You can buy ready-made passatta from supermarkets or good food shops. The passatta will be in the tinned and pureed tomatoes section.

Hi, Ray here again.

After last week’s disaster with the poppadoms, I needed to get back into the cooking saddle again pretty quickly.

I decided to try out another vegetarian recipe and this time it was the Cauliflower and Potato recipe from the Curry Focus website.

Very little shopping was needed here because the only thing that I didn’t already have was the cauliflower.

This is an amazingly simple dish to prepare and it is absolutely delicious.

Through circumstances beyond my control, I was dining alone tonight.

So I followed the recipe, step by step, and pretty soon I had a plate full of delicious food.

And it was delicious. There was a divine spice taste and everything was cooked to perfection. There was easily enough curry for 2 (I had the left overs the next day for lunch) and would be a great side dish for a dinner party of 4.

A few days later I had friends around for dinner and decided to cook saag gosht again. The recipe was a big hit the last time I made it and this time I had a great side dish to go with it.

I was running a bit late with the cooking and the guests were very eager to sample the food when I eventually served it up.

The saag gosht went down well but the big hit was the cauliflower and potato side dish.

The word “stunning” came out of the mouth of one of the guests which was high praise indeed.

The dish had a little bit of a spicy kick to it but wasn’t too hot. And the textures and flavours were great.

The cauliflower and potato dish scored a great 9 out of 10 with a heat rating of medium.

This is the recipe for you if you want a great side dish that is easy to make.

Try it for yourself.

Hi, Ray here again.

I’d been looking through some of the curry books that I’ve got and was struck by the lack of recipes for Poppadoms. Indeed, some books just said to buy a packet from a shop and then grill or fry them. I seem to remember somebody saying that poppadoms were difficult to make.

So here’s a challenge. I did pretty well making naan bread so poppadoms should be easy enough.

There’s a Poppadom recipe on the Curry Focus website that looks easy enough.

I started by making the dough.

It was too dry. Way too dry.

So I added more water, a dribble at a time, until I got what I thought was the correct consistency.

But I obviously got it wrong. The dough was way too sticky.

So I added more flour to dry it up a bit.

Then I rolled the dough out into a cylinder and sliced it into equal rounds and put a dab of oil on the top of the rounds.

But the dough kept sticking to my rolling pin. I put flour on the work surface and the rolling pin but as the poppadoms kept getting bigger, they kept attaching to the rolling pin and splitting.

I was ending up with strips of poppadoms.

I got all of the dough back together a couple of times and tried again but no luck.

I don’t know whether I messed up the recipe or that the recipe doesn’t work. I am fully prepared to accept that the problem was with me. I don’t have a real rolling pin and use an empty wine bottle but I can’t see that blaming my rolling pin is the answer – I think the person wielding the rolling pin is the problem. Maybe I wasn’t careful enough. Or maybe I’m not adaptable enough in the kitchen – I assume that real cooks automatically compensate for dough inconsistencies.

It wasn’t a huge disaster because I had bought a packet of poppadoms earlier.

I’ll try the recipe one more time and I’ll buy a proper rolling pin to see if that makes a difference.

And if the recipe doesn’t work, I’ll hunt down another one.

I won’t be beaten. I need a recipe that works so that I can create my own flavours.

Hi, Ray here again.

This week I wanted to try out a recipe for a dish that I’d never eaten before. I searched through the yummy recipes on the Curry Focus website and decided to try the Beef Pasanda.

The beef needed to marinate overnight so I made sure that I got all of the ingredients early enough.

The marinade is about half a bottle red wine. Now here was the hard decision. I didn’t like the idea of buying an expensive wine just for cooking (I know that’s probably a silly thing to worry about) but I didn’t want to buy cheap, nasty wine either (because I’d have a couple of glasses to drink). I finally went for a middle of the road merlot.

Now this is easily one of the noisiest curries that I’ve ever made. I don’t have a meat tenderiser so resorted to putting the beef onto the kitchen work surface, covering it with the plastic meat preparation board and pounding the board with a hammer. I made a lot of noise but the beef was flattened just fine.

I put the beef, with the marinade, into the fridge overnight.

The next afternoon, I started to make the Pasanda.

I prepared the onions, garlic and ginger and stir-fried them for 10 minutes. The mixture gets very dry so needs to be kept moving at all times. There was a lovely ginger aroma when the cooking stopped.

I made up the spicy paste whilst the onion mixture was cooling.

After a while I put the onion mixture, along with the coriander and coconut, into the food processor and made a puree.

After that the spicy paste was stir-fried for 90 seconds to be joined by the puree before stir-frying for 5 minutes.

I mixed in the ground almonds and tomato paste and then removed the mixture from the heat.

The oven had already been preheated by now and the beef, marinade and cooked ingredients all went into a large casserole. After mixing everything well, the casserole went into the oven.

I checked and stirred after the 30 minutes and cooked it for another 30 minutes.

I checked the Pasanda once again and all was good.

I returned the Pasanda to the oven whilst the rice was started.

After five minutes I turned off the oven, leaving the Pasanda to cook for a further 10 minutes.

The pasanda and rice was served up to the waiting dinner guests.

The sauce was rich, thick, smooth, nutty and tasted of the red wine. And the beef was very tender. The Pasanda was eaten quickly enough but failed to ignite hearty enthusiasm. One of the guests commented that it would have been better with some yogurt. I did a quick search on the internet and most of the Pasanda recipes did indeed use yogurt as the marinade. So I need to find another Pasanda recipe to try. And one of the guests was looking for some red wine to go with the food but I had already drunk the remainder of the wine whilst cooking – I think this is a valid cook’s bonus.

Overall, the Pasanda was very tasty and scored 7 out of 10 with a heat rating of mild.

If you like a mild curry and red wine then this could be just the curry for you.

Another busy month as we try more recipes, look at how to match wine to a curry and continue to add new features to the website. We’ll let you know about the new features once they are ready. If you think of something that would make your visits to the website more enjoyable, just give us your ideas from the Contact Us page.

Last week we were asked where our website visitors come from. To be honest, we didn’t know the complete answer - we knew where most people lived but not them all. So we checked with Google and the answer was that we have had visitors from 145 different countries. Now that’s a lot of countries. Most of the missing countries in the world are from the African continent - maybe we need some more spicy African curry recipes on the website?

Ray cooks and reviews a delicious Jamaican Chicken Curry Recipe

Time to try out another great recipe from the Curry Focus website. I liked the look of the Lamb Rogan Josh recipe but hadn’t looked at the recipe early enough. The lamb needs to marinate overnight and the dinner guests were arriving in 6 hours. So, instead, I went for the Jamaican Chicken Curry that looked pretty easy to make…. read more

It can always be a challenge matching Wine With a Chicken Curry

I spotted an article that I think might be of interest to you lovers of fine Indian curries.

An Indian wine company called Indage is launching a range of Indian wines in the UK and the wines are reportedly good to drink with a curry… read more

Cumin Chicken Curry Recipe Review

Time to try out another great recipe from the Curry Focus website. This time it’s the Cumin Chicken Curry recipe.

I only had to buy the chicken – the other ingredients were already in the kitchen.

This is really a very easy curry to cook… read more

Top 5 Recipes for June

1 Chicken Biryani
2 Easy Chicken Curry
3 Chicken Jalfrezi
4 Chicken Bhuna
5 Chicken Curry

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

Hi, Ray here again.

Last week I wanted to make a Rogan Josh curry but left it too late to make because I had forgotten that the lamb had to be marinated overnight.

So this week I was properly prepared to make a Lamb Rogan Josh from the Curry Focus website.

I made up the marinade and mixed it in with the lean lamb and then put it into the fridge to marinate overnight.

A couple of hours before dinner, I started preparing the ingredients which really only involved getting ready the onion and second garlic clove.

Then I started the cooking.

I stir-fried the cumin seeds and then stir-fried the bay leaves and cardamom pods.

Then I stir-fried the onion and garlic for 5 minutes before adding the coriander, cumin and chilli powder.

Soon it was time for the lamb to enter the frying pan.

And not long afterwards, the chopped tomatoes, tomato paste and water joined the lamb.

All was mixed up well and brought to a simmer.

The lamb simmered for 90 minutes and the basmati was timed to be ready at the same time as the curry.

Whilst I was serving up the Rogan Josh, I quickly microwaved a couple of stuffed paratha to go with the meal.

The Rogan Josh was served up and went down fairly well.

The lamb was really tender but this wasn’t the curry that I expected. The curry had a lot more liquid than I am used to and, to be honest, it was more like a stew than a curry. And it was very mild.

The Rogan Josh was awarded a sympathetic 6 out of 10 with a spice heat rating of mild.

I carefully reviewed the recipe to make sure that I had followed the steps correctly. And I had. Maybe the lid could have been left off the frying pan to allow the curry to reduce and thicken a bit. But the spice level was too low – I’m used to a Rogan Josh with a bit of bite.

But I won’t let the odd failure stop me. I’ll be hunting down another Lamb Rogan Josh recipe to try because it is usually such a tasty dish.

I’ll let you know what I find in due course.