Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

Hi, Ray here again.

Last weekend I had a couple of good friends around for dinner. I hadn’t seen either of them for over a year so I decided to push the boat out a little and make a range of dishes for them to sample.

I made a spicy potato and cauliflower, dhal and chicken jalfrezi, all from the range of delicious Curry Focus recipes.

The friends were bringing round some fresh fruit for dessert so I decided to try and make some ice cream (kulfi) to go with the fruit.

I know that you can buy ice cream making machines. But I don’t have one.

The Curry Focus ice cream recipe doesn’t need anything more automated than a whisk.

I bought all of the ingredients, conscious that there was a lot of fat and calories going into this dish. But I don’t have ice cream very often so it’s a bit of a treat.

The recipe was easy enough to follow.

It was the freezing and unfreezing that I had to think about.

Before adding the final ingredient of whisked egg whites, the ice cream had to be 80% frozen. I really had to make a guess at what this meant. I kept checking the mixture every 10 minutes after an hour and then finally decided it had frozen enough after 90 minutes.

Then I left the ice cream overnight to freeze.

I wanted to check out the ice cream the next day and found that it was frozen solid. There was no way that I could even chip out portions to eat. It must be because there are no added preservatives – ice cream that you buy from the supermarket never really freezes when you have it in the freezer so it must be down to something that is added to the ice cream.

So I left the ice cream in the kitchen for an hour to let it thaw a little. The ice cream could be spooned out of the bowl but had a fair amount of ice inside it.

I had to go out for the best part of the day so put the ice cream back into the freezer.

An hour before we were due to start eating, I took the ice cream out of the freezer again. Once more, it was frozen solid. By the time it came for dessert, just over 1.5 hours had gone by and the ice cream was almost perfect. I mixed it up with a fork to make sure that the few solid bits were broken up and then served it up with the fresh fruit.

Another hit on my hands!! The ice cream was loved by everyone and it received an impressive score of 8 out of 10.

So if you have a sweet tooth and are partial to ice cream, why not give this easy recipe a try?

My daughter surprised me the other day by asking where curries come from. She’s only six and hasn’t shown the slightest interest in curries (I suppose it’s more an adult taste). I answered that they came from the Indian restaurant at the end of the road. But what she actually wanted to know was which country they came from.

Now that was a very interesting question.

The obvious answer is that they come from India.

But that’s only a part of the truth.

In fact curries come from a lot of different countries, the most famous being India. But you also get curries in a lot of other countries including Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Nepal, Cambodia, Vietnam and Jamaica. Even China and Japan have their own styles of curries.

Each country produces at least one type of curry and some, such as India, have lots of different types of dishes to tempt your palate.

So what goes into a curry? The answer is “almost anything”. The main ingredients around the world are chillies, spices, onions, ginger, meat (including fish) and vegetables. Most curries are served with rice.

Nowadays you can get a good curry in most countries of the world. Indeed, in most cities that I’ve visited, you usually have a choice of the type of curry that you can buy.

I’m not sure that my answer meant very much to my daughter but we had a fun time finding all of the curry producing countries in an atlas.

Hi, Ray here again.

Time to try another of the great range of curry recipes on the Curry Focus website. My local supermarket was advertising a special on beef so I chose the Beef and Potato curry to take advantage of the special. The way I figure it, the more I save on ingredients, the more I can spend on a beer to have with the curry.

This is another really easy curry to make and all you have to remember is that you have to simmer the curry for about 2.5 hours – so if you’re planning on dining at 7pm then you have to start making the curry around 4pm.

I cut up the beef and mixed it up with the salt and turmeric.

Then I prepared the onions, garlic and ginger and was ready to start the cooking.

I stir-fried the onion, garlic and ginger for about 10 minutes. Then I added the beef and spices and stir-fried for another 5 minutes.

Then in went the water. I brought the curry to a simmer, covered and left it for 2 hours, returning to stir the curry every 10 – 15 minutes.

I quickly peeled and cubed the potatoes when the 2 hours were nearly finished and then added the potato cubes to the curry, stirring well and covering the frying pan again.

I started up some rice after 5 minutes and everything was ready just 20 minutes after the potato was added.

The Beef and Potato curry was served up to the assembled diner (just 2 of us for dinner tonight) and we tasted the results of my cooking.

It was a good curry. Not a great curry but a good one. It had a mild to medium spicy taste. The beef was lovely and tender. There wasn’t much colour on the plate so I maybe should have garnished the curry with some fresh coriander. The curry received a good rating of 7 out of 10.

Of course, there was far too much curry for the two of us. We had the same curry the next night and it tasted a little spicier than the previous night (funny how curries do that). And we still hadn’t finished the curry so put the remainder into a container and popped it into the freezer for another day.

I definitely recommend this curry if you want to try a curry that is not too spicy.

Our writers have been busy this month reviewing recipes and taking a closer look at some of the ingredients used.

Ray puts together some of the things he has learned in the last twelve months making curries and produces a full meal - Putting It All Together.

Passatta. What Is It? - Passatta is a cooked tomato concentrate that we talk about in this article.

Cauliflower and Potato Recipe Review - A great side dish that is not only tasty but easy to make.

Poppadom Recipe Review - Poppadoms end up being a challenge to cook.

Beef Pasanda Recipe Review - If you like a mild curry and red wine then this could be just the curry for you.

Lamb Rogan Josh Recipe Review - this curry did not turn out as expected so we are looking for more Rogan Josh Recipes to review.

Top 5 Recipes for July

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

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