Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

Hi, Ray here again.

The weekend is here again so it’s time to try another one of the great Curry Focus recipes.

I don’t think that I’ve followed a fish recipe since I started testing out the Curry Focus website recipe. I spotted the recipe for Fish Cakes. It’s been a long time since I had fish cakes – too long. And the recipe looked so easy.

I already had most of the ingredients for the meal in the house so all I had to buy was the fish and spring onions (scallions).

It’s such a simple recipe that it’s hard to write anything special about it.

I cooked the fish and let it cool whilst I made the mashed potato.

Then I crumbled up the fish and mixed all of the ingredients together.

I beat the second egg.

Then I made the fish cakes. They were a bit small and crumbly. So I decided to make slightly bigger fish cakes and I ended up making 12 fish cakes in total.

I heated up the oil and the oven and then fried the fish cakes and kept them warm in the oven.

I served the fish cakes with vegetables to the dinner group.

The fish cakes went down well with the diners with “tasty� being the main word that was used to describe them. They had a medium spice/heat flavour and received a good rating of 7 out of 10.

One thing that was lacking was some sauce to go with the fish cakes. Maybe a tamarind sauce would have gone well with the cakes.

Overall, the fish cakes were great and I won’t leave it so long before I make them again.

Diwali is an Indian and Nepalese Hindu festival that is celebrated around the end of October.

The actual date of the festival is not the same each year because it is based upon lunar months. In southern India, the festival starts in the month of Ashwin and ends in Kartika. In northern India the festival is in the middle of Ashwayuja/Ashvin. The festival happens at almost the same time all over India and Nepal – it’s a bit confusing because each of the regions uses its own calendar.

The next celebration of Diwali is on October 28th, 2008 in the Gregorian calendar.

The festival is well known throughout the world as the Festival of Lights.

The festival is called the Festival of Lights because of the tradition of lighting clay lamps all over Hindu homes on Diwali night.

There are 3 main reasons for lighting the lamps.

The first is so that the gods Rama and Sita can find their way to return to their northern India home of Ayodhya.

The second reason is that, to Hindus, darkness represents ignorance whereas light represents knowledge. So the lighting of lamps dispels the dark forces of ignorance and all of the negatives forces (evil, anger, greed, injustice, fear, violence, envy, suffering and oppression) and replaces them with the light of knowledge.

Diwali falls over the start of the Hindu financial year and the third purpose of the lights is to welcome Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity.

Friends give each other gifts of sweetmeats, nuts and dried fruit and Diwali day is spent eating these delicacies along with cooked savoury snacks.

With Hindu migration nowadays Diwali, the Festival of Lights, is celebrated all over the world with parades, music, dance, food and fireworks.

Do go to a Diwali celebration if you get the chance. There is always great entertainment and the food is delicious.

Hi, Ray here again.

Time for to try out another great curry recipe from the Curry Focus website and this week I went for the Beef Madras recipe. This recipe has been on the Curry Focus website for a long time so I’m a bit surprised that I haven’t tried it before now because I love Beef Madras.

As usual, this is a pretty easy recipe to make and it only took me just over an hour from starting the preparation to serving up the food.

I just bought some ordinary steak because the recipe did not say which cut to buy.

I did buy a couple of stuffed paratha to go with the curry.

I just followed the recipe and all worked out well.

The curry kept getting dry during the cooking and I ended up adding all of the masala gravy and an extra ½ cup of hot water to stop the curry from becoming too thick.

There was only my flatmate and me for dinner tonight and we both like hot curries. Which is pretty lucky because this is definitely a spicy, hot, curry. It was very tasty and had a strong after taste. The word “fiery� was used and I’m convinced that it was hotter than the Pork Vindaloo that I recently made.

Overall, the curry was awarded a score of 8 out of 10 with a spice/heat rating of hot.

In my opinion, this is a stunning curry and you should definitely give it a try if you like a tasty and hot curry.

Hi, Ray here again.

Time for another great chicken curry from the Curry Focus website and this week it is the Jaipur Chicken Curry recipe.

I bought a mixture of chicken pieces to use in the curry – a pack of chicken drumsticks and a pack of chicken pieces.

I made the chicken broth with the onion and chicken pieces and left the chicken to cool down a little.

The chicken came off the bones so easily once it had been cooked and I removed the meat without needing a knife.

I carefully followed the recipe and the curry was ready about an hour later.

I timed the rice to be ready with the curry and served up the meal to the dinner guests.

The curry had a great creamy ginger taste. Most of the liquid had been absorbed into the curry so it was a dry curry. The curry texture was good.

The curry received an excellent score of 7 out of 10 with a medium spice/heat rating.

This is an excellent curry that I can recommend that you try.

And now time for a confession. I made this curry last week using chicken breasts instead of chicken on bone. I had gone shopping and left my shopping list behind. I knew that I had to buy chicken but forgot the type.

2kg (4 lb) of chicken breast is a lot of chicken. Maybe I should have put the chicken into the freezer or chosen another recipe but I blundered on. And the chicken really fell apart. It was like eating shredded chicken. The curry was very edible but I was annoyed that I’d bought the wrong main ingredient.

The second making of the curry was a lot more successful when I used the drumsticks and chicken pieces. I had read somewhere that about 30% of a chicken is bone and fat. But I found that the drumsticks and pieces yielded less than 50% of the weight. Maybe I should have used a whole chicken. Maybe next time.

Hi, Ray here again.

This week I decided to be healthy and try out a vegetarian curry. I love potatoes and so I chose the Gujarati Potato Curry recipe from the great range of Curry Focus recipes.

This is the first recipe that I’ve tried that has asafoetida in it. I called in at my favourite Indian supermarket and bought a small container of the powder. It smells really strong. The container has a screw top that probably keeps the smell inside. But now I’ve used the powder, I’ve put the container into an airtight jar just to make sure that the smell doesn’t leak out into all of my other spices.

The asafoetida really smells but it gives a great taste to the curry.

I seem to recall, at the back of my mind, that there is an Indian religious sect that isn’t allowed garlic or onions and it is asafoetida that is the substitute.

Now I have to say that the curry is really easy to make and it’s just a matter of following the recipe.

But the one thing that I thought was a bit odd from the recipe is that you’re going to be eating a dry potato curry on rice. This seemed a bit too much carbohydrate to me so I just made the curry by itself.

The curry was really dry and I presume this is because the potato soaks up all of the liquid.

I was eating alone tonight so just put a portion of the curry into a bowl and heated up a paratha from the freezer to go with it.

The curry was OK but was definitely a bit bland. It had a medium spice taste but there wasn’t really any “body�, or substance, to it. I just couldn’t imagine eating rice with it. Maybe it would have been better with some more vegetables in it – like the Spiced Potato and Cauliflower recipe.

I gave the curry a rating of 6 out of 10 with a medium spice rating. The curry was edible but a bit disappointing.

Its often the simple questions that have the most interesting of answers and this month we look at - Where Do Curries Come From?.

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

Beef and Potato Curry Recipe Review - We recommend this curry if you want to try a curry that is not too spicy.

Top 5 Recipes for August

Chicken rules the roost yet again.

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

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

We get a regular trickle of questions in regard to the dishes and ingredients that are in curries. Usually the answer is on one of the glossary pages on the website. A list of all of the more common dishes can be found on the Dishes page. And a list of common curry ingredients is on the Ingredients page. If you’re confused about terms such as “saute” , “garnish” or “marinate” then you’ll find a quick guide on the Methods page. Finally, there’s a handy measures conversion page where you can work out what some of the strange recipe measures that you come across - this is on the Measures page.

We hope that you find the glossary pages useful. If you think of any other glossary details that would be useful, let us know and we’ll do our best to include them for you.