Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

Hi, Ray here again.

I don’t know about you, but I do like peas. When I see a curry recipe with peas in it, I usually can’t resist. There’s a fairly new Keema Mattar (Minced Lamb with Peas) recipe on the Curry Focus website and I decided to try it out.

I had all of the ingredients except for the lamb and the fresh coriander so it was going to be another small shopping trip.

My local meat store had a special on lamb so I was winning already!

This is another easy recipe to follow.

As usual, I prepared and measured all of the ingredients so that I could just add them to the frying pan as they were needed.

The curry only takes about 25 minutes to cook and so I didn’t start the cooking until the dinner guests arrived. And so I started cooking just after the guests arrived and helped themselves to some beer from the fridge.

It was a fairly typical curry to make and about the only thinking that I had to do was to synchronise the cooking of the rice and a couple of naan breads that I had in the freezer.

I served the meal and all of the talking stopped for a short while whilst the curry was devoured.

The curry had a lovely taste with a great coriander tang to it and was well liked by the diners. It received a workmanlike rating of 7 out of 10 with a spice rating of medium.

This is a good lamb curry that is worth trying to see if you like it.

2008 was a brilliant year for the Curry Focus website.

The website has been up and running for exactly 2 years and the traffic is growing on an almost monthly basis – we now get more than double the visitors each month as we did at the end of 2007.

We have a lot more recipes on the website for you to enjoy. The number of recipe pages have doubled in the year and there is sure to be something that you like that you can make yourself. We are working on changing some of the recipe pages to make it easier for you to find a suitable recipe for every occasion.

We try and review at least one recipe each week to let you know how easy (or difficult) it is to make, what it tastes like and how spicy-hot the dish is.

People look at the chicken recipes on the website more than all of the other recipe types put together. About the only time that chicken is edged out the top 5 recipes in each month is in December when turkey recipes are much sought after. There are lots and lots of great recipes that don’t use chicken, or turkey, so why not try one out soon?

The Xmas turkey is as popular as ever. How do we know this? Because hundreds of you visited the Curry Focus website in the week after Xmas and checked out the article on what to do with left over turkey. And some of you must have had enormous turkeys because the article was still being avidly looked at in the New Year!!!

We enjoy all of the emails and suggestions that you send to us. They give us ideas and keep us on our toes so do keep sending them.

One of the things to remember about the Curry Focus website is that it is free to use. You don’t have to register, or pay anything, to use the website. And we will keep it that way.

We enjoy making and eating curries. We think that’s pretty obvious when you look through the website and check out the recipe reviews and other blogs and articles.

But we don’t know everything. In fact, we know only a small part of the curry world. If you have a good recipe, why not tell us? If you have an interesting article on anything to do with curries then why not tell us? We will publish them on the website.

If you have any friends, or relatives, that enjoy curries then tell them about us. Spread the word.

We have had a fantastic two years and look forward to many more.

Thank you.

Latest Articles

Dhal with Spinach Recipe Review
Vegetable Korma Recipe Review
How To Remove Chilli Skins
Lamb Rogan Josh Recipe #2 Review
Jims Beef Curry Recipe Review

Top 5 recipes for last month

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

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

Hi, Ray here again.

Time to try out another beef curry recipe form the Curry Focus website and this time it’s Jim’s Beef Curry. I don’t know who Jim is but he must be pretty smart to come up with a great curry recipe.

My local supermarket had a special on diced beef so I didn’t even have to chop up the beef. And all of the fat had already been trimmed off so I didn’t even have to that small task.

I already had all of the ingredients except for the beef so the shopping trip was pretty quick.

The recipe has more than the average number of ingredients but was easy to follow.

As usual, I prepared and measured all of the ingredients before starting the cooking. I have small dinner plates with the correct amount of spices so I can just add them to the curry when the time to add them has been reached – I’m more comfortable doing this than measuring the spices whilst the cooking is underway.

I started the cooking about 90 minutes before dinner was due to start.

It didn’t take long to get the spices, garlic and onions cooked and then in went the beef pieces to get sealed.

Then in went the salt and stock and the main 60 minutes simmering was underway.

I partially cooked the potatoes while the beef was simmering and settled down with a beer as the dinner guests arrived – they can smell a curry cooking from a long distance.

Soon I was adding the partially cooked potatoes to the curry and then started to microwave the basmati rice.

Before too long the tomatoes went into the curry and then everything was ready.

I served up Jim’s Beef Curry on the rice and presented it to the ever-hungry diners.

Now this is a great curry, even if I do say so myself. The beef was lovely and tender and had a great texture with no gristle to chew on. The curry had a great flavour and everything was cooked to perfection.

Jim’s Beef Curry was awarded an excellent score of 8 out of 10 with a heat rate of “medium to hot�.

If you like a spicy beef curry then this recipe is definitely one for you.

Hi, Ray here again.

A few months ago I made a Rogan Josh from one of the Curry Focus recipes and was very disappointed with the results, as you can see from the recipe review.

But Rogan Josh is one of my favourite dishes and I vowed to try out another recipe if one turned up in the Curry Focus website. And another Rogan Josh recipe is now on the website so I decided to try it out.

I only had to buy the lamb and the fresh coriander as I already had all the other ingredients.

I made up the marinade and marinated the lamb for most of the afternoon, probably about 5 hours, before starting the main cooking.

Although the recipe looks a bit fiddly, it really is easy to follow.

The only thing I had to be careful of was doing the main simmer it a really low temperature so that I didn’t burn the food.

The dish didn’t need all of the water that was in the recipe. In fact, there was quite a lot of liquid in the curry. So I did not add the last lot of water because the curry did not need it. I’ve changed the recipe so that the last addition of water is optional.

I suppose the amount of liquid in the curry depends upon the heat that is being used under the frying pan. Cooking is not an exact science so you need to be a bit flexible. I always cook with some boiling water close to hand so that I can add some if the curry gets too dry.

I served up the Rogan Josh on basmati rice with a sprinkling of garam masala. In fact, I served up the meal without the garam masala and had to race into the kitchen, grab the garam masala and then sprinkle it over the food when it was already on the table. I’m sure this wouldn’t happen in a posh restaurant.

But the diners didn’t mind. The four of us loved the Rogan Josh. The lamb was very tender and the taste was just yummy. There were no complaints from me about the quality of this dish.

The Rogan Josh was given a good rating of 7.5 out of 10 with a heat rating of medium.

Give this recipe a try if you like a good Rogan Josh and you won’t be disappointed.

Sometimes recipes tell you to remove the skin from chillies but usually they don’t tell you how to remove them. The following simple steps show you how easy it is to do this.

Clean the chillies and dry them.

Heat a frying pan over a medium heat. You can heat the chillies in lots of different ways including grilling or roasting in the oven, but using a frying pan is as easy as any other way.

Put the chillies into the frying pan.

Turn the chillies every minute as they blacken.

The chillies should be ready after about 7 minutes when the outside skin should be more than half blackened

Remove the chillies from the frying pan with tongs and place them into a plastic bag.

Close the plastic bag.

Leave the chillies in the plastic bag for 15 minutes whilst they steam and continue to cook in the steam.

Take the chillies from the plastic bag and remove the skins using your fingernails – they should come off easily – remove any stubborn skin with a sharp knife.

Use the chillies straightaway or freeze for later use.