Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

The results are in for the Scottish Curry Awards that were presented at the Glasgow Marriot Hotel, last week on Monday 18th May.

For the second year, the awards were sponsored by IRN-BRU.

The categories, finalists and winners are as follows.

Curry Lover of the Year Award
Martyn Wallace
Alex Salmond (winner)

Supermarket Curry Award
Asda (winner)
Tesco
Morrisons

Team of the Year Award
Ashoka Elderslie, Glasgow (winner)
Chillies Westend, Glasgow
Bombay Joes, Dundee
Surruchi, Edinburgh
Cinnamon, Aberdeen

Chef of the Year Award
Jaffar Hussain – Kabana, Glasgow (winner)
M.Saftar – Taj Mahal, Biggar
Tejpal Singh – Ashoka, Glasgow

Take-Away of the Year Award
Kebab Mahal, Edinburgh (winner)
Tandoori Hut, Dundee
Balti, Glasgow
Chillies West End, Glasgow
Eastern Spices, Edinburgh

Restaurant of the Year Award
Ashoka Shak, Dundee
Mother India Café, Glasgow
Bombay Joes, Broughty Ferry
Cinnamon, Aberdeen (winner)

A special Lifetime Achievement Award was made to Mr. Ali Ahmed Aslam (who founded Glasgow’s Shish Mahal and has raised funds for the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice) and the Curry King or Queen of the year award went to Mr. Balbir Singh Sumal (owner of Balbir’s, in Glasgow, and a pioneer in introducing healthy Indian curries).

So if you have one of these top restaurants and chefs close to where you live, why not make a dinner booking and go and find out what great curries taste like?

The other day, the Curry Focus team was talking about what searches were being made on the website. Luckily we keep a track of this information in the database. In the blink of an eye, a quick bit of SQL coding brought the answer.

In the past month, in descending number of searches, the following were the top searches.

01 – chicken curry

02 – masala paste

03 – chicken

04 – chicken saag

05 – potato

06 – xacutti

07 – chicken pasanda

08 – lamb

09 – masala

10 – chicken kasmiri

You can see that the top search was for chicken curry. That’s no real surprise considering that the chicken curries are nearly always the top recipes that are viewed by the website visitors.

Indeed, 5 out of the top 10 searches included the word “chicken�.

It’s interesting to see what the visitors were looking for from this list. Some were looking for a type of curry (chicken curry and lamb). Some were looking for a type of dish (xacutti) and some were looking for a specific dish (chicken pasanda and chicken kasmiri). And quite a few people were looking for a curry with potato in it.

We don’t have any chicken pasanda or chicken kashmiri recipes on the websites yet. If you have a good recipe for one of these, why not share it with us? A lot of people will be grateful.

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Chicken and Mushroom Pulao Recipe Review
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Lose Weight Eating Curry

Top 5 recipes for last month

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

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

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If you live near Bedford then you’re in for a real treat when Edible Ornamentals , the Chawston chilli gurus, start letting people in to pick their own chillis.

Edible Ornamentals grow a lot of chillis (about 400,000 a year) and have a great business supplying supermarkets. From June they are going to let you pick your own chillis for only 20p each.

There is a huge range of varieties to chose from, including Anaheim, padron, cherry bomb, Dorset Naga and Bhut Jolokia.

That’s right. You can go and pick your own Dorset Naga and Bhut Jolokia chillis, which are among the hottest chillis in the world.

The harvest season runs from June to December so you haven’t got long to wait now.

The Edible Ornaments website doesn’t have anything on this great, innovative, service but they are sure to have the website updated soon.

You can read the full story here.

So if you’re lucky enough to live near Bedford, why not give Edible Ornaments a call to find out when they’re open and then drop by to pick the freshest chillis you’re ever likely to get?

The internet is abuzz with stories about the recent announcement that curcumin, a component of turmeric, had caused fat and weight loss in experiments with mice.

We wrote an article about this, called “Take Turmeric and Curcumin To Lose Weight�, three weeks ago.

Since then, the story has been picked up by a lot of organisations, including the Times of India, the Marie-Claire magazine and the Los Angeles Times.

As you probably know, turmeric is an ingredient in lots of curries.

There’s a long way to go with more tests and experiments planned. Presumably testing on people will take place sometime soon and, if these tests are positive, you can expect a flurry of diet and weight loss products, based on curcumin, to hit the market.

Until then, you can eat a good curry with the thought that maybe you can lose a bit of weight in the process.

The Asda supermarket chain is now stocking a new curry sauce range called “Holy Cow�.

The range of sauces have been created by a chef called Kiran Bhandari, who has used her lifetime of cooking experience to create the sauces.

Kiran was born in New Delhi and has been making the sauces from recipes that have been in her family for decades.

Kiran’s daughter, Anu, has given up her IT job and now helps with the business and marketing.

The delicious range of sauces includes “Goan Extra Hot Lime�, “Spicy Monsoon Mango� and “Madrasi Hot Mint�.

Kiran started making the sauces in her kitchen in Oxford but has now relocated to a factory in Birmingham so she can make the volume that is needed by Asda.

Kiran has 5 children and teaches evening cooking classes, which makes you wonder when she found time to develop the curry sauce range.

If you see this new range in your local Asda, why not give it a try and see what you think? It’s great to support new talent and we’re sure that the sauces are delicious.

Hi, Ray here again.

My girlfriend loves mushrooms and has been “suggesting� that I make a mushroom curry for a while now.

So I checked out the Curry Focus curries and there was a recipe for a yummy Chicken and Mushroom Pulao.

Sorted.

The chicken in the recipe was chicken thighs, which I find are always tastier than chicken breasts.

And there were vegetables in the recipe, which meant that it must be healthy.

As usual, I started to prepare the ingredients about half an hour before I was going to start cooking. There was nothing too complicated to prepare. I peeled the mushrooms because I prefer them that way but I don’t suppose there’s anything wrong in just lightly wiping the mushrooms with some damp kitchen tissue and then just chopping them up.

This is a pretty easy recipe to follow.

Except that I found that the rice took a lot longer to cook than in the recipe and the pulao needed some extra water to stop it from sticking. I often have this problem with dishes where the rice absorbs the water. I’m sure that I had the minimum simmer possible. Anyway, the recipe said the final cooking phase should last 15 minutes but my test took 30 minutes and the addition of a cup of boiling water to get the rice cooked.

The dinner guests had arrived just after I started cooking and were well ready to eat by the time the dish was properly cooked.

The pulao was served up with a nice glass of wine and it was peaceful for a few minutes while everyone got stuck into the food.

And this is a very tasty pulao. Not very spicy but it was tasty. The cloves could be tasted through the while dish and the chicken was well cooked and yummy. The cloves were hard to spot amongst the food and a couple of lucky people got 2 each.

The dish was very well liked and received an average score of 8 out of 10 with a spice rating of very mild.

If you’re a pulao fan then this is a recipe that you simply must try – you won’t regret it.

My girlfriend couldn’t make dinner because of a last minute dinner arrangement with some friends. So she didn’t get to try the mushroom curry. Now that’s funny.

The 5th annual British Curry Awards ceremony will be held on Tuesday 3rd November, 2009 at Battersea Evolution and nominations are now open.

If you know of a great curry house then why not nominate it for the awards?

This is the major curry award of the year so the restaurant needs to be consistently serve up quality curries.

This year there are two categories – “Best Spice Restaurant� and “Newcomer of the Year�.

The “Best Spice Restaurant� award is given on a regional basis and the “Newcomer of the Year� award is a national title.

Nominations close on 14th August, 2009 so you have a few months to think about your nominations. But don’t leave it too long because months have a habit of slipping by when you’re not looking.

You can nominate online so why not do it now?

And if you want to attend the awards ceremony itself, you’d better book quickly. The VIP tables are already gone and the event always sells out well before it is held. As well as the awards, the ceremony always has great entertainment and stunning food.

In India, the word tiffin means lunch, a light meal or a snack.

And in India, there are thousands of vendors of tiffin who come into the cities, selling their delicious light lunches to office workers. Tiffin is delivered in containers and the containers are collected later on in the afternoon so they can be cleaned and used again the next day.

A twist on the delivery method has been introduced to Melbourne with tiffin being brought to the office on converted 3-wheeled bikes.

The “Tifins� company was started about a year ago by two brothers who immigrated to Australia from Mumbai. And business is booming with around 250 meals being delivered to offices in the city centre every day.

The 3-wheeled bikes can get through the Melbourne traffic surprisingly quickly and each bike has an insulated box that can hold 50 tiffin containers.

The food is delivered hot and delicious and cheaply.

Tiffin is now a big hit in India and Melbourne. Where next?

Hi, Ray here again.

A busy weekend was ahead of me and I was going to be out most of Sunday. And Sunday night is curry night.

So I looked for an easy recipe that I could make on Saturday and just heat up on Sunday night. And the one that I found was Chas’s Chicken Curry.

I knew that I wouldn’t be able to find any Naga Bih Jaloka chillies anywhere. But I had some dried Kashmiri chillies in the cupboard so they would have to be a substitute.

The recipe itself is very simple to follow and before long the curry was made and I went out for the rest of the day.

Sunday night arrived and I got home about an hour before dinnertime. And so I had plenty of time to chop up the coriander, heat up the curry and cook some basmati rice.

I served up the curry and we settled down to eat it.

And it was pretty disappointing. The curry was pretty bland, apart from the coriander. I’m not a great fan of curry paste and the curry paste that I used didn’t seem to add much to the flavour.

The curry received a taste score of 5.5 out of 10 with a spice heat rating of “mild to medium�.

Once again turmeric or, more precisely, the curcumin in turmeric has hit the health headlines.

We’ve previously written a couple of articles on the health benefits of turmeric and curcumin - “Is Turmeric a Spice or Medicine?� and “Curcumin, Turmeric and Your Health. An Update�.

Now curcumin is being heralded as a possible wonder weight loss aid.

Experiments have been taking place with mice by giving them doses of curcumin with their food.

And the mice that got the curcumin lost body fat and weight.

The treatment has not been done on people yet but we’re sure it won’t be too long before it does.

You can read about the research in lots of places on the internet. One of the easiest articles to read (some of the articles are quite technical) is on the Nutra Ingredients website.

Turmeric is a spice that is often used in curries, so does this mean that one day we’ll be encouraged to eat curries to lose weight?