Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

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.

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.

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.

The wines have been developed with input from chefs and are going to be available in good restaurants as well as in supermarkets.

Indage is hoping that it will capture a big slice of the curry eating, wine drinking market.

Some of the wines from the company are already on sale in the UK but the new range is being aimed at the curry market.

I’m not sure if the wines are going to be a big hit and only time will tell.

But I think that I’ll be sticking to my Kingfisher beer when I’m dining out – I just can’t imagine having a chardonnay or pinot noir with my rogan josh.

You can check out a full article here.

Chillis arrived in India early in the 16th century, not long after Columbus sailed to the Caribbean in 1492.

Why did Columbus head west? The main reason was to find a passage to India and the “spice islands” in the Pacific. Up until that time, pepper was carried to China (or Malaysia) and then transported across the Indian Ocean to India, then across the Arabian Sea to Africa, then overland to the Mediterranean and finally entering Europe via Venice or Genoa. Towards the end of the 15th century, the price of pepper was spiralling upwards and a lot of the blame was put on the multitude of middlemen in the process, particularly the Venetians and Genoese. A western sea route to the spice source was needed.

Columbus was convinced that he had succeeded in finding the western route when he reached the Caribbean and this conviction was strengthened when he saw the locals spicing up their meals with pepper.

But pepper wasn’t being used in the Caribbean – capsicums were being used. Varieties of these capsicums had been used in cooking for thousands of years in the Americas. One of the major users of the spicy capsicums was, and still remains, Mexico. The Aztecs were a major force in Mexico for a long time and their word for the capsicum was “chilli”.

In this way, the humble chilli pepper was “discovered” by Europeans.

In 1498 a small Portuguese fleet of 3 ships, led by Vasco da Gama, sailed down the west coast of Africa, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, crossed the Arabian Sea and landed at the Malabar Coast of India. The real sea route to India had been found (remember, this was long before the Suez canal was built).

Trade flourished between India and Portugal and the Portuguese established settlements in this area of India with their capital at Goa. The Portuguese quickly took over control of the spice trade and built forts to protect their interests.

And the Portuguese brought chillis from the New World and used them in their cooking in, and around, Goa.

The Portuguese ate a lot of meat, mainly beef and pork, and added chillis to the ingredients in their dish of meat cooked in wine vinegar and garlic. The Portuguese for this dish is “carne de vinho e alhos” – “vinho e alhos” was badly pronounced by the local population and became “vindaloo”.

The local Indian population usually did not eat meat – they were Muslims (who didn’t eat pork), Hindus (who didn’t eat beef) or vegetarians. But all that changed when the Portuguese introduced Christianity and even more so when the Inquisition arrived in Goa in 1560.

The Inquisition persuaded (or coerced or forced) the Indian population to become Catholics. In 1550, around 20% of Goans were Catholics and this had reached around 67% by 1650.

And the Catholic Church issued edicts saying that it was OK to eat pork and beef.

And so, gradually, the local population began to eat meat.

The British invaded Goa in 1797 and discovered the vindaloo. And they loved it. The British left Goa after less than 20 years and took Goan cooks, and recipes, with them back to British India. After that it didn’t take long for the vindaloo to reach Britain where it established itself as a favourite dish, especially pork vindaloo.

Use of the chilli spread within the Indian sub continent from Goa. The chilli was as spicy as the Indian long pepper (that it quickly replaced), was easy to grow and easy to store (the Indian long pepper was hard to store because it was susceptible to mould).

So, contrary to popular belief, the chilli did not originate in India – it is a spice from the New World (the Portuguese did indeed ship a lot of chilli to Europe, mainly in the form of chilli powder).

The blending of the Portuguese dish of “carne de vinho e alhos” and chillis resulted in the vindaloo, for which the rest of the curry-eating world is grateful.

There is a great Curry Focus recipe for Pork Vindaloo.

A karahi is similar to a flat-bottomed wok and is the traditional cooking utensil for Indian curries.

Traditionally, a karahi is made of cast iron but nowadays you can buy a karahi made out of stainless steel or coated with non-stick material, such as tefal.

A karahi has relatively deep sides and is ideal for deep frying, or shallow frying, lots of different foods and dishes. Stews that are cooked in a karahi are themselves sometimes called karahis.

A karahi can be large or small enough to hold a single portion of food. A single portion karahi can be used as a serving dish

To confuse matters, a karahi can also be called a kadai and a dish cooked in a karahi can also be called a kadai.

Curry Focus has good karahi and kadai recipes. There’s a Karahi Chicken and Fenugreek main dish and a Kadai Paneer side dish.

A lot of good hardware stores stock kaharis but, if you’re having difficulty finding stockists, you can buy online on sites such as Amazon. Just go here to see a selection.

Coriander is now the top selling herb in Britain.

25 percent (a quarter) of all fresh herb sales are now for coriander, a remarkable achievement seeing that the herb has only been on sale in supermarkets for 20 years. The second placed herb is basil, with 19 percent of sales.

The reason for this boom in coriander sales is the seemingly insatiable appetite for curries in the UK.

Coriander is used in lots of Indian curry dishes including curries, soups and breads with fresh coriander being chopped up and either put into the food whilst it is cooking or sprinkled over the food as a tasty garnish when it is served.

The herb has been grown commercially all over Britain for more than 30 years and packets of seeds started to appear in supermarkets about 10 years ago. It isn’t hard to grow coriander but it needs a bit more attention than just throwing a few seeds into a pot and watering it.

But you don’t need to grow your own coriander – you can just buy it from your supermarket or local Indian supply shop. All you need to do is wash the coriander, finely chop it up and then sprinkle it on your favourite curry just before you eat it. Most people only use the leaf part of the plant but some use the whole plant. Why not give it a try and see what you think?

The Mughal emperor, Babur, invaded Hindustan in 1526. Babur was from Uzbekistan and he moved through Afghanistan to reach Hindustan, which is the former name of northern India.

The cuisine from Babur’s homeland was deeply influenced by the culinary styles of Persia and, to some extent, Turkey.

The pulao (or pilau) dish was introduced in the time of Babur and was basically meat fried in fat with water, rice and vegetables added. The Mughals ate meat, such as beef and mutton, whereas a lot of the population of Hindustan were vegetarians. There are lots of versions of vegetarian pulao/pilau recipes that you can try. There’s a very simple Curry Focus recipe for Pulao Rice here and there’s a Vegetable Pulao recipe here.

During the reign of Babur’s son, Humuyan, the pulao/pilau dish became even more popular and evolved into containing not just spices, but also fruit and chicken.

The next emperor was Akbar and the pulao/pilau dish evolved even further into an entirely new dish, biryani. Biryani is similar to pulao/pilau but usually contains meat that has been marinated in yogurt and is more than likely to contain onions, garlic, almonds, saffron and rice as well as a wide variety of spices. You can see a recipe for Chicken Biryani here and for a Lamb Biryani here.

The Mughals built the most well known building in the world. Akbar’s grandson, Shahjahan, was responsible for creating the Taj Mahal, in Agra.

There’s no denying that the Taj Mahal is a magnificent gift to the world

And nobody can argue the pulao/plau and biryani dishes are also great gifts to the world from the Mughals.

Following on from our recent blog on the world rice shortage, the latest news from Vietnam confirms that the problem is getting worse.

Vietnam is the usually 5th largest producer of rice, and the 3rd largest exporter, of rice in the world.

But all this has changed with disease and pests attacking the rice crops both last year and this.

And there doesn’t seem to be an answer to the problem at present.

The rice-dependent part of the world is reeling from crop failures, and shortages, and is nervously waiting to see if the rice diseases and pests spread from Vietnam into neighbouring major rice producing countries (such China, Thailand and Cambodia).

You can read an article on Vietnam’s current problems on Yahoo.

As a result of their problems, Vietnam has placed heavy restrictions on rice exports to try and ensure that the local population has access to the most important of their staple foods.

So Vietnam joins a list of countries (India, China and Egypt) that has banned, or restricted, rice exports so that their own people can eat. But the price of rice is rising in those countries despite these actions.

So what this mean for you and me? Higher prices for rice are inevitable as countries that buy rice compete against each other for a diminishing supply. And there may be shortages in your local supermarket as well, although it is too early to see if this actually happens.

My local supermarket does not seem to have noticed any problems in the rice market because my favourite basmati rice was on sale this weekend with 30% off the regular price. But, as the world’s rice supplies do dry up, the prices WILL rise.

At the end of the day, I can afford to pay more for my rice. It’s the masses in South East Asia who have a far bigger problem in finding affordable food.

Garlic is part of the onion family of plants and, like onions, is an ingredient in many curry recipes.

Garlic has a pungent spicy flavour that mellows in cooking.

The main part of the garlic plant is the bulb and there are lots of small segments in the bulb. These segments are called cloves. Curry recipes that use garlic usually tell you how many cloves of garlic to use. You take this number of cloves off the main bulb, peel away the thin tissue-like covering and you are left with the raw garlic. You either finely chop or crush the garlic to use in the recipe (there’s a special kitchen utensil, called a garlic crusher, that you use to crush garlic – the utensil looks a bit like a nut crusher). Most times you can chop up the garlic really finely if you don’t have a garlic crusher.

Often you will be putting garlic into a curry at the same time as you are cooking the onions or ginger. The three ingredients go together well.

As well as being great in cooking, garlic also has a lot of medicinal applications.

Garlic has been used to treat a wide variety of ailments such as high cholesterol, hypertension, cancer, blood sugar problems, the common cold and AIDS. You can search the internet if you want to find out more details.

Garlic is reasonably easy to grow and is readily available all around the world with China and India being the main producers.

No kitchen should be without a bulb of garlic.