Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

Not long ago we told you about a long distance curry delivery from North Yorkshire all the way to the south of France.

It’s not often you see stories like this but another one has just come to our attention.

A guy in Greece persuaded a friend to pick up his favourite food from an Epsom restaurant and then personally deliver it to him.

Apparently the restaurant often gets request to ship a curry overseas so didn’t bat an eyelid when the food was picked up and taken straightaway to the airport.

It just goes to show that some people will go to great lengths to satisfy their tastebuds.

You can read the full story here.

Just what is the Tiffin Cup? I must admit I hadn’t heard of it until this week.

It’s an annual award made by the Tiffin Club, which is a club of around 60 MPs.

The idea of the award is to raise the awareness of the excellence of South East Asian cuisine as well as to raise money for charity. The award is not just for curry houses but curries do feature really highly on the menus of the competing restaurants.

The award has been running since 2006 and the past winners of the award are:-

Each MP in the Tiffin Club nominates the most popular restaurant in their constituency. The MPs usually ask their constituents to vote for their favourite restaurant and, quite often, local newspapers promote the event and get their readers to participate in the voting.

A restaurant from any South East Asian country can be nominated, covering a lot of great curry producing nations from Pakistan all the way to Vietnam. So it’s not just a competition for Indian restaurants although they do feature in the nominated, and award winning, restaurants.

A shortlist (of something like 10 – 15 restaurants) is compiled and the restaurant chefs are invited to take part in a “cook off”, in Parliament’s Bellamy’s Restaurant, where one is chosen as the winner of the Tiffin Cup.

This “cook off” is a popular event and lots of great food is sold off to those present to raise money for a charity. The charity for 2010 is World Vision

It’s too late to make any nominations for 2010 – the closing date for entries was 20th July.

We’ll bring you details of the winning restaurant just as soon as we get the news.

Scientists at Newcastle University have been experimenting with common curry spices such as turmeric, cumin, cloves, coriander (cilantro) and cinnamon to see if they reduce the production of methane gasses.

The scientists created an experiment that simulated sheep’s stomachs and measured the methane that was produced.

And the findings were that the spices do reduce methane output with the best curry ingredient being coriander, which reduced the methane output by a staggering 40%.

There are around 30 million sheep in the UK, and they produce about 600 million litres of methane every day, so a 40% reduction is a huge cut in emissions.

We don’t think that farmers will take to feeding curries to their sheep in the future but it’s possible that curry spices will be added to the livestock feed to help cut down on farm-produced methane.

You can read more of the story of using curry spices to reduce methane emissions.

I’ve noticed in the past that leftover curry often tastes better the next day.

I asked myself why this happens and did some searching on the Internet to try and find out why.

The first explanation that I found says that leaving a curry overnight lets the spices and juices infuse themselves into the main ingredient (such as meat or chickpeas).

The next explanation was very similar and said that the flavour is more enhanced if the curry is frozen and then defrosted later.

Another explanation is that the curry is being cooked twice and the ingredients blend together even more than when they are cooked once, with liquid reduction causing the flavour to concentrate in the curry.

Generally speaking, the consensus is that the spices continue to release their flavours into the curry. If you eat a curry as soon as it is cooked for the first time then you stop this secondary flavouring from happening.

I couldn’t find any scientific facts to bring to the discussion and even some chefs didn’t know exactly why most curries taste better the next day.

But everyone acknowledges that curries do indeed often taste better with the second cooking with the best enhancement coming if a curry is frozen and then defrosted before being cooked again.

If I have leftover curry then I always freeze it and take it into work for a tasty lunch.

Post a comment on this article if you’ve got any other explanations why a curry tastes better the next day.

You can have a crocodile, kangaroo, ostrich, camel and buffalo curry in the Nowab Restaurant, in Carlisle.

Chef Abdul Harid has been working in the curry-making industry for over 25 years and thought that it was time to branch out from the traditional chicken and lamb curries on the menu.

Abdul has found a supplier of the exotic meats and come up with a new menu to tempt the curry-loving Carlisle palate.

The Nowab restaurant is in Lonsdale Street and you can try out these new curry dishes now.

We don’t have anything too exotic amongst the Curry Focus recipes, apart from a couple of goat curry recipes.

If you’ve got an unusual curry recipe then why not give us the details on the Add Recipe page? We’ll publish the recipe for the whole world to enjoy.

I’ve learnt a lot about cooking curries over the last three years by testing one of the Curry Focus recipes each week.

In the beginning, I was pretty clumsy in my approach and this was not helped by some of the recipes. I’ve come to appreciate that there are 9 golden rules that make recipes easy to follow.

So here is my list of rules, in no particular order.

1 - The ingredients should be listed in the same sequence as they are used in the recipe. Having the list of ingredients in the same sequence that they are used in the recipe method definitely makes the recipe easier to follow.

2 - Make sure that the cooking steps are in the correct sequence. I’ve seen recipes that get you cooking and then suddenly say something like “Add 2 cups of cooked rice”. If you need to precook an ingredient then do this near the beginning of the recipe method and say to keep the item for later (something like “gently simmer the rice in a cup of water in a covered saucepan for 15 minutes and set aside”).

3 - The cooking times for each step should be clearly stated. I often see recipes that have phrases such as “fry the onions until they are cooked” or “simmer the beef until it is tender”. What exactly does that mean? For a beginner, or inexpert cook, this is often meaningless. With my limited experience, I know the answers to these instructions but I didn’t know this information 3 or 4 years ago. You need to spell out how long each step takes. Of course, the length of time that it takes to fry or cook something does depend on the heat that is being applied so sometimes you need to say “about 8 minutes” or “60 - 90 seconds”.

4 - The measurements should be consistent. You shouldn’t start off by saying something like “750 g of chicken” and then follow this up with “4 oz of coconut”.

5 - Use common ingredients. If you are publishing a recipe on the internet then it is going to be seen all over the world - if you want people to try your recipe then they need to be able to get hold of the ingredients. If your recipe calls for an ingredient that you know may be difficult to find then suggest an alternative.

6 - Use common ingredient sizes. This is especially important if you are using canned ingredients. For example, coconut milk is generally sold in cans of around 400 ml so it’s going to be frustrating/wasteful if you say a recipe needs 500 ml of coconut milk - the person is more likely to just use one can of coconut milk than buy 2 cans of coconut and waste most of a can.

7 – Keep it simple. Recipes with lots of ingredients and lots of complicated cooking steps put people off. Short direct sentences are better than rambling descriptions.

8 - Make sure that the recipe works. Try the recipe yourself and make sure that you follow the instructions, as written. You’d be surprised how many recipes use an ingredient that isn’t listed or don’t use an ingredient that is listed.

9 - Last, but not least, make sure that the recipe produces yummy food. This is obviously very subjective and is down to personal taste but the food must be edible.

If you have any good curry recipes, then why not share them with everyone by giving us the details on the Curry Focus “Add Recipe” page? We’ll format it for you and publish it for the world to enjoy.

The news that somebody has created a successful weight loss program with the main meals being curries is currently hitting the headlines.

A woman called Suki Burai has lost 19KG (42lb or 3 stone) by just eating curries and the story is covered in depth by the Daily Mail.

But eating curries to stay healthy comes as no surprise to the regular visitors of the Curry Focus website.

A few months ago we published an article titled “How Many Calories Are In A Curry?” which built on a series of articles called “Curry Calorie Count”.

These often-visited Curry Focus articles point out that the main factor in keeping control of the curry calories is that you need to cook the curries yourself so that you know exactly what is going into the curry.. Buying ready made curries from the supermarket or, even worse from a calorie point of view, eating in a curry house (or buying a takeaway) means that you have little or no control over what you eat.

I know from personal experience that most diets are really, really boring. In the past I have tried eating all kinds of salads but they are boring (did I mention that already?).

So it’s just brilliant that somebody has developed yummy curry recipes specifically designed to help people lose weight.

There are lots of great curry recipes on the Curry Focus website where you can keep control of what you eat. Most of the recipes are really easy to follow and a lot of them have been reviewed so you can see their relative taste and heat ratings at a glance on the recipe review page.

So check out the “How Many Calories Are In A Curry?” article and then start making your own delicious meals.

We spotted an interesting article about the amount of salt that is in a readymade curry (bought from a supermarket or a curry house).

The recommended daily salt intake for an adult is between 4-6 grams and a takeaway, along with the extras, can be up to 21 grams of salt.

It seems that people in India regularly take between 9-15 grams of salt in a day, which is way too much.

The conclusion of the article is that the best thing to do would be to make your own curries at home and then you have control over how much salt, or how little, you put into your food.

Obviously we think that this is a great idea and suggest that you start by trying out some of the great curry recipes on the Curry Focus website.

You can read the full article on the Times of India website.

We’ve just seen the story about a curry delivery that went above and beyond the call of duty.

A Selby, North Yorkshire, curry house recently delivered an order to the south of France for a loyal customer – and they didn’t even charge delivery. The delivery distance was 700 miles (about 1,100 kilometres), which gave the delivery guys a return journey of some 1,400 miles (2,200 kilometres).

The Yorkshire customers must have been very good customers indeed to get such great service.

We notice that the story didn’t give the name of the curry house – maybe they’re a bit worried that they might get more long distance orders.

You can read the story on the Express website.

A Jalfrezi curry is basically a stir-fry spicy-hot curry. Some people argue that Jalfrezi is a style of cooking rather than being a dish in its own right.

Onions and spices are usually fried and then meat (or vegetables) is added along with tomatoes, fresh chillies and capsicum (bell pepper). The curry is a “dry” curry, in that the sauce is thick with very little liquid, which is why it needs to be stir-fried in order to stop the ingredients from sticking and burning.

The dish originated in the Bengal area (of the northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent). The Bengal area is now split between Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal.

There are lots of different ways of spelling Jalfrezi, with Jalfrazi, jhal frezi, jalfrayzi being some of the more common variants.

There are Jalfrezi curry recipes on the Curry Focus website that are easy to make – the stir-fry nature of the curry makes it a fast curry to cook. The latest Chicken Jalfrezi to be reviewed, the Chicken Jalfrazi recipe, scored an impressive taste rating of 9 out of 10.