Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

Our writers have been busy this month reviewing recipes and taking a closer look at some of the ingredients used.

Ray puts together some of the things he has learned in the last twelve months making curries and produces a full meal - Putting It All Together.

Passatta. What Is It? - Passatta is a cooked tomato concentrate that we talk about in this article.

Cauliflower and Potato Recipe Review - A great side dish that is not only tasty but easy to make.

Poppadom Recipe Review - Poppadoms end up being a challenge to cook.

Beef Pasanda Recipe Review - If you like a mild curry and red wine then this could be just the curry for you.

Lamb Rogan Josh Recipe Review - this curry did not turn out as expected so we are looking for more Rogan Josh Recipes to review.

Top 5 Recipes for July

1 Chicken Biryani
2 Chicken Curry
3 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.

Another busy month as we try more recipes, look at how to match wine to a curry and continue to add new features to the website. We’ll let you know about the new features once they are ready. If you think of something that would make your visits to the website more enjoyable, just give us your ideas from the Contact Us page.

Last week we were asked where our website visitors come from. To be honest, we didn’t know the complete answer - we knew where most people lived but not them all. So we checked with Google and the answer was that we have had visitors from 145 different countries. Now that’s a lot of countries. Most of the missing countries in the world are from the African continent - maybe we need some more spicy African curry recipes on the website?

Ray cooks and reviews a delicious Jamaican Chicken Curry Recipe

Time to try out another great recipe from the Curry Focus website. I liked the look of the Lamb Rogan Josh recipe but hadn’t looked at the recipe early enough. The lamb needs to marinate overnight and the dinner guests were arriving in 6 hours. So, instead, I went for the Jamaican Chicken Curry that looked pretty easy to make…. read more

It can always be a challenge matching Wine With a Chicken Curry

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… read more

Cumin Chicken Curry Recipe Review

Time to try out another great recipe from the Curry Focus website. This time it’s the Cumin Chicken Curry recipe.

I only had to buy the chicken – the other ingredients were already in the kitchen.

This is really a very easy curry to cook… read more

Top 5 Recipes for June

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

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

May has been another month where again chicken has come out on top looking at our most popular recipes. We have added some more great articles as well and we hope you enjoy reading them.

What Is A Karahi? 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….

Pork Vindaloo Recipe Review My girlfriend wasn’t going to be here for my weekly curry so it gave me an opportunity to try a great Pork Vindaloo recipe that had been given to me by my flatmate’s mother. A vindaloo is a very hot curry (although not as hot as a phal)…..

Naan Bread Recipe Review I few weeks ago I made a great aubergine curry (here is the review of the aubergine curry).

At the time, I also ventured into making naan bread….

Easy Chicken Curry Recipe Review
Curry time again so once more I scan through the Curry Focus recipes. This time I was immediately attracted by the word “Easy” in the Easy Chicken Curry Recipe. And it looked an easy dish to prepare….

We’ve had some positive feedback with the revised search processing where the search looks for common mis-spellings and alternatives for search words. Thanks for letting us know that the changed search is helping you find the recipes that you want.

One of the suggestions that we’ve had is to include the blogs in the search, as well as the recipes. The blogs cover a wide range of subjects and it would be good to let you search them. It won’t happen this month but we’ve moved this request up the list and will tackle it next month. We’ll let you know when this has been put into the website.

Top 5 Recipes for May

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

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

April has been a productive month for the CurryFocus.co.uk website with a major upgrade to the recipe search feature of the site.

We’ve changed the way that the recipe search works so that now you’ve got more chance of finding a recipe that you’re looking for.

The search now looks for alternative spellings and alternative words for the main recipe names and ingredients.

For example, if you look for saag, then the search looks for saag, saagwalla, sag, sagwala, sagwalla, spinach and spinage. All of the words, except for spinage, mean the same and spinage is a commonly used bad spelling of spinach.

You still only see a recipe once in the results list, no matter how many times words are found in the recipe.

We hope that this change to the search helps you find a great recipe for you to try.

More changes to the web site are in the pipeline. We hope you like them.

And chicken recipes are top of the charts yet again.

Top 5 Recipes for April

1 Chicken Curry
2 Chicken Bhuna
3 Easy Chicken Curry
4 Chicken Jalfrezi
5 Chicken Curry (Kodi Kura)

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

March has been a great month for the CurryFocus.co.uk website with our traffic increasing to another all time high.

We have added more great articles and below are the latest.

World Rice Shortage Worsens
Following on from our recent blog on the world rice shortage, this weekend’s news from Vietnam confirms that the problem has got worse.

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

Garlic. A Curry Favourite

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

Garlic has a pungent spicy flavor that mellows in cooking.

The main part of the garlic plant is the bulb that has lots of small segments that are called cloves. Curry recipes that use garlic …. Read More

Sambal. What Is It?

Sambal is a spicy relish that is often served as a side dish to a meal.

Sambal features a lot in Indonesian and Malaysian cuisine.

One of the simplest sambals is made from chillies and salt but more elaborate sambals can contain onion, garlic, lemongrass, vinegar, lime juice, sugar, fruit and nuts….. Read More

Once again, chicken curry recipes are the favourites.

Top 5 Recipes for March

1 Chicken Curry
2 Chicken Jalfrezi
3 Chicken Curry (Kodi Kura)
4 Balti Chicken
5 Easy Chicken Curry

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

February, although a short month, has been our busiest to date in terms of visitors to our site and we have added more articles and recipes throughout the month.

Onions and Curry. A Culinary Blend

Making a curry without onion is almost unthinkable. Nearly every curry starts with cooking onions. Some curries have a lot of onions and some have only a small amount of onions. But the onions are always there….Read More

Paprika. What Is It?

Traditionally, paprika is made from red bell peppers. The peppers are allowed to dry and then the stalks and the inside veins are discarded. The pepper fruit and seeds are separated from each other and separately ground into powder. This process is done for different types of bell pepper and the resultant powders are blended to produce the required taste…. Read More

Tamarind. What Is It?

The tamarind tree is a tropical tree that originated in east Africa. The main growing place is now India but the tamarind tree is grown in such diverse tropical locations as the Caribbean, Mexico, northern Brasil, Hawaii and Florida…. Read More

Top 5 Recipes for February

It never ceases to amaze us here at Curry Focus how often chicken appears in our top five recipes and this month every one of the top five is a chicken related dish.

1 Chicken Curry
2 Easy Chicken Curry
3 Chicken Jalfrezi
4 Balti Chicken
5 Chicken Curry (Kodi Kura)

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

2008 has kicked off with a bang for those of us at Curry Focus, with it being our busiest month to date. We would like to share some of the articles that have been added in the last few weeks..

Indian Naan Bread

Naan (or Nan) is a leavened (it rises using yeast) flatbread that can be eaten with most curries.

Many hundreds of years ago, the Moguls brought naan bread to India (the Moguls came from Persia and the Persian word for bread is naan).

Nowadays, naan is almost a mandatory part of an Indian meal. It’s usually eaten with the main curry dish and is often used to scoop up the curry, instead of using knives and forks….. Read More

Dill. What Is It?

Dill is an herb that grows to about 60cm (2 ft) in height.

The leaves are slender and feathery and grow to a length of about 15cm (6 in) in length.

The leaves and seeds are used in cooking.

The fresh dill leaves are sometimes called dill weed.

In Indian cuisine, dill is used to make curry powders, masalas and to flavour spinach and other leafy green vegetables. Dill seeds have a flavour that is similar to caraway seeds….. Read More

Mango Lassi Recipe Review

Hi, Ray here again.

I don’t know about you, but I love a good mango lassi. It’s a very refreshing drink and there’s an easy mango lassi recipe on the Curry Focus website.

I had previously spotted cans of mango pulp at my favourite Indian supermarket so that’s where I got the mango pulp. The smallest can was 850g (nearly 2 lbs) so I had enough pulp to make the recipe 8 times….. Read More

Nigella. What Is It?

Nigella is a spice that is mainly used when cooking Indian flat breads, such as naan, and vegetarian dishes.

The spice has a strong taste that is similar to oregano.

The Nigella spice is the seeds of the plant called Nigella Sativa. The seeds are tiny and black in colour. The seeds themselves don’t have much of an aroma but the oregano aroma is released when the seeds are fried or crushed. The taste is a bit like cracked pepper and is bitter…. Read More

Top 5 Recipes for January

1 Chicken Curry
2 Easy Chicken Curry
3 Chicken Curry (Kodi Kura)
4 Balti Chicken
5 Chicken Jalfrezi

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

This is the December 2007 edition of the Curry Focus newsletter.

Well, hasn’t the year been a great one? Happy New Year to all our Newsletter subscribers. More articles and recipes have been added in December and we hope you enjoy them ….

Fenugreek and Your Health
Fenugreek is a spice that is widely used in curries, being an essential spice in five-spice powder and in curry powders. But as well as adding flavour to curries, fenugreek also has medicinal applications….Read more.

Balti Curry. What Is It?
The Balti curry was invented in Birmingham (in the West Midlands region of England) in the 1970s, by Pakistani and Kashmiri immigrants. Balti cafes opened in Birmingham, during this time, serving cheap food and they became very popular.…. Read more.

How To Make Curry Powder
Curry powder is a mixture of spices that have been ground into a powder. When cooking, you use curry powder instead of the individual spices.There’s an article describing curry powder here in the Curry Focus blog section and there is also a recipe for making curry powder here.…. Read more.

Blog Articles

We had a couple of comments to say that now there are so many website blogs, it is time-consuming to search through them. So we have grouped the blogs into subject areas to make it easier for you to navigate around the articles. You’ll sometimes see that some articles appear in the index more than once because they cover more than one subject. You can check out the new blog index by clicking on the Blogs menu link.

If you would like to see any new features in the website, or have suggestions as to how the existing pages can be improved, then just let us know - we promise that we’ll listen to your ideas.

Recipes

The recipes that were viewed most by our visitors in December were:-

1 Chicken Curry
2 Easy Chicken Curry
3 Chicken Curry (Kodi Kura)
4 Chicken Jalfrezi
5 Balti Chicken

Why not tell us the recipes that you like? You can submit a recipe at http://curryfocus.co.uk/newrecipe.php and a restaurant at http://curryfocus.co.uk/add_restaurant.php.

Regards,

The Curry Focus Team