Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

Restaurant nominations for the 2008 British Curry Awards closed on 21st July and the gala awards ceremony will be held on Sunday 19th October at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London in front of an audience of more than 1,000 people.

The awards ceremony is sure to be an evening for the curry industry not to miss with great food and live entertainment as well as the awards for the best restaurants around Britain.

Details of the finalists will be released soon and we’ll let you know them as soon as possible.

Hi, Ray here again.

The weekend is here again so it’s time to try another one of the great Curry Focus recipes.

I don’t think that I’ve followed a fish recipe since I started testing out the Curry Focus website recipe. I spotted the recipe for Fish Cakes. It’s been a long time since I had fish cakes – too long. And the recipe looked so easy.

I already had most of the ingredients for the meal in the house so all I had to buy was the fish and spring onions (scallions).

It’s such a simple recipe that it’s hard to write anything special about it.

I cooked the fish and let it cool whilst I made the mashed potato.

Then I crumbled up the fish and mixed all of the ingredients together.

I beat the second egg.

Then I made the fish cakes. They were a bit small and crumbly. So I decided to make slightly bigger fish cakes and I ended up making 12 fish cakes in total.

I heated up the oil and the oven and then fried the fish cakes and kept them warm in the oven.

I served the fish cakes with vegetables to the dinner group.

The fish cakes went down well with the diners with “tasty” being the main word that was used to describe them. They had a medium spice/heat flavour and received a good rating of 7 out of 10.

One thing that was lacking was some sauce to go with the fish cakes. Maybe a tamarind sauce would have gone well with the cakes.

Overall, the fish cakes were great and I won’t leave it so long before I make them again.

Diwali is an Indian and Nepalese Hindu festival that is celebrated around the end of October.

The actual date of the festival is not the same each year because it is based upon lunar months. In southern India, the festival starts in the month of Ashwin and ends in Kartika. In northern India the festival is in the middle of Ashwayuja/Ashvin. The festival happens at almost the same time all over India and Nepal – it’s a bit confusing because each of the regions uses its own calendar.

The next celebration of Diwali is on October 28th, 2008 in the Gregorian calendar.

The festival is well known throughout the world as the Festival of Lights.

The festival is called the Festival of Lights because of the tradition of lighting clay lamps all over Hindu homes on Diwali night.

There are 3 main reasons for lighting the lamps.

The first is so that the gods Rama and Sita can find their way to return to their northern India home of Ayodhya.

The second reason is that, to Hindus, darkness represents ignorance whereas light represents knowledge. So the lighting of lamps dispels the dark forces of ignorance and all of the negatives forces (evil, anger, greed, injustice, fear, violence, envy, suffering and oppression) and replaces them with the light of knowledge.

Diwali falls over the start of the Hindu financial year and the third purpose of the lights is to welcome Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity.

Friends give each other gifts of sweetmeats, nuts and dried fruit and Diwali day is spent eating these delicacies along with cooked savoury snacks.

With Hindu migration nowadays Diwali, the Festival of Lights, is celebrated all over the world with parades, music, dance, food and fireworks.

Do go to a Diwali celebration if you get the chance. There is always great entertainment and the food is delicious.

Hi, Ray here again.

Time for to try out another great curry recipe from the Curry Focus website and this week I went for the Beef Madras recipe. This recipe has been on the Curry Focus website for a long time so I’m a bit surprised that I haven’t tried it before now because I love Beef Madras.

As usual, this is a pretty easy recipe to make and it only took me just over an hour from starting the preparation to serving up the food.

I just bought some ordinary steak because the recipe did not say which cut to buy.

I did buy a couple of stuffed paratha to go with the curry.

I just followed the recipe and all worked out well.

The curry kept getting dry during the cooking and I ended up adding all of the masala gravy and an extra ½ cup of hot water to stop the curry from becoming too thick.

There was only my flatmate and me for dinner tonight and we both like hot curries. Which is pretty lucky because this is definitely a spicy, hot, curry. It was very tasty and had a strong after taste. The word “fiery” was used and I’m convinced that it was hotter than the Pork Vindaloo that I recently made.

Overall, the curry was awarded a score of 8 out of 10 with a spice/heat rating of hot.

In my opinion, this is a stunning curry and you should definitely give it a try if you like a tasty and hot curry.

Hi, Ray here again.

Time for another great chicken curry from the Curry Focus website and this week it is the Jaipur Chicken Curry recipe.

I bought a mixture of chicken pieces to use in the curry – a pack of chicken drumsticks and a pack of chicken pieces.

I made the chicken broth with the onion and chicken pieces and left the chicken to cool down a little.

The chicken came off the bones so easily once it had been cooked and I removed the meat without needing a knife.

I carefully followed the recipe and the curry was ready about an hour later.

I timed the rice to be ready with the curry and served up the meal to the dinner guests.

The curry had a great creamy ginger taste. Most of the liquid had been absorbed into the curry so it was a dry curry. The curry texture was good.

The curry received an excellent score of 7 out of 10 with a medium spice/heat rating.

This is an excellent curry that I can recommend that you try.

And now time for a confession. I made this curry last week using chicken breasts instead of chicken on bone. I had gone shopping and left my shopping list behind. I knew that I had to buy chicken but forgot the type.

2kg (4 lb) of chicken breast is a lot of chicken. Maybe I should have put the chicken into the freezer or chosen another recipe but I blundered on. And the chicken really fell apart. It was like eating shredded chicken. The curry was very edible but I was annoyed that I’d bought the wrong main ingredient.

The second making of the curry was a lot more successful when I used the drumsticks and chicken pieces. I had read somewhere that about 30% of a chicken is bone and fat. But I found that the drumsticks and pieces yielded less than 50% of the weight. Maybe I should have used a whole chicken. Maybe next time.

Hi, Ray here again.

This week I decided to be healthy and try out a vegetarian curry. I love potatoes and so I chose the Gujarati Potato Curry recipe from the great range of Curry Focus recipes.

This is the first recipe that I’ve tried that has asafoetida in it. I called in at my favourite Indian supermarket and bought a small container of the powder. It smells really strong. The container has a screw top that probably keeps the smell inside. But now I’ve used the powder, I’ve put the container into an airtight jar just to make sure that the smell doesn’t leak out into all of my other spices.

The asafoetida really smells but it gives a great taste to the curry.

I seem to recall, at the back of my mind, that there is an Indian religious sect that isn’t allowed garlic or onions and it is asafoetida that is the substitute.

Now I have to say that the curry is really easy to make and it’s just a matter of following the recipe.

But the one thing that I thought was a bit odd from the recipe is that you’re going to be eating a dry potato curry on rice. This seemed a bit too much carbohydrate to me so I just made the curry by itself.

The curry was really dry and I presume this is because the potato soaks up all of the liquid.

I was eating alone tonight so just put a portion of the curry into a bowl and heated up a paratha from the freezer to go with it.

The curry was OK but was definitely a bit bland. It had a medium spice taste but there wasn’t really any “body”, or substance, to it. I just couldn’t imagine eating rice with it. Maybe it would have been better with some more vegetables in it – like the Spiced Potato and Cauliflower recipe.

I gave the curry a rating of 6 out of 10 with a medium spice rating. The curry was edible but a bit disappointing.

Its often the simple questions that have the most interesting of answers and this month we look at - Where Do Curries Come From?.

Ice Cream Recipe Review - So if you have a sweet tooth and are partial to ice cream, why not give this easy recipe a try?

Beef and Potato Curry Recipe Review - We recommend this curry if you want to try a curry that is not too spicy.

Top 5 Recipes for August

Chicken rules the roost yet again.

1 Chicken Curry
3 Chicken Biryani
2 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.

We get a regular trickle of questions in regard to the dishes and ingredients that are in curries. Usually the answer is on one of the glossary pages on the website. A list of all of the more common dishes can be found on the Dishes page. And a list of common curry ingredients is on the Ingredients page. If you’re confused about terms such as “saute” , “garnish” or “marinate” then you’ll find a quick guide on the Methods page. Finally, there’s a handy measures conversion page where you can work out what some of the strange recipe measures that you come across - this is on the Measures page.

We hope that you find the glossary pages useful. If you think of any other glossary details that would be useful, let us know and we’ll do our best to include them for you.

Hi, Ray here again.

Last weekend I had a couple of good friends around for dinner. I hadn’t seen either of them for over a year so I decided to push the boat out a little and make a range of dishes for them to sample.

I made a spicy potato and cauliflower, dhal and chicken jalfrezi, all from the range of delicious Curry Focus recipes.

The friends were bringing round some fresh fruit for dessert so I decided to try and make some ice cream (kulfi) to go with the fruit.

I know that you can buy ice cream making machines. But I don’t have one.

The Curry Focus ice cream recipe doesn’t need anything more automated than a whisk.

I bought all of the ingredients, conscious that there was a lot of fat and calories going into this dish. But I don’t have ice cream very often so it’s a bit of a treat.

The recipe was easy enough to follow.

It was the freezing and unfreezing that I had to think about.

Before adding the final ingredient of whisked egg whites, the ice cream had to be 80% frozen. I really had to make a guess at what this meant. I kept checking the mixture every 10 minutes after an hour and then finally decided it had frozen enough after 90 minutes.

Then I left the ice cream overnight to freeze.

I wanted to check out the ice cream the next day and found that it was frozen solid. There was no way that I could even chip out portions to eat. It must be because there are no added preservatives – ice cream that you buy from the supermarket never really freezes when you have it in the freezer so it must be down to something that is added to the ice cream.

So I left the ice cream in the kitchen for an hour to let it thaw a little. The ice cream could be spooned out of the bowl but had a fair amount of ice inside it.

I had to go out for the best part of the day so put the ice cream back into the freezer.

An hour before we were due to start eating, I took the ice cream out of the freezer again. Once more, it was frozen solid. By the time it came for dessert, just over 1.5 hours had gone by and the ice cream was almost perfect. I mixed it up with a fork to make sure that the few solid bits were broken up and then served it up with the fresh fruit.

Another hit on my hands!! The ice cream was loved by everyone and it received an impressive score of 8 out of 10.

So if you have a sweet tooth and are partial to ice cream, why not give this easy recipe a try?

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.

Hi, Ray here again.

Time to try another of the great range of curry recipes on the Curry Focus website. My local supermarket was advertising a special on beef so I chose the Beef and Potato curry to take advantage of the special. The way I figure it, the more I save on ingredients, the more I can spend on a beer to have with the curry.

This is another really easy curry to make and all you have to remember is that you have to simmer the curry for about 2.5 hours – so if you’re planning on dining at 7pm then you have to start making the curry around 4pm.

I cut up the beef and mixed it up with the salt and turmeric.

Then I prepared the onions, garlic and ginger and was ready to start the cooking.

I stir-fried the onion, garlic and ginger for about 10 minutes. Then I added the beef and spices and stir-fried for another 5 minutes.

Then in went the water. I brought the curry to a simmer, covered and left it for 2 hours, returning to stir the curry every 10 – 15 minutes.

I quickly peeled and cubed the potatoes when the 2 hours were nearly finished and then added the potato cubes to the curry, stirring well and covering the frying pan again.

I started up some rice after 5 minutes and everything was ready just 20 minutes after the potato was added.

The Beef and Potato curry was served up to the assembled diner (just 2 of us for dinner tonight) and we tasted the results of my cooking.

It was a good curry. Not a great curry but a good one. It had a mild to medium spicy taste. The beef was lovely and tender. There wasn’t much colour on the plate so I maybe should have garnished the curry with some fresh coriander. The curry received a good rating of 7 out of 10.

Of course, there was far too much curry for the two of us. We had the same curry the next night and it tasted a little spicier than the previous night (funny how curries do that). And we still hadn’t finished the curry so put the remainder into a container and popped it into the freezer for another day.

I definitely recommend this curry if you want to try a curry that is not too spicy.