Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

Welcome to the August 2010 edition of the Curry Focus Newsletter!

This month the team at Curry Focus look at hypertension, curry deliveries across countrys as well as the usual reviews of tasty recipes including a must try Beef Vindaloo!

Latest Articles

Cheese on Toast Recipe Review

Curry Delivery To Greece

Chicken Pathia Recipe Review

Review of the Beef Vindaloo Recipe

Chilli Fights Hypertension

Top 10 recipes for last month

1 Thai Green Chicken Curry
2 Easy Chicken Curry
3 Naan Bread
4 Beef and Onion Curry
5 Chicken Tikka Masala
6 Chicken Curry
7 Leftover Ham and Rice Curry
8 Balti Chicken
9 Lamb with Spinach (Saag Gosht)
10 Chicken Sagwala

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

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Hi, Ray here again.

I’ve been reviewing recipes from the range of Curry Focus recipes for the past 3 years and it struck me that I’ve never made one of the snack recipes.

I already snack on cheese on toast but it’s usually a very simple matter of putting some slices of cheese onto bread and then broiling (grilling) it – it must be one of the easiest cooked snacks to make.

I saw the Cheese on Toast recipe and it wasn’t really much more involved than my usual cooking method. There are only a few ingredients and the cooking process is really easy.

I organized my usual weekend dining companions to come around at midday to sample my latest cooking effort.

Grating the cheese and chopping up the onion, tomato and cilantro took no time at all and everything was prepared by the time the tasters arrived.

I turned on the broiler (grill) and everyone was eating the Cheese on Toast in about 10 minutes.

Now this is a great snack. It fills you up, tastes good and is really quick to make. The cheese, onion and tomato tastes were lovely, along with the great taste of cilantro. I think that my pinch of cumin must have been too small because nobody could taste it.

The tasty snack got a good taste score of 7.5 out of 10 with a spice/heat score of “None”.

This is a tasty treat that you can try when you need a quick snack.

A few months ago we reported on an exceptional curry delivery from Yorkshire all the way to the south of France.

A similar story has come to our attention where somebody talked a friend into delivering his favourite curry from an Epsom restaurant all the way to Greece.

The Epsom restaurant is quite used to receiving orders from overseas and didn’t seem too surprised to learn that they were supplying a curry to a diner in Greece.

Some people really have a passion for their favorite food and don’t stop a little thing like distance from keeping them away from their curry cravings.

You can read the full story here.

Hi, Ray here again.

Time to try out a recipe for one of my favorite dishes. I often have chicken patia (pathia) when I’m in a curry house because I love the taste. I found a Chicken Pathia Curry recipe amongst the great Curry Focus curry recipes and it that looked like it would produce a yummy curry.

The recipe called for all of the usual ingredients and, for the first time in a while, I already had all of the ingredients (including the chicken, although I did have to defrost it). I took the chicken out of the freezer on Saturday so that it would be totally defrosted when it was needed on Sunday evening.

A glance at the curry recipe showed that it would take around 35 minutes to cook - nice and quick.

There isn’t really much to report about the cooking that I did because it was a really simple recipe to follow and there wasn’t anything complicated to do - and I didn’t mess anything up!

The dinner guests arrived on time and pretty soon I served up the Chicken Pathia curry on a bed of basmati rice.

And the verdict? Yummy, yummy, yummy. There was a good, thick sauce (not too dry) and the curry had a good tomato, and a stunning sour, taste.

Everyone said that the curry was outstanding and it got an average taste rating of 8.5 out of 10 with a spice/heat level of “Medium”.

I can definitely recommend this curry and hope it won;t be too long before I make it again.

I don’t know about you, but I just love a good vindaloo - the only thing better is a great vindaloo. Portugal came up with a winner when this dish was created during their stay in Goa, all those years ago.

My girlfriend doesn’t like hot curries and won’t even look at a vindaloo. I think this has something to do with getting served a really hot one in a curry house a few years ago - I suppose that this would put anybody off a dish.

Anyway, Wendy is away just now and so here’s a chance to make a hot curry.

I checked out the wide range of Curry Focus curry recipes, gravitating towards the vindaloo recipes. Was there one for me to try? Indeed - the Beef Vindaloo recipe was crying out to me.

It normally takes a while to cook a beef curry and this recipe was no exception. I quickly added up the numbers and saw that it would take just over two hours to cook the curry.

Unlike a lot of vindaloo recipes, you don’t need to marinate the meat in vinegar overnight - so all of the preparation and cooking took place on Sunday.

I started making the curry in plenty of time. I ground the spices and made the vinegar paste whilst frying the onions (multi-tasking, impressive) and lef tthe onions to cool before making the onion paste.

Thereafter it was a fairly normal cooking effort - all I had to do was follow the simple instructions.

The one thing that was a bit strange was that there was a lot of liquid in the frying pan once the beef had been sealed and set aside. I suppose I could have discarded some of the liquid but I just carried on following the recipe.

The 90 minutes simmer gave me plenty of time to clean up the kitchen which usually looks like a total mess when I;ve finished cooking.

The eager diners arrived just as it was time to start cooking the rice so it wasn’t too long before I served up the Beef Vindaloo curry on a bed of basmati rice.

The Beef Vindaloo was a hit. Everybody loved it with well-cooked beef. And there wasn’t too much vinegar to flood the tastebuds.

There wasn’t anything left over once the meal was finished and the diners gave it a great taste score of 8 out of 10 with a heat/spice rating of “Medium to Hot”.

It’s a pity there wasn’t anything left over - I bet it would have tasted even better the next day.

So if you like a vindaloo then it’s time to print off this recipe and give it a try for yourself.

Capsaicin has been shown to relax blood vessels and this lowers blood pressure, reducing the chances of having a heart attack.

Chinese scientists have uncovered this property of capsaicin where they observed its powers in tests with laboratory rats. And the scientists have also worked out that people in the north east China have a much lower rate of hypertension (high blood pressure) than in other parts of China because they eat more spicy food – food with chilli in it.

Capsaicin is found in the vein and seeds of a chilli and is the ingredient of chilli that makes the chilli “hot”.

Which makes a good curry that contains chilli not only a great meal but also a smart thing to eat to improve your health by lowering your blood pressure.

You can read more about this latest piece of research here.

We regularly write about the health properties of curry ingredients and you can read the Curry Focus health articles to find out more.

Hi, Ray here again.

This week I’ve decided to try out a vegetarian curry recipe from the range of Curry Focus recipes.

I’ve commented a few times how much I enjoy eating peas and potatoes so the Potato and Pea Curry recipe looked like it was created just for me.

If you look at the recipe, you’ll see that it a really simple curry to prepare and make seeing that there are only a few ingredients and cooking steps.

But I managed to get the recipe wrong by not paying attention to the type of peas that I used. I grabbed a bag of minted peas and didn’t notice until it was too late (the cooking was finished).

I served up the Potato and Pea curry on a bed of basmati to the ever-eager diners.

All of the ingredients were cooked well and the liquid had been absorbed during the cooking so the curry was nice and dry (I had some boiling water ready during the cooking in case the curry got too dry but the extra water wasn’t needed).

So all was good apart from the mint taste that didn’t seem right with the curry.

Despite me messing up with the peas, the curry received a taste score of 7 out of 10 with a heat/spice rating of “Medium”.

I really have to make this curry again, this time with the correct ingredients, to see how it really tastes.

Welcome to the July 2010 edition of the Curry Focus Newsletter!

This month we look at some very important issues and find that curry spices are helping to not only kill cancer cells but Scientists are also experimenting with common curry spices to see if they can help to reduce the production of methane gas!

Curry Spices to Save the Planet

Curcumin in the Battle against Cancer

Ray tries his hand at one of the tasty Curry soup recipes and also reviews a Massaman Chickpea dish.

Mulligatawny Soup Recipe Review

Massaman Chickpea Curry Recipe Review

Top 10 recipes for last month

1 Easy Chicken Curry
2 Naan Bread
3 Beef and Onion Curry
4 Chicken Tikka Masala
5 Thai Green Chicken Curry
6 Chicken Sagwala
7 Chicken Curry
8 Balti Chicken
9 Massaman Chicken Curry
10 Chicken Massaman Curry

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

Browse Categories

Just what is the Tiffin Cup? None of the Curry Focus team had heard about the award until we spotted a blog aout it.

The Tiffin Club is a group of MPs who run an annual competition to find the best South East Asian restaurant. The restaurant can be from any of the South East Asian countries, including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, etc. In fact, the restaurant can serve food from any South East Asian country from all the way from Pakistan to Vietnam. The competition is not limited to Indian curry houses.

There are about 60 MPs in the Tiffin Club and they ask their constituents to vote for their favourite constituency with the most popular restaurant being put forward. The competition is usually heavily promoted within the constituencies by the MPs with lots of local newspapers getting behind the event and encouraging the readers to vote.

A shortlist of about a dozen restaurants is compiled and the chefs from the selected restaurants are asked to take part in a “cook off”, in Parliament’s own Bellamy’s Restaurant, where one of the restaurants is chosen as the winner of the Tiffin Cup.

The objectives of the Tiffin Cup award are to raise the awareness of South East Asian cuisine and also to raise money for charity.

This year’s charity is World Vision and food made during the “cook off” is sold to all those present at the event.

The Tiffin Cup has been awarded each year since 2006, with the following past winners.

Nominations for this year’s Tiffin Cup closed over a week ago on July 20th so you’ve missed your chance to vote this year.

We’ll keep an eye open to see who wins this year’s Tiffin Cup.

Hi, Ray here again.

I made some soup a few months ago – another first in my role of resident curry maker.

There are some yummy soup recipes amongst the Curry Focus recipes and the Mulligatawny Soup recipe looked pretty good.

I’ve read that Mulligatawny soup was invented by the British and is a fusion of British and Indian ingredients.

The Mulligatawny soup takes about an hour to cook and the recipe got me to cook the rice first, instead of cooking it near the end just prior to serving up time.

Making soup for dinner might seem a bit foolhardy but it looked like it would be OK seeing that similar ingredients are in a biryani.

Making the Mulligatawny soup was pretty easy even though it took a bit of cooking.

And it would be stretching it to say that this is a soup – it’s more like a sloppy biryani – I assume that most of the liquid was absorbed by the rice.

I served the Mulligatawny Soup to the eager diners and everybody said that it was really good. The ingredients were well cooked and the dish was very filling.

The soup was a bit salty but I put that down to the chicken stock that I used – I used a powder stock and later discovered that the main ingredient in the stock was salt so I won’t be buying that product again.

As I said before, everybody enjoyed the soup and it received a good rating of 7.5 out of 10 with a heat/spice rating of “Hot”.

If you want a filling, tasty and spice soup then this is probably the recipe for you.