Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

Fenugreek is a spice that is used a lot when making curries and is basic ingredient of five-spice powder and curry powders.

But, as well as adding flavor to curries, fenugreek also has a variety of medicinal applications.

A quick search of the Internet shows that fenugreek is used to treat high cholesterol, diabetes, indigestion, inflammation, skin disorders, menstrual aches and pains, ulcers, colds and sore throats.

In addition, fenugreek has been used to induce labour and stimulate breast milk production.

Other, non-medicinal, uses of fenugreek include its use for weight control and for breast enlargements.

You should always talk to your doctor before starting to use a new medicine and taking fenugreek is no exception. There are warnings that pregnant women should not use fenugreek. Your doctor will have the latest information available.

But using fenugreek in your curries is probably OK, as well as being tasty.

You can find out more about the health benefits of fenugreek by searching the Internet. The following links are some that may be of interest to you.

Fenugreek

Therapeutic applications of Fenugreek

Fenugreek Seed

Fenugreek for Health

The Balti curry first appeared in the city of Birmingham (in the West Midlands region of England) in the 1970s, and was invented by members of the Kashmiri and Pakistani comunities. During the 1970s, Birmingham Balti cafes opened serving cheap food and the cafes quickly became very popular.

The Balti is both the pot where the curry is cooked and is also the metal dish in which the curry is served. A picture of a serving dish is shown below.

The main regional cooking influence of Balti curries is Punjabi (the Punjab is a large region that contains parts of Pakistan and India, with the main part being in Pakistan).

A Balti curry is cooked quickly over a high heat and is served, sizzling hot, in the Balti dish. Knives and forks are available to those who want them but skilled Balti eaters use naan bread or chapattis to scoop up the curry.

There are lots of Balti restaurants in central Birmingham in an area that is called the “Balti Triangle” (the sides of the approximate triangle are Ladypool Road, Stoney Lane and Stratford Road). This area has the highest concentration of Balti restaurants in Birmingham. Balti restaurants are usually unlicensed but diners are free to take their own beers and wines to accompany their meals.

Nowadays you can find a Balti restaurant in most parts of the curry-eating world.

Why not try making your own Balti curry? There’s a Curry Focus recipe for Balti Chicken that you can try. If you have your own favourite Balti recipe, then why not give us the recipe so that we can share it with everyone?

Hi, Ray here again.

It’s time to try another curry Focus recipe. I decided to try the Aloo Gobi (Spiced Potato and Cauliflower).

This is a really simple recipe with only a few ingredients.

First, I chopped up the cauliflower and soaked it for about an hour (later I worked out that this is probably to provide moisture when actually cooking the potato and cauliflower.

I chopped up the 3 large potatoes into small cubes and boiled them for 5 minutes before straining them and leaving them to the side.

I stir-fried the cumin for 30 seconds before adding the onion and cardamom seeds and stir-frying them for another minute.

Then I added the potato and cauliflower and mixed them well in my largest frying pan – it’s a heavy-duty pan with a lid.

Now it was cooking the curry. The recipe originally said to cook the potatoes and cauliflower for 12 minutes but there cauliflower was not cooked after 12 minutes (maybe I didn’t cut up the cauliflower into small enough pieces). It took just under 30 minutes for the cauliflower to be properly cooked and still have a bit of crunch left. I changed the recipe to help others who might have the same problem.

Finally, I added the poppy seeds and mixed them in well.

I served up the aloo gobi, along with some paratha that I heated when the curry was nearly ready, to the waiting diners.

The dish was quite tasty and wasn’t really spicy hot. The overall rating was 6.5 out of 10.

The overall verdict was that it’s probably better to have this dish as a side rather than as a main. And there wasn’t much colour to it – it was tasty but looked dull.

So next time, and there will be a next time, I’ll cut up the cauliflower into smaller pieces, serve it as a side dish and garnish it with some fresh cilantro (I’ve added the cilantro to the recipe).

Curry powder is a mix of spices that have been heated and then ground into a powder. You use curry powder, instead of the individual spices, when you are cooking.

There’s a Curry Focus article describing curry powder here and there’s also a recipe for making your own curry powder here.

Not many recipes tell you how to use curry powder; instead they tell you to add the spices when cooking. But there are recipes that do use curry powder and here’s a good one for Hot Lamb Curry.

The method of making your own curry powder is fairly standard in that you heat individual spices and then grind them into a powder. The recipes are very easy to follow. You can experiment with the spices that you use so that you can find the curry powder flavor that works well for you.

Some purists say that you should always use fresh spices when making a curry and that you should never use curry powder.

But we can see nothing wrong with using curry powder, whether you’ve made it yourself or bought it from a store or a supermarket.

I usually add fresh spices to my curries but sometimes I use curry powder, when I’m in a hurry.

If you find a recipe that you want to try, you can substitute curry powder for the spices if you want. Simply add the curry powder early on in the recipe to make sure that the spices are absorbed into the food. I’ve seen advice that you sprinkle curry powder onto a meal, as if it was salt – in my opinion, this is bad advice and should be ignored.

You should not be tempted to make a really big batch of curry powder unless you’re going to use the powder soon because all spices go stale, no matter how carefully you store them. You can read an article about looking after your spices in the blog that is titled “Keeping Your Indian Curry Spices Fresh”.

Why not try making your own curry powder instead of buying it from a store or supermarket? Your curry powder will have no preservatives, will be fresher and may taste better.