Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

Hi, Ray here again.

Last weekend, a couple of old friends that I hadn’t seen for over a year were coming round for dinner. They both liked curries so I decided to make a range of dishes for them to sample.

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

My friends were bringing round some fresh fruit for dessert so I chose to make some Indian ice cream (kulfi) to go with the fruit.

I know that there are machines that make ice cream. But I don’t have one of them. And the Curry Focus ice cream recipe doesn’t need anything more complicated than a whisk.

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

The recipe was simplicity itself to follow.

The only thing that I had to work out was the freezing and unfreezing of the ice cream.

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

I then left the ice cream in the freezer overnight.

The next morning I checked out the ice cream and found that it had frozen solid. I couldn’t chip out any ice cream to test. The ice cream must have frozen solid because there are no added preservatives – supermarket bought ice cream never freezes completely when you have it in the freezer and this must be the result of some additive in the ice cream.

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

I needed to go out of the house for the rest of the day and put the ice cream back into the freezer (I didn’t want it to melt back into its original state).

An hour before we were scheduled to start eating, I removed the ice cream from the freezer again. It was completely frozen. When the time arrived for dessert, just over 1.5 hours had gone by and the ice cream had thawed almost perfectly. I mashed the ice cream with a fork to make sure that the few solid bits were broken up and then served it with the fresh fruit.

I had another hit on my hands!! Everyone loved the ice cream and it received an excellent rating of 8 out of 10.

If you are partial to ice cream, why not try this easy recipe?

My daughter surprised me last week by asking me where curries come from. She’s only six and previously hasn’t shown any interest in curries. I replied that curries come from the Indian restaurant at the end of the street. But what she really wanted to know was from which country curries came.

That was an interesting question with multiple answers.

The most obvious answer is that curries come from India.

But that’s not the full story.

In fact, curries come from lots of different countries, the most famous (in my mind) being India. But curries also come from lots of countries including Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Japan and even Jamaica. Each country has its 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.

What ingredients are put into curries? Well, almost anything edible. The main ingredients are chillies, spices, onions, ginger, meat (including fish) and vegetables. Rice is usually served with a curry.

Today you can get a curry in almost every country in the world. Indeed, there is usually a choice of types of curry in most big cities around the world.

I’m not sure that my answer meant much to my daughter but we had fun finding all of the curry countries in an atlas.

Hi, Ray here again.

Once again, it’s time to make a yummy curry from the great range of recipes on the Curry Focus website. My local supermarket was advertising a beef special so I chose the Beef and Potato curry to take advantage of the good price.

This is yet again another very easy curry to make and all that has to be remembered is that the curry simmers for around 2.5 hours – so if dinner is scheduled for 7pm then making the curry needs to start at about 4pm.

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

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

I stir-fried the onion, garlic and ginger for around 10 minutes. Then I added the beef with the spices and stir-fried for 5 more minutes.

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

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

I started to microwave rice after 5 minutes and the curry and rice were both ready just 20 minutes after the potato was added.

I served up the Beef and Potato curry to the lone other diner (there was only 2 of us for dinner tonight) and we tasted the results of the cooking.

And it was a good curry. Not a great curry, but a good one. The spice rating was mild to medium and the beef was really tender. There wasn’t much color on the plate so I maybe could have garnished the curry with some fresh cilantro to add a touch of color. The curry was given a good score of 7 out of 10.

There was way too much curry for just the two of us so we ate the same curry the following night and it tasted a little bit better than the previous night (it’s funny how curries do that). And we still couldn’t finish the curry so we put the remaining curry into a container and popped it into the freezer for another day.

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

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 Balti Chicken
2 Chicken Curry (Kodi Kura)
3 Easy Chicken Curry
4 Naan Bread
5 Chicken Curry

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