Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

Every so often I see recipe that contains yeast (such as the great Curry Focus Naan Bread recipe). And quite often, the recipe calls for fresh yeast.

But, nowadays, fresh yeast is often hard to find. It’s probably because few people use it and it goes stale so quickly. I talked to the owner of my local Indian supply store and he said that it was rare for fresh yeast to be in the shop and, when he received a supply, the fresh yeast was quickly bought up. He figured that the news of a fresh yeast delivery quickly spread around the neighborhood and that’s why his store was cleared of the fresh yeast within hours.

I tried to find fresh yeast for days so I could try the Naan Bread recipe but couldn’t find any for sale anywhere.

I did notice that stores and supermarkets had jars of dry yeast and so I searched the internet to try and find out how much dry yeast was the equivalent to fresh yeast.

I very quickly joined a world of strange terminology and confusing numbers.

I eventually found out the answer and here are the results for you.

There are several types of yeast but I’m only going to describe dry active yeast (the type that you buy in jars) and fresh yeast (which I still haven’t even seen yet, and probably never will).

The active dry yeast used to be sold in envelopes, or packages (a package is the same as an envelope), but more recently it is sold in 4oz plastic, or glass, jars.

And fresh yeast is sold in cakes.

So how much dry active yeast is in an envelope, how much fresh yeast is in a cake and how much do you need to substitute one for another?

Well, an envelope of dry active yeast weighs 1/4 oz.

And a cake of fresh yeast can either weigh 2/3 oz or 2 oz.

If you are fortunate to find fresh yeast, you can cut off a measure from the cake but how can you measure dry active yeast?

Luckily, you can use a teaspoon to measure dry active yeast.

This part of the article is where a bit of math starts to hurt your brain.

2 1/2 teaspoons of dry active yeast weighs 1/4 oz.

An envelope of dry active yeast has the same effect as a 2/3 oz cake of fresh yeast.

You can see a dry active yeast to fresh yeast quantity equivalents table here.

One good thing about dry yeast is how long you can keep it (in its jar) before it goes stale. Fresh yeast goes stale after only a few days whereas dry active yeast can be kept for around 4 months (even longer if the jar is kept in the fridge).

I found most of the above details on yahoo answers. If you want to read about all of the different types of yeast, you can check out this great article.

So now you know a little about yeast cakes or envelopes.

Hi, Ray here again.

The weekend is here again and it’s time for another curry from the great range on the Curry Focus website.

I haven’t made a beef curry for a while so I went for the Beef and Onion Curry.

One of the main reasons for chosing this recipe was that there are so few ingredients which appeals to my minimal cooking effort regime.

The only spicy ingredient was the dried chillis.

This beef curry takes over 2 hours to cook, with the beef taking over 90 minutes. I’ve found that it is common for beef to take a while to cook and this generally results in a very tender beef curry.

I soaked the dried chillis and then cooked half of the onions so that they were well browned.

One thing that I noticed was that a lot of oil was used in this recipe. Onions soak up oil but not a full 10 tablespoons.

Plenty of oil was left over once I’d taken out the cooked onions.

I had made the chilli paste whilst the onions were cooking and quickly cooked the paste for the required 30 seconds before adding the remaining onion to cook.

After the onion was cooked, I added the beef, cinnamon, lemon juice, sugar, lemon grass and water and mixed everything up well. Then I covered the frying pan and simmered the curry for 90 minutes.

I started the rice when the beef had been simmering for 90 minutes and removed the frying pan lid so that the liquid in the curry would reduce.

Some of the liquid disappeared but I thought that there would be too much left in the curry. However, the browned onion thickened up the sauce very nicely. The curry wasn’t dry but wasn’t runny either.

I removed the lemon grass and cinnamon and served up the curry on the rice.

The curry was quickly eaten by the four diners. There was a slight hint of sweetness with a great taste of cameralized onion. The beef was lovely and tender.

The curry was rated an excellent 7.5 out of 10 with a spice/heat rating of mild.

This curry provoked a heated argument as to what exactly makes a curry, purely and simply because there was only one spicy ingredient (the dried chillis). One person was convinced that it wasn’t a curry because there was no curry powder or garam masala. Another one argued that it was the taste that made a curry and this was a curry because of the taste. Another joined in and said that they had eaten lots of curries that didn’t have curry powder or garam masala. The argument raged for a few heated minutes but was soon abandoned when dessert of strawberries and ice cream arrived.

Whatever makes a curry, I thoroughly enjoyed this dish. If you like a mild curry that is easy to cook then I recommend that you try this Beef and Onion Curry. You won’t regret it.

Hi, Ray here again.

It was time for another chicken recipe from the Curry Focus website after last week’s Lamb Biryani. I scanned the great recipes Curry Focus and decided upon the Jeera (Cumin) Chicken recipe.

As usual, it was a very simple recipe to follow which matched up well with my cooking abilities.

Jeera (or Jira) is Hindi for cumin and it isn’t surprising to see that there is a lot of cumin in the recipe – three tablespoons in total.

One thing that surprised me was that there is no onion in this recipe – there aren’t too many Indian curry recipes that don’t have onion in them.

There was only a small amount of preparation work by getting the chilli, garlic and ginger ready before starting to cook.

After only a few minutes the kitchen was full of the lovely aroma of roasting cumin.

The cooking went well but I got a bit worried when the spices were added (after the garlic and onion had been stir-fried). Why? Because all traces of liquid had disappeared and the curry was very dry. There wasn’t a trace of liquid in the frying pan. I added the chicken, mixed everything up pretty well, reduced the heat and covered the frying pan. At the same time, I boiled up some water in case I needed to add it to the curry.

But I didn’t need to have worried because plenty of juice/liquid was supplied by the chicken thighs and was retained in the frying pan because of the lid. I should have realised that the chicken would supply the liquid but, as I’ve said before, I’m not an expert cook.

I kept checking the chicken every five minutes and started the rice when the chicken was part-way cooked.

Everything was ready together and the chicken thighs were served on a bed of rice to the waiting dinner guests.

This is a simply stunning curry. It was a very tasty with a great cumin taste on well-cooked chicken thighs. I always think that chicken cooked on the bone is better than when it is cooked off the bone and this is particularly true with chicken thighs.

There was a nice after taste in the mouth when the curry was finished but it wasn’t really spicy.

The Jeera Chicken Curry received an excellent rating of 8.5 out of 10 with a heat rating of “mild to medium”.

If you like a great tasting chicken curry then you simply must try this recipe for yourself.

Hi, Ray here again.

The weekend is here again and it’s time to try another recipe from the great recipes on the Curry Focus website.

What I like most about the Curry Focus recipes is that they are very easy to follow. Non-cooks like me can make a great tasting curry without too much effort.

As I’ve previously said, I’m not a natural cook. I’ve spent years being fed and buying ready-made meals.

But that’s not what happens nowadays. I’ve started to know how ingredients interact with each other and how they contribute to the finished meal.

I can make a very basic curry without following a recipe but it really is a very basic curry.

But I do make a great curry when I follow the Curry Focus recipes.

There has been a lot of interest in Biryani recipes on the website so this week I decided to renew my acquaintance with this rice dish and decided to make a Lamb Biryani.

Once again, I had most of the ingredients and all I had to buy was the lamb and yogurt.

I got up early on Sunday morning, put the lamb into the yogurt to marinate, and then went back to bed for a well deserved couple of hours rest.

The cooking time arrived in the early evening. I’ve been asked how I know how long it’s going to take to make the meal, seeing that I’ve usually never cooked the dish before.

Well, it’s fairly easy to work out. I just add up the minutes in the recipe, then add 15 minutes for the initial preparation and then 10 minutes for getting things ready, such as heating up the oil or getting a curry up to simmering temperature.

So for the Biryani recipe, it’s 61 minutes cooking time plus 15 minutes preparation time plus 10 minutes – a total of 86 minutes. It takes a few minutes to serve up the meal so the Biryani probably took 90 minutes.

I know that the lamb marinated for a few hours but I can’t include that time in the cooking time, can I?

Back to the cooking. I followed the recipe, step by step, and about 90 minutes later the lamb biryani was served up to the waiting diners.

I was a bit anxious about the biryani drying out in the casserole phase but everything turned out fine. I checked the biryani 10 minutes, stirred it well to stop it sticking to the casserole, and it cooked just great.

The biryani had a lovely delicate flavor with very tender lamb and was well received by the diners, with “tasty” being the most frequent comment. The biryani had a medium heat rating and scored a good 6.5 out of 10.

I have to admit that I’m not a huge fan of biryani but one of the guests was such a fan and said that it was great. Why not give the recipe a try and see for yourself?

Reviews, new features and the latest hot gossip from the Curry world, we have some great content for you once again!

A delicious spicy scrambled eggs breakfast is reviewed and guess what? It’s simple and easy to cook as well!

A mild Coriander Lamb Korma meal is well received from the diners. If you are an expert on Indian cooking perhaps you can answer the question asked within the article. We will give special mention to whoever can help in our next newsletter.

With more of a focus on Lamb this month, we look at a Keema Lamb Curry that has a kick to it, for the spice lovers amongst you, and is quick and easy to cook.

A popular meal handed down through generations of curry lovers, Curried Beef Sausages comes across a bit bland, so Ray advises how this could be spiced up a little to improve its taste.

Recently, we received an email asking us which were the mild recipes on the website from somebody who wanted to try a “safe” curry as they had a bad experience eating a curry when they were younger.

We have been reviewing recipes for a long time but the information was buried amongst the reviews making it almost impossible to find a “mild” curry without reading all of the recipe reviews.

So we were inspired to create a new web page to help you find a recipe that suits your heat/spice levels.

A quick change to the database, a little bit of data entry and writing some code has produced a review page that will help you.

You can reach the new page by clicking on the “Recipe Reviews” link in the main navigation line or from the navigation links at the foot of the website pages.

You’ll see a list of recipes, the taste rating (out of 10), the heat rating and a link to the recipe review.

If you click on the orange triangles, the details are sorted. A triangle pointing upwards sorts the details into ascending/increasing order whereas a triangle pointing downwards sorts the details into descending/decreasing order. So you can sort into recipe name, taste rating or heat rating sequence.

Some of the early reviews didn’t include ratings, which explains the “unrated” values.

Remember that everyone has different tastes and the listed ratings are the opinions of our regular staff reviewers. But we think that they are pretty accurate.

We hope that the new page is useful to you and inspires you to try different curries from the website.

The page content will grow as more recipes are reviewed.

Tell us, from the Contact Us page, if you’ve got any ideas for new pages on the website and we’ll see what we can do..

Top 5 Recipes for October

Chicken rules the roost yet again.

1 Easy Chicken Curry
2 Naan Bread
3 Chicken Curry
4 Chicken Curry (Kodi Kura)
5 Chicken Tikka Masala

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

Hi, Ray here again.

There is a recipe for Achaari Chicken on the Curry Focus website. I don’t think that I’ve ever tried (or heard of) this dish so now is a good time to check it out.

It looked and easy recipe to follow even though there are a lot of ingredients.

I needed to buy onion seeds and fennel seeds - I don’t think I’ve ever used them in cooking before now. Luckily my local Indian supply store has large containers of spices where you can take as much, or as little, as you need. So I only bought a little of the 2 types of seeds just in case I never used them again. Buying loose spices like this is very economical when compared to buying glass containers of spices from a supermarket.

As usual, the ingredients needed onion, ginger and garlic. I prepared these ingredients, along with cutting up the chicken and the red chillis.

I then prepared a couple of small plates with the spices so I could just tip them into the cooking.

Then I started the cooking.

I stir-fried the seeds, added in the other spices with the water and mixed the curry up well.

After that, in went the chicken which I stir-fried for the 3 minutes.

I started cooking the rice in the microwave whilst the chicken was being stir-fried.

Nearly there now.

I covered the frying pan and simmered the curry for 10 minutes.

Finally, I added the chopped red chillis and the cilantro before serving the curry on rice.

The Achaari Chicken Curry had a lovely texture and a great taste. All of the spices blended well and there was the delightful cilantro taste, amongst others. This is a light curry, but be careful, it is spicy hot.

The curry received an excellent score of 7.5 out of 10 with a spice heat rating of hot.

I usually keep clear of making dishes that have a lot of ingredients because they are “too complicated”. This curry has 10 spices and a total of 21 ingredients. But there are only 7 cooking steps in the recipe so it’s really easy to make. If you like a chicken curry then I can recommend that you try this curry, but you need to remember that it’s a hot curry.