Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

Hi, Ray here again.

I made a note to try the Chicken Phal recipe that is on the Curry Focus website a few months ago. Why? Because a long time ago, a typical Tuesday night was a group of us playing a few games of snooker, sinking a few beers and then eating a good curry. The local curry restaurant was superb and more often than not I’d end up eating a chicken phal. I suppose my tastebuds were numbed by all of the beer and it took something hot to register.

The chicken phal recipe is more or less a standard curry and was simple to follow.

But it’s not a standard curry in regard to the heat level. The curry has 6 fresh chillies, 4 teaspoons of chilli powder and 1 1/2 tablespoons of curry paste and so it was very obvious that the curry would be spicy hot..

After the preparation, the cooking was very easy and it only took around 30 minutes to make.

And was the curry hot? You bet! The cilantro and bell pepper added a bit of color but the main taste was heat. Despite the heat, it was surprisingly good. Everyone was sweating by the time they had finished and the beers were consumed very quickly. You definitely should like hot curries to enjoy this curry (I had made sure that the diners all liked hot curries). I could still feel my lips tingling a full 15 minutes after finishing eating.

The average score for the curry was 7 out of 10 with a spice/heat rating of very hot.

If you enjoy a hot curry then this is a recipe that you simply must try. But make sure that you warn everyone that it’s going to be a hot one.

When doing research for this month’s Newsletter, I decided to try and find out if there was a world record for the hottest curry ever made. It certainly makes for interesting reading and it appears that in July last year an Indian chef (from the UK) tried to land a place in the Guinness Book of World Records with his creation the “Bollywood Burner”.

Unfortunately, the officials that judge this kind of feat decided that as there was a physical limit to how hot a curry could be and, as it could become unbreakable, it did not meet the requirements for a Guinness world record.

Anyone attempting to eat this curry is asked to sign a waiver confirming that they have been made aware of the risks involved before eating it!

The lamb-based dish, was created by Vivek Singh, a chef at The Cinnamon Club restaurant.

The mouth burning creation contains:

• A series of hot Deccan chillies
• Dorset Naga (the hottest Naga pepper) seeds (over 855,000 on the Scoville scale)
• Kashmiri chilli powder
• Sesame tamarind sauce
• Naga peppers
• Scotch Bonnet peppers (around 300,000 on the Scoville scale).

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Hi, Ray here again.

My girlfriend only eats fresh fish and simple refuses to eat canned fish of any kind. A few months ago, I had picked out the Tuna Jalfrezi recipe from the great range of Curry Focus recipes but had been unable to test it until now – Wendy was away for the weekend.

The tuna jalfrezi recipe looks pretty healthy with the capsicums and the tuna.

This is a very easy recipe. After the preparation of the ingredients, it only takes around 25 minutes to make the jalfrezi.

I did the preparation work and started to cook when the dinner guests arrived. The jalfrezi was ready before most of them had time to finish their glass of wine (slow drinkers).

The meal was very simple to make and the only point worth mentioning was that the jalfrezi gets very dry so the sauté turning had to be done often to prevent the food from sticking (you sauté by turning over the food with a spatula, rather than stir-frying it).

The tuna jalfrezi was served on a bed of basmati and the red and green capsicums made the dish very colorful.

Everybody enjoyed the tuna jalfrezi. It had a fresh taste with delicate flavours. Overall, the dish got a good rating of 7 out of 10 with a medium spice/heat rating.

This is a great jalfrezi and you won’t regret it if you try out this recipe.

Hi, Ray here again

The Lamb Xacutti curry from last week was a great success and I wanted to try a nice and easy recipe that does not take all of the spice preparation that the xacutti needed.

I checked out the yummy Curry Focus recipes and saw the Chilli Con Carne that looked like a really easy dish to make. Peeling and chopping the onion really was the most difficult part of making the chilli.

And it is a very, very simple recipe to follow with nothing to really go wrong.

The chilli was served up on a bed of basmati rice to the assembled diners and we all eagerly ate the chilli.

The chilli got a lukewarm reception from everyone with people saying it was bland, did not have any real body and was definitely missing something.

The chilli got an overall rating of 6 out of 10 with a spice/heat level of medium.

You should give this recipe a try if you like eating chilli con carne but it doesn’t really have enough spices or flavour to be considered a curry.

Birmingham City Council (in the West Midlands of the UK) is currently investigating if it can trademark the curry name of Balti.

If this happens, nobody outside the Birmingham area would be able to make and sell a Balti curry, in much the same way as nobody outside the champagne area of France can make and sell champagne. In fact, probably nobody outside The Balti Triangle area of Birmingham would be able to make and sell a Balti.

Birmingham’s claim to the Balti is based upon the dish first being made in Britain by a Pakistani immigrant to Birmingham in 1977 (it’s hard to believe that such a widely eaten dish was only introduced in 1977). The delicious dish was an instant hit and became very popular in the Sparkbrook, Balsall Heath and Moseley areas of Birmingham – the Balti Triangle.

If the council decide to go ahead and try and trademark the Balti, they are bound to get a lot of opposition from all around the UK with at least one Balti dish being on the menu of most curry houses in the country.

Opponents to the trademark move point out that Balti is a style of cooking, not a specific dish, with traditional Baltis made in a special Balti cooking wok which has been used worldwide for hundreds of years.

It will be interesting to see what happens with this story.

In the meantime, we’ll continue to enjoy a good Balti down our local curry house.