Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

Diwali is an annual festival of India and Nepal that takes place near the end of October or beginning of November.

The festival dates are not the same each year because they are based upon the lunar months in the Hindu calendars. In south India, the festival starts in the month of Ashwin and finishes in the month of Kartika. In north India the festival falls the middle of Ashwayuja/Ashvin. The festival happens at almost the same time all over India and Nepal – it’s all seems to be a bit confusing because the different regions use their own calendars.

In the Gregorian calendar, the next Diwali festival is on October 28th, 2008.

The festival is known around the world as the Festival of Lights.

It is called the Festival of Lights because of the lighting of clay lamps all over Hindu homes on Diwali night.

There are 3 main reasons for the lighting of lamps.

The first reason is to show the gods Rama and Sita their way home to their north India home of Ayodhya.

The second reason is that, to Hindus, darkness represents ignorance whereas light represents knowledge. The lighting of lamps destroys the dark forces of ignorance, and all of the negatives forces, and replaces them with the light of knowledge.

Diwali also falls over the start of the Hindu financial year and the third purpose of the lights is to welcome Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity.

Friends traditionally swap gifts of sweetmeats, nuts and dried fruit and Diwali day is spent eating these gifts as well as easting other cooked, savory, snacks.

Hindus have migrated far and wide and nowadays Diwali, the Festival of Lights, is celebrated all over the world with parades, music, dance, food and fireworks.

Go to a Diwali celebration if you get the opportunity. There is always great entertainment and the food is delicious.

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.

It’s been just less than a year since I began trying the recipes on the Curry Focus website.

In the first few weeks, I followed the recipes extremely carefully and was sometimes unsure as to what would actually be served at dinner time.

In the early weeks I was probably testing myself as much as testing the recipes and couldn’t adapt if I made a mistake when cooking.

And I also could not tell that some recipes were wrong or not quite correct.

A year forward still sees me carefully following the recipes because I need to ensure that the recipes on the website actually work.

But I’m a more adaptable now and can improvise as I’m cooking.

If a recipe doesn’t work then I can often work out why and then try it again once I’ve changed the ingredients or adjusted the cooking times.

But during these months I have only cooked one dish at a time (I won’t pretend that rice is a dish). I cooked a chicken, pork, beef, lamb or vegetarian curry.

But last weekend I made a meal instead of a single dish.

I picked the saag gosht as the main because it simmers for 90 minutes for the last cooking stage and gave me enough time to make the other dishes.

Before starting the saag gosht, I mixed up the dough for some naan and left it to rise.

Then I made a batch of mango lassi and put it in the fridge to cool.

Whilst the naan dough was rising, and the mango lassi was chilling, I got ready the ingredients for the saag gosht and then relaxed and read the paper for a couple of hours.

After a good read, I started to cook the saag gosht.

Once the saag soght had started to simmer, I rolled out the naan bread and baked the bread. I had already preheated the lower oven and put the ready naans into the oven to keep them warm. I baked all of the naans although I only needed 4 for dinner and put the surplus naans aside to cool – once the naans had cooled I put them into individual plastic bags and then put them into the freezer for another day.

I infused some saffron threads in hot water by putting 10 saffron threads into an egg cup, pouring in some boiling water and leaving them for 10 minutes.

Then I made the Aloo Gobi (cauliflower and potato) as a side dish.

Now it was time to cook the rice so I put it into the microwave after having mixed the infused saffron with the rice and water.

And everything was ready at the scheduled dinner time.

We had saag gosht on saffron rice, with a side of aloo gobi, naan bread and a delicious mango lassi.

It was a wonderful meal.

Everything worked well and there were no problems during the cooking.

So I’ve come a long way in a year but I’m not complacent. I’ve still got a lot to learn before I can really call myself a cook. But it has been fun getting to this stage and most of the food has been very yummy.

Passatta is a contentrate that is made out of cooked tomatoes.

There are lots of different recipes for passatta. Some recipes have the tomatoes cooked with meat, such as pork and bacon, whereas some have purely vegetarian ingredients such as onion, carrot and celery.

A vegetarian passatta would obviously not include any meat.

Some cooks simply peel and deseed tomatoes and then process them in a food blender to make a puree that can be kept in the fridge for a few weeks until it is needed.

If the recipe that you are following only uses a little passatta, you could just substitute with a tomato paste, or puree, that you buy from a supermarket.

You can buy ready-made passatta from supermarkets or good food stores. You should find passatta in the tinned and pureed tomatoes section.

The first chillis arrived in India early in the 16th century, a short while after Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World in 1492.

Why did Columbus head west? One of the main reasons was to find a passage to India and the “spice islands” in the Pacific. Up until that time, pepper was carried from the “spice islands” to China (or Malaysia) and then transported across the Indian Ocean to India, then across the Arabian Sea to Africa, then overland to the Mediterranean and finally entering Europe via Venice or Genoa. Towards the end of the 15th century, the price of pepper was spiralling upwards the middlemen were blamed for the high prices, particularly the Venetians and Genoese. A western sea route to the spice source was needed to cut out all of the middlemen.

Columbus was convinced that he had found the western route when he reached the Caribbean and this conviction was strengthened when he saw the locals spicing up their meals with pepper.

But it wasn’t pepper that was being used in the Caribbean – capsicums were being used. Varieties of these capsicums had already been used in cooking for thousands of years in the Americas. One of the major users of the capsicums was, and still remains, Mexico. The Aztecs were a major force in Mexico for a long time and their word for the capsicum was “chilli”. This is where we get the word “chilli”.

So even though it was misnamed, the humble chilli pepper had been “discovered” by Europeans.

A few years later, in 1498, 3 Portuguese 3 ships, under the command of that great explorer, Vasco da Gama, sailed down the west coast of Africa, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, crossed the Arabian Sea and landed at the Malabar Coast of India. And so the real sea route to India had been found (remember, this was long before the Suez canal was built).

The Portuguese established settlements in this area of India, with their capital at Goa, and trade flourished between India and Portugal. The Portuguese quickly took over control of the spice trade and built forts to protect their interests.

The Portuguese brought chillis from the New World and used them in their cooking in, and around, Goa.

The Portuguese ate a lot of meat, mainly beef and pork, and spiced up their dish of meat cooked in wine vinegar and garlic by adding chillis. The Portuguese for this dish is “carne de vinho e alhos” – “vinho e alhos” was badly pronounced by non-Portuguese and became “vindaloo”.

Although the Portuguese ate meat, most of the local Indian population usually did not eat meat – they were Muslims (who didn’t eat pork), Hindus (who didn’t eat beef) or vegetarians. But all that changed when the Portuguese introduced Christianity, especially when the Inquisition arrived in Goa in 1560.

The Inquisition converted (or coerced or forced) a lot of the Indian population to become Catholics. In 1550, around 20% of Goans were Catholics and this had reached around 67% by 1650.

The Catholic Church kept issuing edicts saying that it was OK to eat pork and beef.

And so, gradually, the local population began to eat meat.

The British invaded Goa in 1797 and discovered the vindaloo. And they loved it. The British left Goa after less than 20 years and took Goan cooks, and recipes, with them back to British India. After that it didn’t take long for the vindaloo to reach Britain where it established itself as a favourite dish, especially pork vindaloo.

Usage of the chilli gradually spread within the Indian sub continent from Goa. The chilli was as spicy as the Indian long pepper (that it quickly replaced), was easy to grow and easy to store (the Indian long pepper was hard to store because it was susceptible to mold).

So, contrary to popular belief, the chilli did not originate in India – it is a spice from the New World (the Portuguese did ship a lot of chilli from India to Europe, mainly in the form of chilli powder).

The blending of the Portuguese dish of “carne de vinho e alhos” and chillis resulted in the vindaloo, for which the rest of the curry-eating world is grateful.

There is a great Curry Focus recipe for Pork Vindaloo.

A karahi is a the traditional Indian cooking utensil that is similar to a flat-bottomed wok.

A karahi used to be made only of cast iron but, nowadays, a karahi can be made out of stainless steel or or some other metal that is coated with non-stick material, such as tefal.

A karahi has relatively deep sides and is ideal for deep frying, or shallow frying, lots of different foods and dishes. A stew that is cooked in a karahi is sometimes called a karahi.

A karahi can be very large or small enough to hold a single serving of food. A single serving karahi can itself be used as a serving dish

To confuse matters a little, a karahi can be called a kadai and a dish cooked in a karahi can also be called a kadai.

Curry Focus has good karahi and kadai recipes. There’s a Karahi Chicken and Fenugreek main dish and a Kadai Paneer side dish.

A few good hardware stores stock kaharis but, if you’re having difficulty finding stockists, you can buy online on sites such as Amazon. Just go here to see a small selection.

In 1526, the Mughal emperor, Babur, invaded Hindustan. Babur was born in what is now known as Uzbekistan and he pushed through Afghanistan to reach Hindustan, which is the former name of northern India.

The cuisine from Babur’s homeland was heavily influenced by the culinary styles of Persia and, to some extent, Turkey.

The pulao (or pilau) dish was introduced in the time of Babur and was essentially meat (often mutton) fried in fat with water, rice and vegetables added. The Mughals liked to eat meat, such as beef and mutton, whereas most of the population of Hindustan were vegetarians. There are lots of variations of vegetarian pulao/pilau recipes that you can try. There’s a very easy Curry Focus recipe for Pulao Rice here and there’s a Vegetable Pulao recipe here.

During the rule of Babur’s son, Humuyan, the pulao/pilau dish became even more popular and evolved into containing fruit and chicken, not just spices.

The third emperor was Akbar and the pulao/pilau dish evolved even further into a completely new dish, biryani. Biryani is similar to pulao/pilau but usually contains meat that has been marinated in yogurt and is more than likely to contain onions, garlic, almonds, saffron and rice as well as a wide variety of spices. You can see a recipe for Chicken Biryani here and for a Lamb Biryani here.

The Mughals built the most famous building in the world. Akbar’s grandson, Shahjahan, was responsible for creating the Taj Mahal, in Agra.

The Taj Mahal is a great Mughal gift to the world.

And there’s no denying that the pulao/plau and biryani dishes are also great Mughal gifts to the world.

Following on from our recent blog on the world rice shortage, this weekend’s news from Vietnam confirms that the problem has got worse.

Vietnam is the usually 5th largest producer of rice, and the 3rd largest exporter, of rice in the world.

But this has changed with pests and disease ruining the rice crops both last year and this.

And there doesn’t seem to be an immediate resolution to the problem.

The rice-dependent part of the world is suffering from shortage and crop failures, and is anxiously waiting to see if the rice pests and diseases spread from Vietnam into other major rice producing countries (such China, Cambodia and Thailand).

You can read a good article on Vietnam’s current rice crop problems on Yahoo.

Because of the crop problems, Vietnam has placed restrictions on rice exports to try and ensure that the local population has access to the most important staple food.

Vietnam joins a list of countries (India, China and Egypt) that has banned, or heavily restricted, rice exports in order that their own people can eat. Despite the export restrictions, the price of rice is rising in those countries.

What this mean for you and me? Well, higher prices for rice are inevitable as countries that buy rice compete against each other for the shrinking. And there may be shortages in your local supermarket as well, although it is too early to see if this actually happens.

My local supermarket does not seem to have noticed any problems in the rice market because my favourite basmati rice was on sale this weekend with 30% off the regular price. But, as the world’s rice supplies do dry up, the prices WILL rise.

At the end of the day, you and I can afford to pay more for our rice. But the masses in South East Asia face the big problem of finding affordable food for themselves.

Garlic is part of the onion family of plants and, like onions, is a key ingredient in many curry recipes.

Garlic has a pungent spicy flavor that mellows in cooking.

The main part of the garlic plant is the bulb that has lots of small segments that are called cloves. Curry recipes that use garlic (and most of them do) tell you how many cloves of garlic to use. You take this number of cloves off the main bulb, peel away the thin tissue-like covering and you are left with the raw garlic. You can either finely chop or crush the garlic to use in the recipe (there’s a special kitchen utensil, called a garlic crusher, that you use to crush garlic – the utensil looks a bit like a nut crusher). Most times you can chop up the garlic really finely if you don’t have a garlic crusher.

Often you will be putting garlic into a curry at the same time as you are cooking the onions or ginger. The three ingredients go together well.

And as well as being great in cooking, garlic also has a lot of medicinal applications.

Garlic has been used to treat a wide variety of ailments such as high cholesterol, hypertension, cancer, blood sugar problems, the common cold and AIDS. You can search the internet if you want to find out more details.

Garlic is reasonably easy to grow and is readily available all around the world with China and India being the main producers.

No curry-friendly kitchen should be without a bulb of garlic.

Sambal is a spicy relish that is often served as a side dish to a meal.

Sambal features a lot in Indonesian and Malaysian cuisine.

One of the simplest sambals is made from chillies and salt but more elaborate sambals can contain onion, garlic, lemongrass, vinegar, lime juice, sugar, fruit and nuts.

You use the sambal as a relish and usually you spread the sambal on meat that you want livened up with a bit of spicy heat, much like you use ketchup

There’s a recipe for a delicious Tamarind Sambal on the Curry Focus website that you can try out.

There are lots of different types of sambal that you can buy from your local Asian store, if you don’t want to make one yourself.

But we think it’s much more fun to make your own sambal. Why not make one soon?