Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

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?

You might have seen headlines about the shortage of rice, and wheat, and the prices rises that have followed this.

The Independent Bangladesh has a good article and you can read it here.

Lots of different factors are making the shortage worse than it could be.

Firstly, Thailand farmers and millers are holding back rice stocks waiting for the prices to go even higher.

Next, China and India have banned rice exports (except to a few specific countries) so that the crop is available to their own populations.

Prices have recently soared in Pakistan by 60% and in Singapore by between 30% and 40%.

Some of the rice price rises have been caused by concern over the low wheat yields that are expected in India and about worries with next Vietnam rice harvest.

Amongst the causes of the shortages is land being converted to produce biofuel instead of food.

The South Wales Echo has picked up on the link between rising rice prices and the cost of a curry at your favorite curry restaurant. Check out the full story here.

The Rice Association has also pointed out that the price of basmati rice has recently doubled.

The rice shortage, and rise in curry prices, has also been reported by the UK Metro newspaper. You can see the full story here.

Will these price increases stop you and me from eating our favorite meals? I doubt it. You’ve got to keep all of this in perspective – you can still buy a 32 oz bag of basmati rice for less than a six-pack of beer. A bargain.

Making a curry without any onion is hard to imagine. Almost every curry recipe starts with cooking onions. Some curries have a small amount of onions while some have a lot of onions. But the onions are always there.

Onions are grown all over the world and their taste varies from sweet to very pungent (Indian curries usually use more pungent onions). Their aroma varies from almost nothing to a pungency that makes your eyes water.

Just why do some onions make your eyes water? It’s because they contain enzymes that begin to break down when you cut the onions. The enzymes create mild acids that are unstable and turn into a gas. The gas contains sulfur and the gas moves through the air and reaches your eyes where it reacts with the water in your eyes to form a mild sulfuric acid. Not surprisingly, the acid irritates the nerves in your eye and makes them sting. The eyes react to the stinging by producing tears that dilute the acid and clean out your eye.

But not all onions are this strong. If they are, or you cry easily when cutting onions, you can take some avoiding actions. You can try cutting the onions under a running tap so that the gas reacts with the tap water, not your eyes. Or you can cut up the onions in a bowl of water to have the same effect. Most of the enzymes are concentrated in the root of the onion so you can cut off the root last (and under running water).

Once the cooking has started, any eye-watering problem is gone.

You should always take care when cutting up onions and not rub your eyes with your fingers because that is really going to hurt. If this happens, wash out your eyes with lots of cold water.

Onions are an integral component of curries. Most recipes start with instructions to heat up the oil, over a medium to high heat, and cook the onions until they are soft (onions soften and have a golden color when they are cooked but some recipes tell you to keep cooking the onions until they are black and crisp). The onions are often cooked with ginger root and garlic.

Once they have been peeled, onions are usually finely chopped, coarsely chopped or sliced. All things being equal, finely chopped onions take less time to cook than coarsely chopped onions. Curries will be browner and darker the longer the onions are cooked – you should only cook the onions until they are soft (around 10 minutes, depending upon the heat of the oil) unless you are told otherwise.

Deep fried, or blackened, onions are sometimes used as a garnish for curries such as on a Do Piaza (or dopiaza).

And onions are good for you. They contain anti-cholesterol, anti-cancer, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory components that are effective in treating a wide range of diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and even the common cold.

Next time you make a curry, make sure that you have a couple of good onions nearby.

There really is no easy answer to this question because there are lots of different types of paprika.

Paprika is made from red bell peppers. First, the bell peppers are allowed to dry and the stalks and inside veins are thrown away. The pepper flesh and the seeds are separated from each other and are separately ground into powders. This process is done for different types of bell pepper and the resultant powders are blended to produce the required taste.

Some peppers are dried over fires to give them a woody flavor.

And some pepper powders are mixed with powders from the fruits of other members of the capsicum family to give a paprika with some heat (bell peppers, by themselves, have no heat as recorded on the Scoville heat scale).

You can get hot, sweet or bittersweet flavours of paprika depending on the peppers used and even where the peppers were grown – the same plants produce different flavored peppers in different parts of the world.

Indian cuisine uses paprika mainly to add a red color to a dish whilst Hungarian cuisine uses paprika a lot to give their dishes flavor, as well as color.

Tamarind is extracted from the pods of the evergreen tamarind tree.

The tamarind tree is a tropical tree that originated in east Africa. The main growing country is now India but the tamarind tree is grown in such diverse tropical locations as Florida, Hawaii, the Caribbean, Mexico, northern Brasil.

The sticky, brown pulp is extracted from the pods of the tamarind tree. The extracted pulp is squeezed into flat blocks and the blocks are processed to produce tamarind paste and concentrate.

Tamarind does not have much of an aroma and has a sour, fruity taste.

Tamarind is added to curries (such as vindaloo) as well as pickles and chutneys to make best use of the sour taste.

Tamarind sauce, served in Indian restaurants to accompany other dishes, is made by mixing tamarind concentrate with water.

The poppy seeds that are used in cooking either come from the Blue Poppy or the White Poppy plants. The seeds are very similar and it is the seeds from the white poppy that are used in Indian cuisine.

Poppy seeds have a nutty flavor that is fully released when the seeds have been toasted. Toasting only takes a few minutes for the sweet aroma to be released along with the flavor.

The seeds are often ground to a powder and used to thicken Indian curry sauces. Also, the seeds are sprinkled over dry vegetarian or meat dishes.

Poppy seeds are tough and hard to grind. You can even buy a special poppy seed grinder. When grinding poppy seeds, don’t forget to toast them first to release the full flavor.

There are medicinal uses for poppy seeds including cough medicines and treating toothache and earache. The seeds themselves are used to stimulate the appetite. The dangerous derivatives such as heroin, morphine and codeine come from poppy pods and stems, not the seeds.

Kaffir lime, also called makrut lime, is a lime that originated in Southeast Asia and is now grown in such diverse areas as Florida and Australia.

The kaffir lime fruit is green in colour and has the shape of a pear.

Both the leaves and rind are used in cooking, particularly in Thai cuisine.

The leaves give a particularly tangy citrus taste and are used in curries, soups and salads.

The rind has a slightly bitter citrus taste and is grated and used in curry pastes and fish cakes.

The`zest (the fruit part of the rind) is used in Creole`cooking to add its distinctive citrus flavor.

It’s always best to use fresh kaffir lime leaves and rind when you can because the flavour is quickly lost from the fruit once it has been cut open, You can freeze leftover rind and leaves by storing them in ordinary freezer bags.

Medicinally, kaffir lime rind is used for digestive problems and the rind is used in some tonics that are good for the blood.

Naan (or Nan) is a flatbread that can be eaten with most curries. It is a leavened bread, which means that it rises using yeast.

The Moguls brought naan bread to India hundreds of years ago (the Moguls came from Persia, now called Iran, and naan is the Persian word for bread).

Naan is almost a compulsory component of an Indian meal. Naan is usually eaten with the main curry dish and can be used to scoop up the curry (instead of using knives and forks).

The main ingredients in naan are flour, water, yogurt and yeast (a substitute such as baking powder is sometimes used instead of yeast).

You make naan by first making a dough with the flour, water and yeast. Then you add any other ingredients that you want. Then you roll out the naan and, finally, you bake the naan in an oven (traditionally, tandoor ovens are used but western style ovens make naan just as well as tandoor ovens).

Making naan is a relatively lengthy process because you have wait while the yeast makes the dough rise. This isn’t hard to do because you just mix the ingredients together and then put them in a warm place for a few hours to let the yeast make the dough rise. You can batch up making naans and freeze the excess naan so you can warm them up and eat them at a later date (all you need to do is make sure that the naans are individually wrapped with clear film, or greaeproof paper, so you can easily separate the naans that you want without having to pull them apart from a pile of naans that have frozen together).

There are lots of different types of naan that you can make and the most popular ones are plain, garlic, keema (naan with minced lamb) and peshwari (naan with nuts and raisins).

There are some recipes for making naan on the Curry Focus website. There’s one for plain naan here, one for garlic naan here and one for peshwari naan here. As yet, we don’t have one for keema naan – so if you have one then we’d be delighted to add it to the website – just give us the details on this simple form and we’ll share the recipe with the world.

Why not have a naan with the next curry that you have? They really are simple to make and are delicious.

Anise is a plant that originated in the Middle East and is now widely grown in North America, Europe and Asia. Anise is also known as aniseed.

Both the seeds and leaves are used in cooking and have the taste and aroma of sweet liquorice. Indian anise has a slightly bitter taste.

In India, anise is used mainly with breads and savoury dishes - the seeds are dry roasted and added to vegetarian and fish dishes.

Anise is also used to flavor alcoholic drinks such as French pastis, Greek ouzo and Turkish raki.

Anise has some medicinal applications and is used to aid digestion as well as being used as an antiseptic.

The sweet taste of aniseed has led to it being used in breath fresheners and to flavor cough medicines and lozenges.