Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

Hi, Ray here again.

I’ve been reviewing recipes from the range of Curry Focus recipes for the past 3 years and it struck me that I’ve never made one of the snack recipes.

I already snack on cheese on toast but it’s usually a very simple matter of putting some slices of cheese onto bread and then broiling (grilling) it – it must be one of the easiest cooked snacks to make.

I saw the Cheese on Toast recipe and it wasn’t really much more involved than my usual cooking method. There are only a few ingredients and the cooking process is really easy.

I organized my usual weekend dining companions to come around at midday to sample my latest cooking effort.

Grating the cheese and chopping up the onion, tomato and cilantro took no time at all and everything was prepared by the time the tasters arrived.

I turned on the broiler (grill) and everyone was eating the Cheese on Toast in about 10 minutes.

Now this is a great snack. It fills you up, tastes good and is really quick to make. The cheese, onion and tomato tastes were lovely, along with the great taste of cilantro. I think that my pinch of cumin must have been too small because nobody could taste it.

The tasty snack got a good taste score of 7.5 out of 10 with a spice/heat score of “None”.

This is a tasty treat that you can try when you need a quick snack.

Hi, Ray here again.

Time to try out a recipe for one of my favorite dishes. I often have chicken patia (pathia) when I’m in a curry house because I love the taste. I found a Chicken Pathia Curry recipe amongst the great Curry Focus curry recipes and it that looked like it would produce a yummy curry.

The recipe called for all of the usual ingredients and, for the first time in a while, I already had all of the ingredients (including the chicken, although I did have to defrost it). I took the chicken out of the freezer on Saturday so that it would be totally defrosted when it was needed on Sunday evening.

A glance at the curry recipe showed that it would take around 35 minutes to cook - nice and quick.

There isn’t really much to report about the cooking that I did because it was a really simple recipe to follow and there wasn’t anything complicated to do - and I didn’t mess anything up!

The dinner guests arrived on time and pretty soon I served up the Chicken Pathia curry on a bed of basmati rice.

And the verdict? Yummy, yummy, yummy. There was a good, thick sauce (not too dry) and the curry had a good tomato, and a stunning sour, taste.

Everyone said that the curry was outstanding and it got an average taste rating of 8.5 out of 10 with a spice/heat level of “Medium”.

I can definitely recommend this curry and hope it won;t be too long before I make it again.

I don’t know about you, but I just love a good vindaloo - the only thing better is a great vindaloo. Portugal came up with a winner when this dish was created during their stay in Goa, all those years ago.

My girlfriend doesn’t like hot curries and won’t even look at a vindaloo. I think this has something to do with getting served a really hot one in a curry house a few years ago - I suppose that this would put anybody off a dish.

Anyway, Wendy is away just now and so here’s a chance to make a hot curry.

I checked out the wide range of Curry Focus curry recipes, gravitating towards the vindaloo recipes. Was there one for me to try? Indeed - the Beef Vindaloo recipe was crying out to me.

It normally takes a while to cook a beef curry and this recipe was no exception. I quickly added up the numbers and saw that it would take just over two hours to cook the curry.

Unlike a lot of vindaloo recipes, you don’t need to marinate the meat in vinegar overnight - so all of the preparation and cooking took place on Sunday.

I started making the curry in plenty of time. I ground the spices and made the vinegar paste whilst frying the onions (multi-tasking, impressive) and lef tthe onions to cool before making the onion paste.

Thereafter it was a fairly normal cooking effort - all I had to do was follow the simple instructions.

The one thing that was a bit strange was that there was a lot of liquid in the frying pan once the beef had been sealed and set aside. I suppose I could have discarded some of the liquid but I just carried on following the recipe.

The 90 minutes simmer gave me plenty of time to clean up the kitchen which usually looks like a total mess when I;ve finished cooking.

The eager diners arrived just as it was time to start cooking the rice so it wasn’t too long before I served up the Beef Vindaloo curry on a bed of basmati rice.

The Beef Vindaloo was a hit. Everybody loved it with well-cooked beef. And there wasn’t too much vinegar to flood the tastebuds.

There wasn’t anything left over once the meal was finished and the diners gave it a great taste score of 8 out of 10 with a heat/spice rating of “Medium to Hot”.

It’s a pity there wasn’t anything left over - I bet it would have tasted even better the next day.

So if you like a vindaloo then it’s time to print off this recipe and give it a try for yourself.

Hi, Ray here again.

This week I’ve decided to try out a vegetarian curry recipe from the range of Curry Focus recipes.

I’ve commented a few times how much I enjoy eating peas and potatoes so the Potato and Pea Curry recipe looked like it was created just for me.

If you look at the recipe, you’ll see that it a really simple curry to prepare and make seeing that there are only a few ingredients and cooking steps.

But I managed to get the recipe wrong by not paying attention to the type of peas that I used. I grabbed a bag of minted peas and didn’t notice until it was too late (the cooking was finished).

I served up the Potato and Pea curry on a bed of basmati to the ever-eager diners.

All of the ingredients were cooked well and the liquid had been absorbed during the cooking so the curry was nice and dry (I had some boiling water ready during the cooking in case the curry got too dry but the extra water wasn’t needed).

So all was good apart from the mint taste that didn’t seem right with the curry.

Despite me messing up with the peas, the curry received a taste score of 7 out of 10 with a heat/spice rating of “Medium”.

I really have to make this curry again, this time with the correct ingredients, to see how it really tastes.

Hi, Ray here again.

I made some soup a few months ago – another first in my role of resident curry maker.

There are some yummy soup recipes amongst the Curry Focus recipes and the Mulligatawny Soup recipe looked pretty good.

I’ve read that Mulligatawny soup was invented by the British and is a fusion of British and Indian ingredients.

The Mulligatawny soup takes about an hour to cook and the recipe got me to cook the rice first, instead of cooking it near the end just prior to serving up time.

Making soup for dinner might seem a bit foolhardy but it looked like it would be OK seeing that similar ingredients are in a biryani.

Making the Mulligatawny soup was pretty easy even though it took a bit of cooking.

And it would be stretching it to say that this is a soup – it’s more like a sloppy biryani – I assume that most of the liquid was absorbed by the rice.

I served the Mulligatawny Soup to the eager diners and everybody said that it was really good. The ingredients were well cooked and the dish was very filling.

The soup was a bit salty but I put that down to the chicken stock that I used – I used a powder stock and later discovered that the main ingredient in the stock was salt so I won’t be buying that product again.

As I said before, everybody enjoyed the soup and it received a good rating of 7.5 out of 10 with a heat/spice rating of “Hot”.

If you want a filling, tasty and spice soup then this is probably the recipe for you.

Hi, Ray here again.

I was given a big sachet of Massaman curry paste some time ago and have been working my way through the contents. I’ve still got some of the paste and I checked out the Massaman curry recipes from the Curry Focus range of curry recipes to see what I could try next.

And I spotted the Massaman Chickpea Curry recipe that looked really simple to make.

This is a really fast curry to make, apart from the overnight soaking of the chickpeas, and the preparation and cooking time is only about 30 minutes.

I started to cook the curry when the dinner guests arrived and served it up half an hour later. As I guessed earlier, this is a really simple curry to make.

I served up the Massaman Chickpea Curry on a bed of basmati rice and the eager diners happily got stuck into the curry.

The potatoes and chickpeas were well cooked and the curry was really tasty.

And it was also really hot – probably the hottest curry that I’ve made from the Curry Focus recipes.

The heat level was simply too high for two of the diners. The heat level could be lowered by missing out one, or both, of the fresh chillies and only using one tablespoon of Massaman curry paste instead of the two tablespoons that the recipe calls for.

There is a lot of liquid in this curry and this could be reduced by turning up the heat a little.

Despite the heat level, the Massaman Chickpea Curry got a score of 7.5 out of 10 with a heat/spice rating of “Very Hot”.

In my opinion, this is a great Massaman curry that you really should try if you like a hot and tasty curry.

Hi, Ray here again.

Easily the biggest section of great Curry Focus curry recipes is for chicken curry recipes. I check out the new chicken curry recipes fairly often and saw that the Murghi Aur Palak (Chicken and Spinach) recipe arrived in April.

I decided to make the Chicken and Spinach curry despite it having a lot of ingredients (I usually steer clear of recipes with lots of ingredients).

All I had to but for the curry was the fresh spinach and chicken thighs.

On Sunday afternoon I went through my usual ritual of preparing the ingredients and this time I also made the yogurt mixture and spice paste before starting any cooking.

This curry takes longer to cook than the average chicken curry, about 70 minutes and I started to cook the meal an hour before the scheduled eating time.

Despite there being a lot of ingredients and cooking instructions, this is a very simple curry to cook. There are four distinct parts to making this curry – frying the onions and chicken thighs, cooking the chicken thoroughly, cooking the fresh spinach and finally mixing all of the ingredients together for the last cooking phase.

The dinner guests arrived bang on time and did not need to wait too long before sitting down to eat the curry.

The Murghi Aur Palak (Chicken and Spinach) curry was served on basmati rice and everybody quickly made the curry disappear (like magic). The curry had great flavours and textures to enjoy and the consensus was that this was one of the best curries that I’d made.

The chicken was very tasty and well cooked and, not surprisingly, everybody picked up the chicken bone to chew off all of the meat.

The Murghi Aur Palak (Chicken and Spinach) curry received a brilliant rating of 9 out of 10 with a heat rating of “Medium Hot”.

You really must check out this recipe for yourself if you love a great chicken curry – I’m confident that you won’t be disappointed.

Hi, Ray here again.

Time for another weekend curry. I checked out the Curry Focus recipes and chose to make the Lamb Curry Cooked with Rice from the delicious lamb recipes.

This looked like a biryani recipe except that the meat is usually marinated for a biryani.

As usual, the kitchen was well stock with the spices and basic curry ingredients so the only thing that I had to buy was the lamb.

I prepared the lamb and other ingredients late on Sunday afternoon and started the cooking about 30 minutes before I expected the dinner guests to arrive.

This is an east recipe to follow and it’s hard to imagine how anyone could get the confused with the cooking instructions.

There was a lot of rice (and water) in the recipe and so I used a large saucepan for cooking everything.

The dinner guests arrived in plenty of time of have a quick beer before dinner.

I made a raita and served it up with the Lamb Curry Cooked with Rice.

And what was the verdict? Pretty disappointing. The curry looked pretty unappetising and was a pale yellow color. “It looks like a big mess of rice with meat in it.” Nobody like the curry very much and it received a poor taste score of 5.5 out of 10 with a heat/spice rating of “Mild”.

The recipe showed promise when I first looked at it but the result didn’t live up to expectations.

If you use this recipe, let me know what you think.

Hi, Ray here again.

The weekend has rolled around again so it’s time for another curry.

This weekend I had some chicken breasts in the freezer that had to be used up soon and so I checked out the list of great chicken curry recipes on the Curry Focus website to see what I could make.

I spotted the recipe for Karahi Chicken with Fenugreek which looked to be a nice, simple, recipe. Unlike most curries, this recipe doesn’t call for onion or ginger but it looked like the results would be tasty.

My local Indian supply store had the fenugreek (methi) leaves that I needed so all I had to get at the supermarket were some chicken thighs.

I prepared the ingredients, cooked the chicken pieces and made the spicy paste not long before the arrival of the dinner guests.

I got on with the real main cooking once the dinner guests had arrived and were settled in the lounge with a beer.

The only tricky thing with the cooking was that the ingredients were very dry until the water was added so I had to stir the contents of the frying pan very often so that the food wouldn’t stick and burn.

And the curry was ready in only 20 minutes – one of the diners hadn’t even finished their beer!

I served the Karahi Chicken with Fenugreek on a bed of basmati and herded the diners into the dining room, where they quickly got “stuck in” to the meal.

And what was the verdict? Very tasty!. The chicken strips were unusual but everybody loved them. The curry doesn’t have much colour, although it tasted great – maybe I should have sprinkled some fresh cilantro as a garnish.

The curry was voted a score of 7.5 out of 10 for taste and had a “heat” rating of “Medium”.

This is a very simple curry to make. It only takes about half an hour from starting to prepare the ingredients to serving up the curry. I know you’ll be very happy with the results if you try this recipe.

Hi, Ray here again.

Just recently I wrote a review of the Dry Massaman Beef Curry recipe. I had been given some Massman Curry Paste by a friend and felt that I had to use it (there’s a good Curry Focus recipe for Massaman Curry Paste that I could have used to make some paste).

I checked out the great Curry Focus Massaman Curry recipes to see if there was another recipe that I could try with the paste that I had.

The Dry Massaman Beef Curry did not contain any potatoes, which I thought was a bit odd. But the Chicken Massaman Curry recipe does call for potatoes as well as coconut cream.

I bought a pack of chicken thighs to make the latest curry and cut them up a little as they were pretty large.

This is a very simple recipe and nothing wrong happened during the cooking and, before too long, I was serving up the Chicken Massaman Curry on a bed of basmati rice.

And everybody loved the curry. It was creamy with lovely flavours of coconut and peanuts.

Overall, the curry got a score of 8.5 out of 10 with a spice/heat level of “Medium to Hot”.

This is a yummy curry that is easy to make and I unreservedly recommend that you try it yourself.