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.

Hi, Ray here again.

Once again it’s time to try one of the great curry recipes from the Curry Focus website and this time I chose the Beef Madras recipe. The recipe has been on the Curry Focus website for a long time and I’m a surprised that I haven’t tried it before now because I just love Beef Madras.

Like most of the Curry Focus recipes, this is a very easy recipe to follow and it only took just over an hour from starting the preparation to serving up the meal.

I bought some ordinary steak because the recipe did not say which type of beef cut to buy.

And I bought two stuffed paratha to eat with the curry.

I simply followed the recipe and everything worked out just fine.

The Madras kept getting dry near the end of the cooking and I added all of the masala gravy and also an extra ½ cup of hot water to prevent the curry from becoming too dry.

There was only two for dinner tonight, my flatmate and myself, and we both like hot curries. Which is just as well because this is definitely a hot, spicy, curry. The Madras was very tasty and with a strong flavor. The word “fiery” described the heat pretty well and I’m sure that the Madras was hotter than the Pork Vindaloo that I made not long ago.

Overall, the curry was given a rating of 8 out of 10 with a spice/heat rating of hot.

In my opinion, this is a simply a stunning curry and I recommend you should try the recipe if you like a delicious, and hot, curry.

Hi, Ray here again.

It is time to make another chicken curry from the wide range on the Curry Focus website and this week I went for the Jaipur Chicken Curry recipe.

I bought a couple of packs of chicken pieces for the curry with a pack of chicken drumsticks and a pack of chicken pieces.

I used the onion and chicken pieces to make the broth with the onion and chicken pieces and then left the chicken for about 10 minutes to cool down.

The meat easily came off the bones once it had been cooked and I didn’t even need to use a knife.

I just followed the simple instructions in the recipe and the meal was ready about an hour later.

I made some rice and it was timed to be ready when the curry was ready.

I soon served up the curry to the dinner guests.

The curry had a great creamy ginger taste. And most of the liquid had been absorbed into the curry so it turned out to be a dry curry with a good texture.

The Jaipur chicken curry received an excellent rating of 7 out of 10 with a spice/heat rating of medium.

This is an excellent curry that I recommend that you try.

It’s now time for a little confession. I made this curry last week using chicken breasts instead of chicken on the bone. I went shopping and forgot my shopping list. I knew that I had to buy chicken but forgot the type.

And 4 lb of chicken breast is a lot of chicken. Perhaps I should have put the chicken into the freezer, or chosen another recipe, but I went ahead anyway. The meat on the chicken breasts fell apart. It was a bit like eating shredded chicken. The curry was good but I was annoyed that I’d bought the wrong main ingredient.

The second making of the curry was a lot more successful using the drumsticks and chicken pieces. I remember reading somewhere that about 30% of a chicken is bone and fat. But I found that the drumsticks and pieces yielded less than 50% of the weight. Maybe I should have used a whole chicken. Maybe next time.

Hi, Ray here again.

I decided to be a bit healthy and make a vegetarian curry. I just love potatoes and so I went for the Gujarati Potato Curry recipe from the great range of recipes on the Curry Focus website.

This is the first recipe that I’ve made that has asafoetida as an ingredient. I dropped by my favorite Indian store and picked up a small container of the pungent powder. It has a really strong aroma. The container has a screw top that helps to keep the strong smell inside. Now that I’ve broken the seal and used the powder, I’ve stored the container inside an airtight jar just to make sure that the smell doesn’t leak out and contaminate my other spices.

The asafoetida is really pungent and gives a great taste to the curry.

I seem to remember that there is an Indian religious sect that isn’t allowed garlic or onions and they use asafoetida as a substitute.

I must say that this potato curry is really easy to make and it’s just a matter of following the recipe.

One thing that I thought was a bit odd, when I first looked at the recipe, is that it suggests that you serve it on rice. So you’re going to be eating a dry potato curry on rice. This looked like too much carbohydrate to me so I just made the potato curry by itself.

The curry was really dry, presumably because the potato soaks up all of the liquid.

I was dining alone tonight so simply served up a portion of the curry into a bowl with a a paratha that I heated up to go with it (even more carbohydrate).

The curry was adequate but was bland. There was a medium spice taste but no real “body”, or substance, to it. I couldn’t imagine eating rice with it – how bland would that be? Maybe the curry would have been better with some more vegetables in it – like the Spiced Potato and Cauliflower recipe.

I gave the curry a score of 6 out of 10 with a spice rating of medium. Overall, the potato curry was edible but a bit disappointing.

Its often the simple questions that have the most interesting of answers and this month we look at - Where Do Curries Come From?.

Ice Cream Recipe Review - So if you have a sweet tooth and are partial to ice cream, why not give this easy recipe a try?

Beef and Potato Curry Recipe Review - We recommend this curry if you want to try a curry that is not too spicy.

Top 5 Recipes for August

Chicken rules the roost yet again.

4 Balti Chicken
2 Chicken Tikka Masala
1 Easy Chicken Curry
2 Naan Bread
3 Chicken Curry

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

We get a regular trickle of questions in regard to the dishes and ingredients that are in curries. Usually the answer is on one of the glossary pages on the website. A list of all of the more common dishes can be found on the Dishes page. And a list of common curry ingredients is on the Ingredients page. If you’re confused about terms such as “saute” , “garnish” or “marinate” then you’ll find a quick guide on the Methods page. Finally, there’s a handy measures conversion page where you can work out what some of the strange recipe measures that you come across - this is on the Measures page.

We hope that you find the glossary pages useful. If you think of any other glossary details that would be useful, let us know and we’ll do our best to include them for you.

Hi, Ray here again.

Last weekend, a couple of old friends that I hadn’t seen for over a year were coming round for dinner. They both liked curries so I decided to make a range of dishes for them to sample.

I made a spicy potato and cauliflower, chicken jalfrezi and dhal, all from the great menu of delicious Curry Focus recipes.

My friends were bringing round some fresh fruit for dessert so I chose to make some Indian ice cream (kulfi) to go with the fruit.

I know that there are machines that make ice cream. But I don’t have one of them. And the Curry Focus ice cream recipe doesn’t need anything more complicated than a whisk.

I bought the ingredients, conscious that there was a lot of fat and calories going into this simple dish. But I don’t have ice cream very often and it’s a bit of a treat.

The recipe was simplicity itself to follow.

The only thing that I had to work out was the freezing and unfreezing of the ice cream.

Before I added the last ingredient (of whisked egg whites), the ice cream needed to be 80% frozen. I had to make a guess at what this meant. I kept checking the mixture every 10 minutes after an hour of freezing and finally decided it had frozen enough after 90 minutes.

I then left the ice cream in the freezer overnight.

The next morning I checked out the ice cream and found that it had frozen solid. I couldn’t chip out any ice cream to test. The ice cream must have frozen solid because there are no added preservatives – supermarket bought ice cream never freezes completely when you have it in the freezer and this must be the result of some additive in the ice cream.

I left the ice cream in the kitchen for an hour to let it thaw. After an hour, the ice cream could be spooned out of the bowl but still had a fair amount of ice inside it.

I needed to go out of the house for the rest of the day and put the ice cream back into the freezer (I didn’t want it to melt back into its original state).

An hour before we were scheduled to start eating, I removed the ice cream from the freezer again. It was completely frozen. When the time arrived for dessert, just over 1.5 hours had gone by and the ice cream had thawed almost perfectly. I mashed the ice cream with a fork to make sure that the few solid bits were broken up and then served it with the fresh fruit.

I had another hit on my hands!! Everyone loved the ice cream and it received an excellent rating of 8 out of 10.

If you are partial to ice cream, why not try this easy recipe?

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.

Hi, Ray here again.

Once again, it’s time to make a yummy curry from the great range of recipes on the Curry Focus website. My local supermarket was advertising a beef special so I chose the Beef and Potato curry to take advantage of the good price.

This is yet again another very easy curry to make and all that has to be remembered is that the curry simmers for around 2.5 hours – so if dinner is scheduled for 7pm then making the curry needs to start at about 4pm.

I cut up the beef and mixed it in with the salt and turmeric.

Then I peeled and prepared the onions, garlic and ginger. Now I was ready to start cooking.

I stir-fried the onion, garlic and ginger for around 10 minutes. Then I added the beef with the spices and stir-fried for 5 more minutes.

Then in went the water. I brought the curry to a simmer, covered it and left it for 2 hours, returning to stir the curry every 10 – 15 minutes.

I peeled and cubed the potatoes just before the 2 hours were nearly up and then added the potato cubes to the curry, stirring the curry well and covering the frying pan again.

I started to microwave rice after 5 minutes and the curry and rice were both ready just 20 minutes after the potato was added.

I served up the Beef and Potato curry to the lone other diner (there was only 2 of us for dinner tonight) and we tasted the results of the cooking.

And it was a good curry. Not a great curry, but a good one. The spice rating was mild to medium and the beef was really tender. There wasn’t much color on the plate so I maybe could have garnished the curry with some fresh cilantro to add a touch of color. The curry was given a good score of 7 out of 10.

There was way too much curry for just the two of us so we ate the same curry the following night and it tasted a little bit better than the previous night (it’s funny how curries do that). And we still couldn’t finish the curry so we put the remaining curry into a container and popped it into the freezer for another day.

I can definitely recommend this curry if you want to try an easy curry that is not too spicy.

Our writers have been busy this month reviewing recipes and taking a closer look at some of the ingredients used.

Ray puts together some of the things he has learned in the last twelve months making curries and produces a full meal - Putting It All Together.

Passatta. What Is It? - Passatta is a cooked tomato concentrate that we talk about in this article.

Cauliflower and Potato Recipe Review - A great side dish that is not only tasty but easy to make.

Poppadom Recipe Review - Poppadoms end up being a challenge to cook.

Beef Pasanda Recipe Review - If you like a mild curry and red wine then this could be just the curry for you.

Lamb Rogan Josh Recipe Review - this curry did not turn out as expected so we are looking for more Rogan Josh Recipes to review.

Top 5 Recipes for July

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

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

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.