Chicken Curry and Beyond – The CurryFocus Blog

Hi, Ray here again.

I was browsing through the great range of Curry Focus curry recipes for this weekend’s curry and was drawn to the Fish Curry recipe. The recipe name said it all – it was a simple fish curry. There were a couple of fiddly preparation steps at the beginning but, apart from those. This looked an easy curry to make.

I picked up some nice fish fillets whilst out doing the shopping, making sure to get fish that wasn’t too strong in case this overpowered the curry.

Late Sunday afternoon saw me preparing the marinade and then marinating the fish pieces.

And I started to cook the curry just after the usual curry tasters arrived.

I heated the oil and was very careful about adding the fish pieces because I knew that the oil would start to bubble and I didn’t want any spills to either burn me or get onto my clothes. I took the fish out of the oil once it had cooked and put it onto some sheets of kitchen paper in order to mop up the excess oil. I must admit that the yellow, greasy, fish pieces did not look very appetising.

The curry making part of the recipe was pretty standard and soon the fried fish pieces were cooking away in the onion paste. The last part of cooking this curry is very simple. The fish pieces started to break up and crumble even more whilst they were cooking and did not look very edible at all – maybe the final cooking time of 15 minutes is about 5 minutes too long? There was a lot of liquid left in the frying pan when the cooking was finished – maybe there should have only been 2 cups of water, instead of 3 cups, added to cook the fish.

Anyway, I kept following the recipe and was soon serving up the Fish Curry on basmati rice.

And how was the fish curry? Well, with the crumbly, yellow, pieces of fish the curry won’t win any beauty prizes. But the curry was very tasty. The fish was well cooked and the curry had a bit of a bite without the spice heat overpowering the curry – it had a clean taste. The spice/heat level was “Hot” and the fish curry received an average taste score of 8.5 out of 10.

If you like a hot curry, this is a definitely a curry that we recommend.

Hi, Ray here again.

I was browsing through the great range of Curry Focus curry recipes, so that I could select a curry to have this weekend, and spotted the Chettinad Lamb Curry recipe. It looked an easy curry to make and I decided that this would be this weekend’s curry recipe.

But before anything, I needed to know what Chettinad was. I suspected that it would be a region in India and a quick search on Google confirmed that this was the case. With Chettinad being in Tamil Nadu in the southern part of India. Chettinad is known for its cuisine so this was an extra reason for choosing to make the Chettinad lamb curry.

Early Saturday saw me shopping and I bought the lamb and the star anise. I was pretty excited at buying star anise because I’d never bought it before. I’d read that it was star shaped and had an aroma like fennel so I easy spotted it at my local Indian supply shop (and it was also labelled as star anise so this confirmed what it was). I bought some star anise and sniffed them on the way home – and yes, they smelled of fennel (aniseed) so I had bought the right thing.

Late afternoon saw me preparing the onion paste and preparing some little plates with the required spices and ingredients (regular readers will know that I prepare as much as I can before starting to cook).

I started cooking not long before the diners arrived and the cooking process was straightforward and pretty uneventful.

The diners arrived just before I started the rice and settled in the lounge with a beer whilst I wandered around the kitchen.

Almost on schedule (just a few minutes late) I served up the Chettanid Lamb Curry on basmati rice. Despite the last 5 minutes of cooking to reduce the liquid a bit, there was lots of sauce to go with the curry.

And how was the lamb curry? It was good. The lamb was tender and well cooked. This is a simple curry and, even though it tasted good, there was something missing. I managed to find one of the cardamom pods which released the lovely taste of cardamom into my mouth. The heat level of the curry was “Medium Hot”, which left a nice afterburn in my mouth, and it received an average taste score of 7.5 out of 10.

The Internet said that Chettinad was more famous for its chicken curries so I’ll have to keep my eyes open for a Chettinad chicken recipe arriving on the Curry Focus website.

Hi, Ray here again.

It’s chicken curry time again. There always seem to be more chicken curry recipes around than any other type and the great range of curry recipes on the Curry Focus website is no exception to this. I did my weekly scan of curry recipes on Saturday morning and decided to try out the Dry Chicken Curry recipe that was published on the website only last month. Only 6 cooking instructions and one of these is to serve the curry so it looked like an easy curry to make.

I picked up the chicken thighs whilst out shopping. There seemed to be a shortage of good chicken thighs around for some reason but I got some nice ones at the 3rd attempt. Maybe the shortage was only where I lived because people sensed that I was going to be using chicken thigh meat this weekend and wanted to have their supply ready so they could follow my cooking lead. Dream on, Ray.

Anyways, the ingredient preparation time was pretty minimal with just the onion, ginger, garlic and tomatoes to get ready along with the chicken itself.

And this recipe was indeed an easy chicken curry recipe to follow.

I started cooking just after the dinner tasting panel arrived (I’m getting fed up calling them guests or diners so decided to give them a new title).

The curry was ready in a little over 35 minutes – pretty fast – and I served up the Dry Chicken Curry on basmati rice (as usual).

The curry was certainly dry, but not overly dry. I was a bit sceptical when I started to cook the curry about no extra liquid being needed and had some hot water ready to add in case the curry was too dry. But all was well – the tomatoes had a bit of liquid and, of course, the chicken released water as well. I did have to stir the curry a lot when it was cooking to make sure that it didn’t stick to the frying pan.

The chicken was well cooked and tasted great (I find that thigh meat is always tastier than breast meat), receiving comments such as “tasty”, “great” and “yummy”. I personally felt that the curry lacked something (I don’t know what – maybe I should have had a side dish to go with the curry) but had to agree that it was yummy. The spice/heat level was “Medium” and the curry received a taste score of 7.5 out of 10.

This is a great curry to make if you’re not really a great cook because it is so easy to make. Why not give it a try for yourself?

Hi, Ray here again.

After a few weeks of vegetarian curries, I thought that it was time to try one a meat curry again. I scanned the great range of Curry Focus curry recipes and I spotted the Dry Beef Curry recipe amongst the beef curry recipes. I love one of the beef madras curry recipes that I tried and reviewed way back in 2009, and have made several times since. So the dry beef curry seemed to be a recipe worth trying out.

Shopping was a breeze for this curry as I already had most ingredients. So I picked up the beef, fresh coriander (cilantro) and some beef stock while I was doing my usual Saturday shop.

Late on Sunday afternoon I roasted the spice seeds. Whilst the seeds were cooling, I prepared the rest of the ingredients. Then I made the spice powder and then the onion paste. All this was a bit more fiddly than using readymade ingredients but it really wasn’t too much of a strain.

I browned the beef pieces and pretty soon afterwards the real cooking was underway. Like most beef curries, there was a long cooking time for the beef (90 minutes) so most of the cooking time I was sitting in the lounge or doing other things.

The dinner guests arrived as the rice was cooking and soon I was adding the final yoghurt, salt and coriander (cilantro) ingredients.

And then I was serving up the Dry Beef Curry on basmati rice to the waiting diners.

This was not really what I would call a dry curry as there was plenty of sauce/gravy. Maybe the heat should have been higher during the final 30 minutes of cooking so that the liquid was reduced even more. The yoghurt added a bit of body and taste to the sauce. The beef was well cooked and the curry had a great taste. There was lots of food to eat and it wasn’t surprising that this curry serves up to 6 people. The beef curry received an excellent taste score of 8.5 out of 10 with a spice/heat rating of “Hot”.

If you like a hot beef curry then this is a curry recipe that you need to try out for yourself.

Hi, Ray here again.

I enjoyed last weekend’s vegetarian curry so Saturday morning saw me scanning the vegetarian curry recipes to see what I could find for this weekend. I soon spotted the Potato and Tomato Curry recipe which looked ridiculously easy to make.

As usual, I had most of the ingredients and all I had to do was pick up some nice tomatoes whilst I was out shopping.

And this is such an easy recipe that all I did before the dinner guests arrived was prepare the ingredients – so I peeled and cut up the potatoes, chopped up the tomatoes, peeled and grated the ginger, measured out the spice onto small plates and got the rice soaking in a bowl of water.

I started cooking as soon as the other diners arrived and pretty quickly everything was simmering away in my trusty cast iron frying pan. I got the rice ready to microwave and set it cooking when there was only 15 minutes of cooking time left.

Pretty soon everything was ready and I served up the Potato and Tomato curry on basmati rice.

And this was a very popular meal. The potatoes were well cooked (which was a relief – I’m always nervous of ending up with half cooked potato when following curry recipes). This was a very tasty curry with a background taste of liquorice from the fennel seeds. The curry was pretty dry and left a lovely aftertaste in the mouth. The curry received a taste score of 9 out of 10 with a spice/heat rating of “Medium”.

This is a delightful, healthy, curry that is really easy to make.