I hardly dare ask after the gentle ribbing over the bread thread (and I'm still hoping this weekend to try some of the suggestions if I get a chance), but I would be genuinely interested in this one, and I'm sure some here will pipe up.
So - I've never made a curry other than using Patak's jar stuff, which is nice enough but probably not exactly genuine. I've a faint feeling it's one of those very long and complicated things, but does anyone make curry "from scratch", and if so, how far down the "scratch" do you go? Buying fresh spices and grinding them? Which ones? How?
And so on.
Sorry to the non-cookery people, but I'm sure someone will be explaining why a winter tyre isn't needed unless you're taking the Upton Dupton bypass by the Little Chef on the B99435 soon enough.
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I take the route to the phone and call the excellent Indian takeaway.........Tsk!
Pat
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>> but does anyone make curry "from scratch", and if so, how far down the "scratch" do you go? Buying fresh spices and grinding them? Which ones? How?
We do sometimes. Madhur Jaffrey's book is pretty good, and of course one can vary quantities and content to taste (more hot pepper for example).
Whole cumin and coriander seeds are essential, but one can buy ground cumin and coriander - also necessary - which keep for some time. It's hard to get decent stuff down here in the sticks though, and asafoetida seems unobtainable outside London. We're out of that since the other day. We had a big packet of dried very hot red small chillis which were just the ticket, but they're nearly gone now. The Smoke is calling once again.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Thu 8 Jan 15 at 16:52
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"We had a big packet of dried very hot red small chillis which were just the ticket, but they're nearly gone now."
Grow some! You need to wait until the summer of course but chillies are amazingly easy to grow on a sunny patio. One small plant will give you hundreds. Apache is a good variety - red small and hot.
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>> Grow some!
There's a small plant in a pot in the hall here. But they're better when thoroughly dried.
For anyone within reach, there's a shop called, strangely enough, The Spice Shop, a few yards west from Portobello Road down one of the Crescents (Elgin or Blenheim). You can get everything you could possibly need there. I hope it still exists. You never know these days.
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We still have some super hot chillies (dried) left from our last purchase from Pepe The Onion Man, in Spain!
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You can get a good assortment of fresh ones in the UK, Scotch Bonnet one being the hottest generally available. Put one in a curry or chilli-con-carne and it would be too hot for most here.
See: topfoodfacts.com/top-5-hottest-peppers-in-the-world/
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>> Scotch Bonnet one being the hottest generally available. Put one in a curry or chilli-con-carne and it would be too hot for most here.
I like hot food, even very hot. First time I saw Scotch bonnet was on a stall in Golborne Road round the corner from our old gaff in the Grove. I looked at them doubtfully and asked the stallholder, a black lady, if they were hot. 'They're hot all right', she replied in a suspiciously neutral voice.
They sure were. After chopping one up, my fairly resistant fingers stung for hours. It wasn't easy to wash off either.
Herself has discouraged me from ever buying them again having more refined tastes than mine.
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If you mean an Indian curry, then I've done a few from scratch using spices etc. One of the ones I used was fenugreek. Tried to grind it (the supply I had had been brought back from Sri Lanka) but it was too hard. Just used it as is. The curry I made was a paneer tikka masala with the paneer marinated before adding to the actual curry.
There will be plenty of ready ground spices in your supermarket to get the right sort.
If you mean curry in general, I also have a Burmese fish curry that I do. That's mostly blended onion, chillies, chilli flakes, tomatoes (fresh), coriander (fresh) and fish sauce.
We also do what you do though and use a few different Patak's jars of paste.
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>> So - I've never made a curry other than using Patak's jar stuff, which is
>> nice enough but probably not exactly genuine. I've a faint feeling it's one of those
>> very long and complicated things, but does anyone make curry "from scratch", and if so,
>> how far down the "scratch" do you go? Buying fresh spices and grinding them? Which
>> ones? How?
I don't buy fresh spices, I buy them ready ground in Jars (tho I do have a cooks pestle and mortar - can't say I have really used it.
If you use your spices often enough, then they don't get a chance to go stale, and toasting them first brings them alive
I have, to hand in the cupboard
ground cloves
ground cumin
smoked paprika
garam masala
Safron
Turmeric
Tins of coconut cream.
In the fridge i have tubes of ginger paste, coriander paste, plenty of onions and garlic, chiles, yoghurt.
Everything can and will get curried if we fancy it.
Last edited by: Zero on Thu 8 Jan 15 at 17:07
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>> Everything can and will get curried if we fancy it.
That must make that dog of yours nervous.
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>>
>> >> Everything can and will get curried if we fancy it.
>>
>> That must make that dog of yours nervous.
Not got into Korean.
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I went to a Korean barbecue in New York last year. Don't ask me why, it just sort of happened. I'm not an expert drinker but I got involved with some Californian Mexican designers and it all went dreadfully downhill after the jaegerbombs started.
Had to go pretty much straight to Kennedy airport without the benefit of using my hotel for its intended purpose between the end of the evening and having to leave for an early flight.
All a bit much given my advancing years.
Anyway, I seem to think there was fried cabbage involved, a stripper at one point , a Korean Abba tribute band, an awful lot of beer and quite a lot of pork.
Can't be sure about any of it sadly. All a bit of a blur.
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Madhur Jaffrey's book is excellent, and I recommend it heartily.
Round here the various spices are easily available.
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Two votes for the book means I'll hunt down a copy. Thanks to you both. Be interested to see your recipe for fish curry, Rob, if there is one? And Z, good list. I didn't even know one of those WAS a spice.
I might be able to tell you in detail about the way a mass spectrometer works, or the voting system in Ancient Greece, or something diverting about the French Revolution, but blow me I'm Mr Bean when it comes to anything practical.
Right, my cold of the last two weeks is turning into something deeply unpleasant now so slinking off to lie in a corner until it's over. Is lots of green coughing a bad thing?
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>> Be interested to see your recipe for fish curry, Rob, if there is one?
Scanned it from a book or something once. And had it for years and years. And never cooked it. Then had a nice Goan fish curry from Waitrose and a while later rediscovered the recipe. So I can send a PDF or JPEG of it. Fairly straightforward. We like it.
Forgot it gets served with a slice of lemon too.
Happy to share it. Maybe I'll try OCR.
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I have cooked this one
www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1121651/goan-fish-curry
Its very simple, for two of you cut every thing in half, ignore the low fat part, full fat coconut milk.
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Worth making a trip to your nearest Asian grocer. Their stores are way cheaper for spices and various other decent products. Of pre-mixed curry powder, Bolsts is widely available and good. See here:
www.theasiancookshop.co.uk/bolsts-hot-curry-powder-tin-1820-p.asp
Roughly a level desertspoon per person. Fry onions till browning, then add the curry powder. Continue frying for a minute then add tinned tomato and stir up. Gets you started and with a few twists or added other spices can be turned into quite a lot of basic curries.
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>> Worth making a trip to your nearest Asian grocer.
Absolutely. Rusholme in Manchester is somewhere where you can probably get some things you won't find in a supermarket.
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Thinking about it, the recipe was in a book. I'm happy to share via email but not post the entire thing on here. That seems wrong. Trouble is my email address is hidden. And seems the mods shouldn't be involved. And your email address is too.
Suppose I could create a throwaway address. I just don't want to post this online for eternity.
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Maybe you can. Never tried. Lots of Indian sweet shops too. And of course lots of curry houses.
I'm sure all of us on here could acquire an AK47 or a Glock if we so wished. But we wouldn't.
A friend at university was from Pennsylvania and had an AK47 at home. And other guns. The AK47 had been made safer by disabling full auto. He knew how to reenable that. It also had a reinforced barrel so it could sustain high burst of gun fire.
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Good tip for Indian-style curries is to pre-cook the meat, gently until it's thoroughly tender. It'll keep in the fridge like this for days. Then, when you've made your sauce, brown it all over in a really hot pan (or, better still, over a charcoal grill) before combining the two.
Even 'cook in' curry sauces can be made enjoyable this way. The back-of-the-jar instructions to cook the meat in the sauce invariably produce something dry and bouncy.
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>> Good tip for Indian-style curries is to pre-cook the meat, gently until it's thoroughly tender.
>> It'll keep in the fridge like this for days. Then, when you've made your sauce,
>> brown it all over in a really hot pan (or, better still, over a charcoal
>> grill) before combining the two.
The best one I did was to marinade the chicken breasts in yoghurt and spices for 1/2 a day, then brown it on the barbi, then cut it up and finish it off in the pre made curry sauce.
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My attempt at Paneer Tikka Massala had the Paneer marinated and then cooked before adding to the curry sauce.
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>> Worth making a trip to your nearest Asian grocer.
Would that we had one. Northampton's traditional industry seemed not to need to recruit abroad and has little in way of Asian community. Leicester's only just up the road though.
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Worth making a trip to your nearest Asian grocer.
I'm lucky. I worked very near Shepherds Bush and it has lots of them in the market, and one could get decent fruit and veg there too - fresh chillies a lot cheaper than the supermarkets, more types and better quality too.
Now I'm retired I don't have that within walking distance, but the smaller Asian quarter in the local town is only 2 miles away, so hardly a problem. The dry spices keep for ages, and chillies freeze well.
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To go with your curry make some naan like these:
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2014/oct/02/how-to-make-perfect-naan-bread-recipe
They come up a treat - properly fluffy and moist inside. I always read Ms Cloake's 'perfect' column on a Thursday but this is one of her best efforts.
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You may, or may not, have a wry chuckle at this, but we have bought spices from an Asian owned grocery, catering to their own community, in Sheffield which goes by the name of "The Paki Shop" !
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>> spices from an Asian owned grocery, catering to their own community, in Sheffield which goes
>> by the name of "The Paki Shop" !
And if they wish to own that name in an ironic or any other sense they're entitled to do so.
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>> >> spices from an Asian owned grocery, catering to their own community, in Sheffield which
>> goes
>> >> by the name of "The Paki Shop" !
>>
>> And if they wish to own that name in an ironic or any other sense
>> they're entitled to do so.
>>
But I can't call them Pakis - in an ironic sense of course?
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But I can't call them Pakis...
Not sure why you'd want to but you're welcome to try; just be very sure of your audience before you do. There's a certain amount of ethnicity-based joshing with my British-Asian cricket team mates - which flows both ways - but I'm pretty sure that word has never come up and never will.
With people you don't even know, why would you expect them to find a term of abuse funny, or even ironic?
Do let us know how you get on.
Last edited by: WillDeBeest on Fri 9 Jan 15 at 14:38
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>> But I can't call them Pakis...
>>
>> Not sure why you'd want to but you're welcome to try; ....................
>> Do let us know how you get on.
I have no wish to do so and no intention of doing so.
It was a response to the previous post referring to "Paki shop". This I find offensive. I don't understand why anybody would want to use this word - ironically, or otherwise.
I recall some time ago, there was discussion on here regarding black men calling each other 'n------'.
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Madhur Jaffrey's recipes are VERY heavy on salt - I suggest halving her quantities initially.
I've used her original book for years and years.
I purée the onion, fresh ginger and garlic, before frying it until soft. I then add the spices and fry gently for as long as it takes, as she puts it, for the oil to show again and then add the meat - usually chicken, to brown in the spices.
For lamb, I always at least seal/brown it well before removing from the pan, setting aside and then proceeding as above with the purée, afterwards adding to the cooked spice mixture.
I often add a bit of soft brown sugar or golden syrup to the final mix for a touch of sweetness.
A knob of unsalted butter stirred in just before serving adds lushness!
As far as cook-in sauces are concerned, I can state unreservedly that ALDI's own, with dry spices in the cap, are far superior to Patak's or any other make which I have tried - irrespective of price, I may add!
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This is the curry book you want tinyurl.com/nx7fajs (links to Amazon) her Bible.
Includes a fascinating description of the dissemination of the curry diaspora around the world. Another cookery book to read like a novel.
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More cookery - Pat
