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2012 Cooking Club Week 2b: Indian Resturant curries
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@Curry Addict
I've never been a fan of indian style curry, I've had it a few times and was times I was let down badly with fatty flavourless sauce. So my homemade curry has always been thai curry (chinese "curry" when im back in ireland for the novelty). But I sampled premium curry blends at a food show and decide to give them another chance, so I came here.
I picked up a Sambal Curry Marsala. Tasted great. I'm looking for something simple for my first bash at Indian style curry, working up to more complex ones later.
The recommended recipe was to fry onions and garlic & ginger paste in oil/ghee, add marsala and fry until fragrant, add lamb and seal well, then coconut cream, salt and lemon grass.
Any comments on the recipe? I'm thinking of cutting the lemongrass out.
it sounds like an Indonesian curry to me. Sambal is an Indonesian ingredient, its mostly chilli and salt and comes prepared different ways like fried and with some other elements. its usually used as a condiment like salt and pepper. the coconut cream and lemon grass also would fit with indonesian cooking.
indonesian cooking is really great so its well worth checking out. I would definitely use the lemongrass in the recipe as its likely fresh citrus flavor will work wonderfully with the rest of the ingredients.
Im a big believer in making a recipe as its written the first time and try to understand the flavors that the writer is using and why. the recipe as you describe it sounds good to me. hope it works out nice
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Curry Addict wrote: »it sounds like an Indonesian curry to me. Sambal is an Indonesian ingredient, its mostly chilli and salt and comes prepared different ways like fried and with some other elements. its usually used as a condiment like salt and pepper. the coconut cream and lemon grass also would fit with indonesian cooking.
indonesian cooking is really great so its well worth checking out. I would definitely use the lemongrass in the recipe as its likely fresh citrus flavor will work wonderfully with the rest of the ingredients.
Im a big believer in making a recipe as its written the first time and try to understand the flavors that the writer is using and why. the recipe as you describe it sounds good to me. hope it works out nice
It was actually Sumatra, not Sambal, so Indonesian is correct
I left out the lemongrass as I couldnt get it fresh and added fresh lime juice.
Really happy with it. The only veg in there was onions this time but I'll be adding more next time, just not sure what exactly.Nah, your oven must be hotter than mine. It'd be raw after 15 minutes.
It says 230C but I don't actually know if it's accurate.
That's what I was getting at. 25-30 on highest setting would leave me with a very dry piece of meat. I'd normal have a breast in for a shorter time or a lower heat.0 -
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A long time ago I promised an update on these recipes. I have made a few changes to address the main problems with the recipes as follows.
1. I always felt that the curries were slightly too heavy.
2. Although the oil content is standard enough for curries, I have now reduced the oil level to a much healthier level.
3. I have improved the base and the cooking method.
I have been using the improvements detailed below for the last 6 months and can honestly say that
the end result is significantly better than the original recipes.
A) The tomato puree should be diluted with water in the ration of 1:3. What I usually do is put 1 tbs of tomato puree in a little bowl and add 3 tbs of water and stir it in with a spoon.
So in the recipes where it calls for 1tbs of tomato puree. I add 1 tbs of this diluted mix.
Improved base and cooking method. The critical flavour in the base is the sugars released by the onions. This is “the” magic flavour in curry. To achieve this flavour, the onion skins are removed and the onions go in whole, into the pot. The onions are then slow cooked on minimum heat for 2.5 hours. They slowly lose their moisture and release their natural sugars.
New base recipe
16 medium onions (skin and put into the pot whole)
2 carrots (roughly chopped)
1inch piece of ginger sliced
1tbs ginger and garlic paste
½ a bunch of coriander
½ a green bell pepper
150ml water
200ml vegetable oil
Place all ingredients above in a 7 litre pot. Put the pot on the lowest flame on a gas cooker and cook for 2.5hours with the lid on. Alternatively use a pressure cooker and cook for 40mins from when it hits pressure. Note, the pressure cooker gives the best result but you will need to now transfer he ingredients into a 7 litre pot.
Add the following to the pot….
3 tbs of curry masala
1inch piece of ginger sliced
1tbs of sugar (preferably palm sugar)
1tbs salt
1tbs ginger and garlic paste
1 green chilli
½ a tin of plum tomatoes
Cook for 30mins on a medium heat. Add 3.5 litres of water and blend the contents of the pot until its completely smooth with a hand blender. It should have the consistency of a thin soup. Now heat the pot with lid on, on a very low heat. Its ready when the oil separates and rises to the top.
This should yield 7 litres of curry base which is enough to make 23 curries. So that’s approx. 9ml of oil per curry. With this new base I can get away with using 2.5tbs of vegetable oil instead of a chef spoon when cooking the individual curries.
I find this new base makes the end resulting curry much lighter than the original and very moreish, a definite improvement. Unfortunately it does lose some flavour to freezing. I find after freezing the curries are a little too light sometimes. I’m going to try adding a little more base when cooking curries to counteract that.
So if you want to try these improvements they are designed to work with all the curry recipes posted here. Enjoy!0 -
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Cool.
With the onions, what do you gain by cooking them whole, as opposed to slicing them and caramelising them slowly, for example?
slicing and carmelizing results in a "roasty hearty sweetness" its quite a heavy sweetness, delicious in its own right.
slow long cooking whole onion results in an acidic light sweetness. The sugars released have a distinct acidic element. This acidity is so prominent you will start to smell it after 2 hours cooking. Its a vinegary smell and unmistakable.
you will know it when you smell it 0 -
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hi fitzcoff,
i like the spicier curries myself so i never bothered to learn how to make a dopiaza. I imagine it starts with 1/2 an onion finely chopped then same as the madras but with no lemon juice and 0.25 tsp of chili powder instead of 1tsp and maybe 1tbs of yogurt.
the makhani is in post 10 of this tread, i call it tikka masala there as some restaurants use this recipe instead of the illumonus orange one 0 -
Curry Addict wrote: »hi fitzcoff,
i like the spicier curries myself so i never bothered to learn how to make a dopiaza. I imagine it starts with 1/2 an onion finely chopped then same as the madras but with no lemon juice and 0.25 tsp of chili powder instead of 1tsp and maybe 1tbs of yogurt.
the makhani is in post 10 of this tread, i call it tikka masala there as some restaurants use this recipe instead of the illumonus orange one
Brilliant thanks for that, yea the indian near me has an illumonus one.
I'll give them a try, thanks for your help.
Quick question - in the tikka masala recipe is the garlic paste and the ginger paste a bought one or can I just blitz garlic /ginger to make a paste?0 -
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Curry Addict wrote: »i call it tikka masala there as some restaurants use this recipe instead of the illumonus orange one
Is it wrong to like the illuminous orange ones?
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