Be Excellent To Each Other

OK, let's put our cooking hats on. You will need:

(serves 4)

1 tsp cumin seeds
1tsp corriander seeds
2tbsp ghee (or just use butter)
1 onion which you slice finely
8 medium or small chicken pieces (I use chicken breast and dice it)
0.5 tsp salt
350ml natural yoghurt
120ml double cream
1tbsp ground almonds
0.25 tsp Garam masala
3 cloves
seeds from 3 green cardamon pods
1 dried bay leaf
60g sultanas
fresh coriander to garnish.

Dead easy this, use half the ghee and fry the onions in it until it is soft and sweet. Whilst you are doing this, using a pestle and mortar, grind the cumin and coriander seeds together. Using another pan, heat the rest of the ghee and chuck in the chicken and brown it. Add this to the onions. Add the ground cumin, ground coriander, salt, yoghurt, cream, almonds, garam masala and stir it a bit. Bring it all to simmer and then throw in the cloves, cardamom, bay leaf and sultanas. Simmer it for 40ish minutes and then serve with rice maybe and garnish with coriander.

YEAH!

Thats looks good, I think I'll give it a try later this week.
Do you use a 'strong' garam masala, ie one with lots of cinnamon?

I came across a really good chicken tikka recipe recently.

If I make a curry I blend all of my ingrediants - dry and liquid (after having cracked all my spices, etc), and then I stick it in a casserole dish with the chicken still raw, and add half a cup of water, stirring it all together. Cover the casserole dish and cook at 200°c for one hour.

Never a more tender piece of chicken will you taste, and every bit will be infused with spicy goodness.

Also, less washing up.

No Chilli's?

Sounds great, I'll give them all a go.

With fresh chilis added, natch.

A rice suggestion to go with that.

Put 1 pound of Basmati rice into a sieve and put the sieve in a full bowl of water to soak. Every 10 min or so, lift the rice out and change the water over; do this 3-4 times while you are prepping the curry.

Dice a smallish onion very fine. Fry in a dollop of butter in the bottom of a big saucepan. Fry it for a long time on a low heat, until it's very tender and translucent. Boil the kettle and make up a pint of chicken stock (i.e. three Oxo cubes). Take the now soaked rice out of the water and leave it to drain for a minute or so.

Now, I forget the proper spice mix for this, and in any event I stopped mixing my own spices and I now just use Schwartz Pilau Rice seasoning; I add a very generous amount, perhaps two tablespoon or so. Stir the onions into the flavouring very briefly then throw the rice in and stir that around briefly to mix the spice, rice, and onion. Add the chicken stock, which should still be nearly boiling. It should look like there can't be enough water for the rice.

Put a lid on the saucepan. It needs to be a very tight fit, and with most pans it is best if you wrap a teatowel around the lid then welly it down onto the pan. Turn the heat under the pan down to a very low setting and leave for 10 minutes, then turn the heat off altogether and leave for at least another 5 minutes or until you are ready to serve. Just before serving, take the lid off the pan and stir through it with a fork to fluff the grains up.

You may need a couple of goes to get your eye in with the timing, my first few batches were either over or under done, but it is worth persisting with. What you should find is that most of the rice gently steams, rather than boils, and it is extremely flavourful from the cominbation of the spices and stock. Plus there are very few cooking smells better than onions frying in butter!

I have an excellent (and quite complex) chicken tikka massala recipe from a Madhur Jeffries cookbook at home I might add to this thread. I've cooked it for a few dinner parties and it usually goes down well.

No, no chillis. Curries don't have to have chillis. Is smooth blend of flavor.

Dude, don't get me wrong I don't like my curries too hot, I like the flavour of Chilli.

Not at all, my friend. I don't think chilli will add to flavor of this one, but YMMV, I guess.

I have another receipe with chillis but is still not perfect yet.

Feeling ill today so brain does not work.

Out of courtesy I will try your recipe without. For the first time.

Will the new mythical site have a recipe section?
If so, this should go in it, innit.

I made this on Saturday night, and me and Mrs Chris were well fucking impressed. Mrs Chris is big fan of curries, but prefers flavoursome to hot, so this went down very well.

22 bananas out of 15.

Did you get any?

Bananas? Yeah. We had some left over after Junior's pudding.

Banana and custard = only way I ever eat bananannanans.

No, no, the curry. Did you manage to taste it yourself, or was Mrs. Chris so enamoured (as you mentioned), that she ate it all?

I care not for talk of bananas and custard. Oo. Anyone know a good banana curry recipe?

Yes, I got some curry. It were yummy. In my tummy.

Kissyfur got a full tum-tum?

Yes, indeed. Last night, excellent curry. Tonight, plenty cassoulet. Ooooooh yes, ducky ducky.

http://www.thefoodpornographer.com/


note: Somtimes (like this last month) it's really shit and he eats rubbish food. Other times, it makes my mouth water.

Good oh.

If you have any other similar recipes, please do feel free to share.

Mrs A made a Dopiaza the other night. I'll dig that one out when I return home.

Yay!

I cooked a curry once, as a schoolboy, during an 'activities week'. In 1996 (how time flies, sob).

Haven't had a curry in a while, so I feel like a takeaway... Need advice though, what is the best way to avoid getting an ill stomach after, say, a Vindaloo or other hot curry?

So I was planning to give MailCurry a try...and forgot to print out the recipe.
Ended up creating this instead, 'twas nice!



Oh yeah and some vegetable oil to cook the onion etc in!

You "just created" that? Looks excellent. Apart from the chicken bit obv.

Well with Mali's curry vaguely in my head, but yeah I duns thunked it up

Order from a decent curry house and don't order a vindaloo, why not try a Rogan Josh, Jhalfrezi or Madras? Lime cordial is your friend if the curry is too hot.

Yeah, Jhalfrezi is always nice. If you want to avoid a dodgy stomach, just go for the vegetable rather than the mystery meat option.

Pathias are my favourite, it's quite hot (usually madras sort of hot, so not as hot as a jalfrezi, but obviously it varies from curryhouse to curryhouse) and it's kind of sour and tasty. Extremely nice curry.

Jalfrezi's are the minefield of the curry menu, very nice until you bite into one of the whole chilli's, then kaboom!

Pathias are pretty much my limit as far as a hot curry that isn't too hot, for me. I usually have a Rogan Josh, or a Dansak. My family almost all go for a Saagwalla.

Lassi. Lassi is the curry defeater.

Milk. The fats in it dissolve the oils in chillis that stick to the inside of your mouth.

Well indeed - lassi is made with yoghurt, for the same effect.

Oops. Now I appear to be quite the fool, an April fool, if you will. I think I used to know this but clearly had forgotten it by posting time.

That gag would work better if it didn't print the file name right there.

Sadly I got it before seeing that.

@ Craster - yeah lassi is ace, but very thick I find.

Im making Mali Curry today!

Does anyone have any awesome curry recipes for someone who is allergic to milk products? I'd rather not substitute as it won't be the same.

No hotter than a madras, though.

I will write one up later when I get home.

Surely any tomato-based sauces will be OK? Pathia, dhansak, dupiaza, rogan josh, etc? I don't think there are any cream or yogurt in those, and if there is, I don't think it would impair it much to leave it out.

Mmm, and they're all really tasty, too. I imagine buying some Patak's curry paste would be the best way to start making your own properly taste dairy-free curry (as I rate the stuff lots).

Sorry if this is a dim question, Myoptika, but can you have coconut milk. I know it isn't a dairy product, but it would make a perfect 'substitute' in mnay recipes without actually being a substitute, rather an authentic ingredient.

Well yes, I could do my own (and have). I was just looking for some interesting BETEO recipes, not using this place as a Google-replacement...

Mimi: yes, I can have coconut milk, as technically it isn't milk at all, but coconut juice.

Well, that's what I thought, but I wasn't sure if it had any dairy additives. I'd just use coconut milk where a recipe calls for milk or cream, but just lower the amount so it is not too rich.

Yes, I usually do this, but there was all sorts of cream and yoghurt in Mali's recipe, so it would've turned out completely different. If it's just a small amount of milk I'll use soya/rice/coconut or whatever.

My random hideous food tips:

chopped dried apricots are an awesome and under-used ingredient for adding flavour and juiciness. Work well in curries, but work particularly well with bolognese, or at least in the beef bolognese that I make.

Also - a small tin of cocktail fruit works excellently in stir fries (and also with mince things like bolognese again). A small pot of yoghurt similarly can be used as a base for a curry or stir fry with often surprisingly excellent results (no use to you of cours, Myo).

Marmite + tuna works. I don't know why, but it really does. (Er, on toast, for example. Not mixed together like tuna + mayo! )

If you have gas hobs, use them (carefully, with a skewer) to roast red peppers, for cheap gorgeousness.

Hmm, interesting. I like fruit in curries (sultanas being the classic example), hadn't considered it in bolognese. Mind you, I hardly ever make bolognese because halfway through I decide it's boring, start adding spices, and suddenly I have chilli con carne.

Speaking of which, chilli con carne should have both sugar and chocolate in it. Trufax.

I can't see the cocktail fruit thing working but I may try it one day to see. Stranger things have happend. The yogurt-in-curry-sauce thing is excellent of course, I base massalla sauces of yogurt to make them somewhat less rich and a bit sharper tasting than the heavy cream-based ones you get from restuarants.

That's very odd. A guy I was in Uni with once used to do this all the time, just mix together anything he had. I saw him once eating tomato soup, baked beans, and shredded wheat. The only thing he said he'd made and not finished was a sandwich of Philadelphia soft cheese, ham, and chocolate spread.

I keep meaning to do this. Last night I oven-roasted a coarsely chopped red pepper and an onion (white but red would be better) with some garlic-infused olive oil and a generous amount of pepper, oregano, basil, onion salt, garlic powder, and (secret ingredient) cumin. I got the cumin idea from... somewhere, and I was slighly dubious but it was really good. Roasted for about half an hour at 180degC then another 20min or so at 220degC, so it had some nice black edges on the peppers and the smaller bits of onion had gone crunchy.