Tag Archives: curry

October 24, 2012

Repost: Accidental Hallowe’en Curry

Another repost today – I feel like I’m run off my feet just lately, trying to keep up with things! I’ve got a couple of good posts brewing, but for now let’s remember the time I made bright green food by accident…

I didn’t mean to make Hallowe’en themed food last night, but given that I’ve never seen such a vibrant shade of green in a curry I’m forced to admit that there was an air of the ghoulish about my creation. It was bright green. Brighter even, I think, than a fresh pea puree. Almost luminescent; you could have used it for a landing light. Put a sealed tupperware of it in the ocean and you’d have a multitude of confused anglerfish before you could say ‘sorry, it’s only a curry’. The photo doesn’t capture the green-ness, but it’s the best one I managed to get. I think you’ll agree, the contrast of the brown chestnut mushrooms makes it look even worse. It did change colour with the additions of further ingredients, but ultimately it really was a most peculiar colour for foodstuff to be.

It is a Thai-inspired curry, by which I mean it contains some ingredients that you’d find in a Thai curry and some that you probably wouldn’t. Let’s see if I can remember what went in it… The first thing I did was make a curry paste, the ingredients for which are immortalised in this next photo. I added extra spices as I cooked; the list below reflects the final amounts, plus some further liquid additions at the end – this made more of a sauce than a paste.

one handful of basil leaves
one handful of coriander leaves
three cloves of garlic
one green chili, de-seeded
one red chili, seeds left in
half an onion
one peeled lump of ginger, about an inch across
1tsp lemongrass powder
1tbsp turmeric
1 tsp light soy
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp lime juice
1 1/2 tsp apple vinegar
100g creamed coconut (leaving this out would probably make the consistency more paste than sauce, next time I’d just add all the coconut cream at once, after cooking the paste

I put all these ingredients in the blender and processed until they were a smooth paste. I then cooked up 450g of turkey mince in a wok, using about a teaspoon of groundnut oil to get it started. I seasoned the meat with 1/2 tsp fish sauce, 1/2 tsp sugar and 1/2 tsp light soy. When the turkey was almost cooked through, with only a little pink left showing, I added half a pack of chestnut mushrooms, and cooked until the meat was all browned and the mushrooms softened. I then added the paste/sauce from the blender cup, and cooked for two minutes. Then I added the rest of the 25og packet of coconut cream, stirred through and simmered for ten minutes. I tasted the curry then, which was still pretty green and watery, and added a teaspoon of dark soy, partly for colour and partly for flavour. It’s really about balancing the flavours, once the big bold paste has gone in. I had my basic tools of soy, sugar, vinegar and chili flakes to hand to tweak the final result. I didn’t use any chili flakes, although I did serve the curry to my dinner guest with fresh chili rings on top, and a bowl of chili flakes on the table, because it was the Tastebudless Wonder that I’m sure I’ve mentioned before.

It looked less Hallowe’eny once it was done. Here is an attempt to show the lovely rice, it doesn’t show up the colour that well, or the lovely variation in colour where the rice that was nearest the teabag had been mixed in with the white rice that was further away. Once I was happier with the balance of flavours in the curry, I left it simmering, uncovered, to reduce until the sauce was clinging to the ground meat, rather than the meat swimming in the sauce. This took about twenty minutes, after which time I covered and left on an extremely low heat to keep warm. In the meantime I made rice in the ever-handy microwave rice cooker. I seasoned the rice with light soy and a spiced chai teabag, and was really pleased with the colour and flavour of the end result. Those teabags are great for cooking and baking, so much so that I rarely use them for making tea. Once the rice was ready, I added the final ingredients to the curry – a tablespoon of sliced spring onions, about a quarter cup of shredded basil leaves and half each of a red and green bell pepper, thinly sliced. I stirred those through and left to cook ever so slightly while I plated up the rice. I topped the rice with the curry and added some basil leaves, some coriander leaves and fresh, sliced chili (I left this off my own plate, though in the end the curry wasn’t too spicy at all, it just had a nice level of slow heat). Then we ate it with poppadoms, for extra crunch. I’ll take any excuse to eat crisps with my dinner, really.

2 comments | tags: curry, curry paste, green food, thai food | posted in Gluten free, Original recipes, Thai food

April 9, 2012

Rhubarb and Coconut Pork Satay

By Rock Salt

This is an ‘interesting’ one, where by ‘interesting’ I mean ‘odd’, and I’ll be the first to admit it. I can’t claim that it’s my own invention though, it’s heavily based on a Jamie Oliver recipe, and if it’s good enough for Jamie it’s surely good enough for me. I first saw this recipe on the TV years ago, and at the time I copied it down with the full intention of using it – the only time I’ve ever done so, to this day. I thought the recipe was so creative and imagined that the flavours would be really vibrant and fresh, I couldn’t wait to try it. And then, to put it simply, I didn’t. I still have that scribbled down recipe in a notebook, but I never got around to using it – until now. When I finally did use it, I made a few changes of my own and turned what was Hot and Sour Rhubarb and Crispy Pork with Noodles into a Rhubarb and Coconut Pork Satay, also with noodles. I will say that Jamie’s looks approximately one heck of a lot nicer than mine, but mine was a lovely curry, full of flavour and topped with spring onion, coriander, cress and slices of boiled egg. Egg and rhubarb. Who knew?

I started with the basic recipe a la Oliver – you can get it through the link above. It involves blending rhubarb, chili, honey, soy, garlic, ginger and mixed spice (which I substituted for five spice) until smooth. To this I added two tablespoons of quality peanut butter, and mixed again.

Er... it does go an 'interesting' colour...

I set this aside for the time being, and cooked some chopped onion, halved button mushrooms and diced pork steaks until the veg was soft and the meat browned. I poured the sauce over the top, stirred through then added a small can of coconut milk, about 200ml. I was a little concerned that I was adding too many flavours, but I was sure I could taste it in my brain, and my brain tongue is usually right. What I will say is that it no longer looked pretty and vibrant.

Where did all that colour go?!

I simmered on the lowest heat for half an hour, to let the pork cook slowly and become soft. When this time was up I hard boiled an egg, dropping some thin noodles into the pot for the last three minutes, and sliced up coriander leaves, a spring onion and mustard cress. I drained the noodles and shook over a little sesame oil, then put in the bottom of a bowl and covered with a big ladle of the curry and then all the toppings. Toasted coconut and/or almonds would also have been lovely, or crushed peanuts if you like that kind of thing.

And now for the whole recipe in an easier to read form…

Makes 3 – 4 servings:

1/2 serving of Jamie Oliver’s Hot and Sour Rhubarb
2 tbsp quality peanut butter
300g pork steaks, cut into bite-sized pieces
100g button mushrooms, halved
small onion, diced
salt and pepper
200ml coconut milk (light or otherwise)

To serve (all optional!):

egg noodles and sesame oil
sliced spring onion
mustard cress
coriander leaves
boiled egg slices
toasted coconut
toasted almond slices
crushed peanuts

Combine the Hot and Sour Rhubarb sauce ingredients with the peanut butter in a blender, and set aside.

Over a medium heat, cook the pork, mushrooms and onion, seasoning with salt and pepper, until the meat is browned and the vegetables are soft.

Add the rhubarb and peanut sauce, then the coconut milk.

Turn the heat to very low and allow to simmer for forty minutes – if you’re having a boiled egg on top, put this in to cook after half an hour. For the last three minutes of cooking time, boil the noodles (if you’re having them).

Serve, garnished as you like, and marvel at the fact you’re eating curry with rhubarb in.

8 comments | tags: cooking, curry, Jamie Oliver, rhubarb | posted in Dairy free, Spicy food

December 29, 2011

Whole Spice Lahore Curry

By Rock Salt

This is the best Indian curry I’ve ever made at home – I slightly augmented the recipe, of course, but you can find the proper one here. I’ve been meaning to learn how to make a proper curry for ages; by ‘proper’ I mean one that doesn’t involve any jars of paste or sauce, curry powder or even a shop-bought garam masala. I’ve made a few Thai style curries (like this red curry with langoustines) and even a Burmese one, but Indian has eluded me. I’ve made some good attempts, but nothing that really made me feel like I’d hit the mark. Until now, of course – and on the back of this success I bought myself a Madhur Jaffrey book to work through, hopefully I’ll be making Indian food like a pro before too long. Maybe even a pro chef – making curry like a pro poker player wouldn’t necessarily mean any improvement. Depends on the poker player, mind you.

The changes I made to the recipe were as follows… I reduced the amount of chicken – I put in six chicken thighs. I’ve never jointed a bird (or anything else) before and I didn’t really feel like trying it, to be honest. Also, chicken thighs are my favourite part, and this way I didn’t have to fish about in the finished product, trying to make sure I got one. This would be made more difficult by the fact that I have no butchery skills so all the chicken pieces would all resemble something cast aside by a wolverine, rather than any recognisable part of a chicken. I also altered the marinade for the chicken and potatoes by using tandoori masala (alright, so I did ‘cheat’ here, for a given and very strict value of ‘cheat’) in place of cayenne pepper. I used twice as much, too, because it’s a less spicy flavour.

It's not pretty when you look at it close up, but it is delicious!

The first step of the recipe asks you to finely chop the onions, garlic and ginger in a food processor. Lacking one, I made a paste of them in my mini-blender. I loved that mini-blender, I used it for something almost every day and when it broke (right in the middle of blending something, prompting a mad dash out to a local shop in too-big boots, which must have been hilarious to watch) I was very sad. I got a stick blender as a temporary replacement, and just after Christmas there I bought myself a shiny Kenwood food processor/blender to fill the gap that was left when my Kitchen Genie went to toaster heaven. I haven’t tried the food processor yet, but I’m very excited about it… I digress. Using a paste made it more difficult to extract the cinnamon stick and green chili and required a bit of scraping them off over the pot. Being down to my last bits of cinnamon and having to use several pieces instead of just one made this particular task all the more enjoyable, as you can imagine. Save yourself the headache by finely chopping the onion, ginger and garlic and always making sure that you have plenty of whole cinnamon sticks, that’s my advice.

My final four changes to the recipe were additions; for one, I added the green chili back into the pot while the sauce simmered, to give more spice without the unwelcome surprise of biting into a particularly hot slice of unexpected chili. I

The sauce was even more orange than it looks here. Very orangey.

like chilis, and spicy food, but an unexpected one can have the embarrassing consequences of eye-watering, face-reddening and hitherto unthought of combinations of swear words which might shock your dinner guests. For the last ten minutes of cooking, I also added a couple of blocks of frozen spinach, a generous handful of frozen peas and a can of chickpeas. The chickpeas were there to make up for the missing chicken pieces, and also because I love chickpeas so much that I feel a curry is incomplete without them. The spinach was there for extra nutrition and flavour, but it had the welcome side-effect of reducing the slightly concerning orange colour of the sauce. It really was quite orangey. All natural colours, of course, but still – if you’re going to insist on not using a jar of sauce you’d rather that the end result didn’t look like it had been pumped full of nuclear food dye.

To go with the curry, I boiled some white rice and made some naan bread. I’d made excellent naan bread once before and I couldn’t find the recipe anywhere, which as you can imagine was pretty annoying. I cast around for a substitute recipe and went with this one, though I used ’00′ flour (sometimes called pasta flour) instead of plain, for a more chewy bread. Making these was good fun – my main advice would be not to stretch the dough out very thinly, because the thick, chewy parts are the best. It bubbled up quite pleasingly in the frying pan, and got a few good scorched bits, too. I wish I could remember where I got my last recipe, though – it had potato in it, and it was almost as good as the real deal. Next time perhaps I’ll try and experiment with making my own recipe, it may even be a sourdough naan, since I’m a bit besotted with my sourdough starter at the moment.

From humble beginnings...

Wow, I took a lot of photos of that bread…

I finished the curry off with coriander, as suggested in the recipe, and even made a little hill of rice by lightly packing it into a ramekin before turning it out onto the plate. Not the finest execution of this move but still, it’s the thought that counts… Or is that only in presents?

4 comments | tags: baking, cooking, curry, naan bread | posted in Bread, Healthy, Indian Food, Other people's recipes

September 21, 2011

Thai Red Curry with Langoustines

By Rock Salt

Well, I am well and truly back from being on holiday. In fact it’s been almost a fortnight. It’s flown past and I still feel a bit befuddled about it! It’s funny how three weeks away can make it so difficult to go back to normal life – why can’t every day be a holiday? Anyway, it was amazing, and now I can get to planning my next one. For now, it’s back to reality. I have managed to cook bloggable food a couple of times since returning though, and here’s the first installment.

The night we got back we phoned for a Chinese takeaway, which we’d been promising ourselves as a balm for the post-holiday gloom. I ordered a Thai red curry, which I really enjoyed, so when it came to making dinner for myself on Wednesday I decided to give it a go. These are the ingredients to feed one person:

4 langoustines
1/2 tsp lime zest
1/2 tsp lime juice
1/2 tsp grated ginger
2 red chilis
100ml coconut cream
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp lemongrass powder
1/2 tsp lime juice
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp fish sauce
3 large mint leaves
5 large basil leaves
1 tsp grated garlic ( 1 – 2 cloves, depending on size)
1 tsp grated ginger
1 tbsp rapeseed oil
1 large shallot (or 2 normal sized)
4 stems purple sprouting or tenderstem broccoli
3 tbsp fish stock, made with the langoustine heads and shells while the curry is prepared
1 individual block egg noodle, plain or flavoured
1 boiled egg, for garnish
fresh coriander, for garnish

Last time I cooked with langoustines I didn’t get a photo of them first, so I’ve made up for that this time. Look:

They don’t look very happy, do they? I suppose you can’t blame them.

Once you wrestle the shells off them, you get this much meat:

It’s not a great deal, and if you’re a fan of the king prawn you’d almost be as well just buying those all pre-shelled and ready to go. Langoustines are somewhere between a king prawn (which I don’t like) and a lobster (which I do). The texture and flavour are both distinct from that of prawns, and I’m glad to have found a prawn alternative for myself, even if they are a pain to prepare. I’ve said prawn a lot in this paragraph. PRAWN!

I came across this site about how to prepare langoustine which gives you a nice step-by-step on how to do it. It also says

You may be lucky and find a green coloured roe in the head end – these are the eggs of the langoustines which can be used in sauces, soups etc along with the head part.

There was plenty of roe caught up in the legs of two of the langoustine, not in the head. I must confess, I didn’t feel lucky, I felt like a mass murderer. This is the thing about trying new ingredients and maybe more unusual cuts of meat, too: you recapture some of that original squeamishness that you got when you first handled raw meat, and which disappeared after a few times. I am obviously desperate to walk the line between enjoying the experimentation and being too grossed out to eat. I had a small pot of water next to me which I used to rinse off the roe, and when I had the head and shells removed I added them to the pot, too. This went on over a medium-high heat to make the fish stock for adding to the curry later – I just let it simmer until it was time to use it, by which time the water had taken on plenty of flavour from the shells. On the plus side, in the face of all the roe I forgot my squeamishness about the feelers that crept me out so much last time. Win?

I marinated the langoustines in the lime zest, lime juice and grated ginger listed at the top of the ingredients while I prepared the curry sauce. This ‘preparation’ involved de-seeding one and a half of the chilis, then putting them in a blender cup along with all the other ingredients up to the second teaspoon of grated ginger, and processing until smooth. I thinly sliced the shallot, which really was a monster, and put the egg on to boil. Now I was ready to start cooking.

I put my wok over a medium-high heat with the rapeseed oil. Once it was hot, I added the shallots and stir-fried until transparent. Then I added the broccoli and cooked for six minutes, as per the packet instructions. Then I added the langoustines and cooked for two or three minutes, until opaque. I poured over the curry sauce and mixed thoroughly, then turned down the heat to low, to let it reduce a little without burning. When the timer alarm went off to let me know that my boiled egg was ready, I lifted it out of the boiling water and replaced it with a small block of shrimp flavoured noodles, which would cook in there for the next three minutes. I added the fish stock to the curry, stirred well to loosen the sauce and left it over the low heat while I peeled and sliced the egg. The egg is neither authentic, as far as I know, nor a mandatory part of the recipe, but I’ve got right into eggs on my curries lately, since I made this Burmese style curry. Anyway, once I had this cooled, peeled and sliced, and had shredded some coriander leaves to go on top of the curry, it was time to drain the noodles and serve up the whole lot.

I found this made a spicy but not searingly hot curry, so you could adjust the amount of de-seeding you do with the chilis, or have some chili flakes on hand to add at the end, if you prefer your food on the tongue-melting side of things. You could also change the meat and add other vegetables – the takeaway I had used beef, sliced peppers and yogurt-marinated mushrooms, which was all ver nice. If you were using chicken or beef you might want to also use a meat stock, rather than fish, and stick to plain noodles.

For my first go at a red curry, I think I did pretty well here. I certainly enjoyed it, and let’s face it, when you’re cooking for yourself that’s all that matters.

Leave a comment | tags: cooking, curry, langoustines, seafood | posted in Dairy free, Original recipes, Scottish food, Thai food

May 12, 2011

Burmese Style Curry with Fish Balls

By Rock Salt

That’s right: fish balls. I know, it’s snigger-worthy, but that’s what they’re called!

FISH BALLS.

Now that we have that out of our systems, here is a recipe for what I think is the best curry I’ve ever made. Sadly I ended up not really liking the fish… spheres…, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, and I’d never tried them before. I was expecting a texture like a fish cake, and I got the texture of proper fish but sliding around in a thin batter. Hard to describe, and the taste was good, but the texture put me right off. You can get beef balls (simmer down) too, I wouldn’t mind trying those another time, to see if I like them better.

The curry sauce was based on this recipe for chicken coconut noodle soup, which I made with a medium amount of success (when it says ‘stir constantly to prevent curdling’, pay attention). The picture to the right is my end result, and shows the soup topped with spring onions, coriander leaves, toasted chili flakes and a boiled egg. I made it really thick so it was a stew rather than a soup, and the thin egg noodles soaked that sauce up beautifully. When I’m done writing, I’m going to have some of the defrosted leftovers for tonight’s dinner, and just looking at that picture has definitely increased my words per minute.

To make my own version, which was a mix of vegetables and fish items in a thin but powerful curry sauce, I used the following, which made enough for two:

one small onion, diced
1 tsp garlic oil
1 tsp paprika
5 – 6 chestnut mushrooms, thickly sliced
salt
a little water, to prevent sticking
2 tsp garlic and coriander seasoning
2 tsp turmeric
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp chili flakes
1 tsp fish sauce
1 tsp light soy sauce
2 1/2 tsp granulated sugar
400g tin coconut milk
handful of beansprouts
one small head of broccoli, cut into florets
pack of chili flavoured fish balls (from the Chinese supermarket, if you fancy trying them)
1 1/2 blocks of egg noodles
sprinkle of sesame oil
one hard-boiled egg (two would have been better)

First, I cooked the onion in the garlic oil until softened and transparent, then I added the paprika, mushrooms and salt, and stirred until everything was well coated. I used a little water to stop anything from burning or sticking to the pot, and to help the dry paprika mix with the other ingredients. I then added all the spices, the fish sauce, the soy and the sugar, and once more stirred to mix and coat. Then the coconut milk went in, and I simmered for ten minutes or so until slightly thickened. I added the beansprouts, broccoli and fish balls, and removed from the heat.

I was making the curry early in the day, and was going to reheat for dinner, which is why I took it off the heat. I didn’t want to cook the broccoli and beansprouts, only to reheat and therefore over-cook them later. Overcooked broccoli is a thing of sadness. When we were about ready to eat, I put the egg on to hard-boil. For me, this means boiling for ten minutes, though there was a little debate over this in the G man’s kitchen as he reckons ten minutes is a bit too long. Still, I was doing the cooking, so ten minutes it was. After I put the egg on, I put the curry into a saucepan over a medium-low heat. The fish balls packet said they should be heated through for five minutes, and I figured that they would take a few minutes to get up to speed from room temperature. After the egg had been on for seven minutes, I boiled a kettle, then put the noodles on to cook. Once they were done I drained them and sprinkled in some sesame oil to stop them from sticking together, and left in the sieve while I peeled the now boiled egg. Finally, to serve, I put the noodles on the plate and topped with the curry, spooning over some extra sauce to really soak into the noodles. I added slices of egg and it was ready to serve.

It’s not a neat plate of food, that’s for sure, but I liked the ‘rustic’ nature of it, it somehow made it seem more authentic. These are the best photos of the bunch; imagine how rough the other ones looked. The phrase ‘car crash’ wouldn’t be unwarranted. Heating the curry for such a short time before serving meant that the broccoli and beansprouts still had some bite to them, which is what I wanted. Making the curry ahead also gave it time for the flavours to develop, which was ideal, but I could have finished cooking it straight away and it still would have worked, it just might not have had the same depth of flavour.

If you’re going to make this kind of curry, make sure to taste it all the time as you cook. The above amounts were balanced to my own taste; you might prefer more fish sauce, or more sugar, or more heat, and you can adjust the ingredients to match that. You could also take more inspiration from the LC recipe and use chicken, or add spring onions before serving. The choice, as they say, is yours.