Category: Curry

(Dime a dozen) Sri Lankan Fish Curry

.Reading time 1 minute.

Serves: 4

A simple and really tasty Sri Lankan fish curry I pulled from the Internet and whipped up for Sunday dinner for Nat and me.

They really are a dime a dozen these curries, though I’m typing this one up because it is about as down the line and traditional as they come… well, in my experience of cooking Sri Lankan fish curries!

This would be best served with some saffron rice, some steamed green vegetables and of course, cold beer!

Ingredients

30ml (2 tbsp) groundnut oil
2 small onions, finely sliced
1 tbsp mustard seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
20 fresh curry leaves
2 long green chillies, chopped
2½ cm (1in) root ginger, grated
2 cloves garlic, crushed
½ tsp ground turmeric
300ml fish stock
150ml light coconut milk
4 fillets firm white fish, skinless, 140g each
2 tomatoes, chopped

Method

  1. Heat the oil in a pan, add the onions and cook until lightly golden. Add the mustard seeds, cumin seeds and curry leaves, and cook for 2 minutes. Add the chillies, ginger, garlic and turmeric and cook for a further 2 minutes.
  2. Add the stock and coconut milk, bring to the boil and simmer. Gently place the fish into the curry sauce and cook for 5 minutes, turning the fish once. When you’re ready to serve, stir through the tomatoes.
  3. Remove the lid from the rice and gently fluff it up with a fork. Serve the curry alongside the rice and your favourite steamed green vegetables.

Goan Pork Vindaloo Curry

.Reading time 2 minutes.
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Lordy!

Serves: 4

What happens when you bring together a spicy curry with flaking pork shoulder?

Everything and anything that is good about food!

This is a cracker of a curry. Really distinct and rich flavour, incredible texture of the pork, especially after the effort of really browning it off, great spice from the chillis. Yum!

Cooked at Nat’s parent’s place where we were dog-sitting, we served this with a chutney and some rice with coriander and it seriously hit every spot.

Ingredients

1kg pork shoulder cut into 3cm pieces
15 dried long red chillis
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp brown mustard seeds
1 tsp fenugreek seeds
5 cardamom pods, crushed
1 tbsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground turmeric
⅓ c white vinegar
¼ c vegetable oil
2 onions, thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tbsp finely grated giner
1 fresh bay leaf (or 2 dry)
2 c chicken stock
Chutney to serve

Method

  1. Place the chillis in a small bowl and cover with boiling water. Soak for 10 minutes or until softened. Drain, discarding the stems and seeds.
  2. Using a mortar and pestle, grind soaked chillis, cumin, mustard seeds, fenugreek and cardamom until fine: better still, if you can outsource this part of the process! Transfer to a small bowl, then stir in the coriander and turmeric.
  3. Heat a small frying pan over a low heat and add the spice mixture and cook, stirring for 30 seconds or until fragrant. Transfer to a bowl, stir in the vinegar and set aside.
  4. Heat oil in a large saucepan over high heat. Season pork, then, working in batches, cook until the liquid evaporates and the pieces are browned all over. Transfer to a plate.
  5. Reduce heat to medium, add the onions and cook, stirring for 5 minutes or until softened.
  6. Add garlic and ginger, stirring for 1 minute or until fragrant. Add reserved spice mixture, bay leaf and chicken stock. Bring to the boil, then reduce heat to low, return pork to the pan, cover and cook for 1½ hours or until pork is tender.
  7. Serve immediately with chutney.

Rick Stein’s Chicken Passanda

.Reading time 2 minutes.
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Nobody can complain and if they do…

 Serves: 4

Rick Stein’s ‘India: in search of the perfect curry; recipes from my Indian odyssey’ has absolutely become my go-to, easy-curry tome.

Every curry I have attempted has been spot-on and this simple, aromatic chicken curry is no different.

I cooked it for the boys as part of a bigger Indian feast and so I needed something with a hint of fire, though not too much more. This is the elegance of this curry, where it is the soft spices that carry the dish rather than some whack of heat.

Oh, and the boys loved it – and it is pretty healthy to boot!

P.S. Rick asks that the chicken breasts are merely cut in half and cooked that way. I cubed the chicken to make it easier for the boys and I am not sure I wouldn’t do that again.

Ingredients

3 tbsp ghee or vegetable oil
5cm cinnamon stick
2 green cardamom pods, lightly bruised with a rolling pin
1 small onion, finely chopped
3cm piece of ginger, finely grated
3 cloves garlic, finely crushed
1 tsp ground coriander
½ tsp turmeric
½ tsp Kashmiri chilli powder
4 small chicken breasts, each cut in half
200gm Greek-style yoghurt
2 tbsp ground almonds
1 tsp salt
100ml water

To finish

Handful of flaked almonds, toasted
Handful of fresh coriander leaves, chopped

Method

  1. Heat the ghee or the oil in a large sturdy pan over a medium heat, add the cinnamon and cardamom and fry for 30 seconds before adding the onion and frying for 10 minutes until golden.
  2. Stir in the ginger and garlic and fry for 2 – 3 minutes, then stir in the ground coriander, turmeric and chilli powder and fry for 30 seconds.
  3. Add the chicken and stir well, then add the yogurt, ground almonds, salt and water. Bring to simmer, reduce the heat slightly and simmer gently for 15 – 20 minutes until reduced to a thick, rich, almost dry sauce that coats the chicken.
  4. Scatter over the toasted almonds and coriander to serve.

Curry Puffs

.Reading time 2 minutes.
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Holy crap these are good. The real deal. Add peas if you feel like it.

Serves: 4 – 6 as a side

If your brief is to shut down the local Malaysian Curry Puff business, proceed with this recipe.

Wow, it doesn’t get any more real than this.

They don’t get the heart tick of approval though they get every other tick out there; seriously, they’re perfect. Just like that Malaysian Curry Puff business you’re shutting down.

A few other recipes I read asked for the homemade creation of your own puff pastry, though that is totally non-necessary based on my experience.

I doubled the recipe though for 4 to 6 people, follow the recipe below. Plenty to share!

Ingredients

2 tsp peanut oil
2 tsp finely chopped coriander root
2 spring onions, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
100gm beef mince
½ tsp ground turmeric
½ tsp ground cumin
½ tsp ground coriander
2 tsp fish sauce
1 tbsp water
100gm mashed potato
2 sheets puff pastry
1 egg, lightly beaten
Vetegable oil
Sweet chilli sauce to serve

Method

  1. Stir fry the coriander root, spring onion, garlic and beef until the colour changes.
  2. Add the turmeric, cumin and coriander and stir-fry until fragrant.
  3. Add the fish sauce and water and simmer until the mixture thickens.
  4. Stir in the mashed potato and cool.
  5. Cut rounds – around 10cm in diameter – from the pastry sheet. Spoon the filling into the centre of each, brush around the edges of the pastry with the egg, fold to enclose and press together with a form to seal.
  6. Deep-fry the curry puff until crisp and lightly browned, drain on paper towels and serve with the sweet chilli sauce.

Café de Paris Butter

.Reading time 5 minutes.

OK, I am going to tread very carefully here and after my brief intro, I am going to revert to a piece I found online many years ago by Franz Scheurer on the topic of Café de Paris Butter.

The reason for treading carefully is threefold:

  1. The original recipe was (and is) a secret and cooked only in one French restaurant in Geneva.
  2. It was so good that apparently the Germans during WWII booked the restaurant out night after night.
  3. There are many interpretations though they are just that; nobody really knows and suggesting that this take on Café de Paris Butter is correct would be dangerous.

Though I think, from what I have read, that this particular recipe is close if not it!

And lordy, of all the butters I have made, it is freaking good.

Don’t be inundated by the extent of the ingredients. Roll up your sleeves and do the hard yards. It freezes and you’ll have the best steaks in town for weeks and weeks.

The excerpt I found by Franz Scheurer:

Created by Freddy Dumont in 1941, specifically to go with sirloin steak, and served in the Restaurant Café de Paris in Geneva, this herb/spice butter was an instant success. So much so that it was almost impossible to get into the restaurant for years. The exact recipe is probably still secret today, and only a few restaurants world-wide are reputed to serve the original recipe, amongst them the Parisian ‘Le Relais de l’Entrecôte’ and the ‘L’Entrecôte de Paris’ and the ‘Café de Paris’ in San Francisco. The original Restaurant Café de Paris in Geneva still exists (albeit under new management) and still has the butter on the menu.

You won’t find a recipe for Café de Paris in Escoffier, Larousse or the Sauce Bible. Nor is it listed in the Oxford Companion to Food, Food Essentials A-Z or in the Cook’s Encyclopaedia. I did eventually find it in the German edition of ‘Der Grosse Pellaprat’, printed in Switzerland in 1966. Interestingly, it closely matches the recipe I have from my father, from his time as a chef at the Savoy in London in 1943.

Surfing the internet it becomes obvious that there are a lot of ‘chef’s versions’ out there, some quite close to what you would expect and some really way-out, like a German hotel chef’s version mounting a herb butter based on thyme, tarragon and parsley with sweetened condensed milk!

In Sydney Café de Paris butter is on the menu at quite a few restaurants and one, Bistro Moncur, is certainly very well known for this dish and their version is superb. 

Below my father’s recipe from 1943:

Beurre Café de Paris

Ingredients

1 kg butter
60g tomato ketchup
25g Dijon mustard
25g capers (in brine)
125g brown eschalots
50g fresh curly parsley
50g fresh chives
5g dried marjoram
5g dried dill
5g fresh thyme, leaves only
10 leaves fresh French tarragon
Pinch ground rosemary
1 garlic clove, squashed then chopped very finely
8 anchovy fillets (rinsed)
1 tbs good brandy
1 tbs Madeira
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
½ tsp sweet paprika
½ tsp curry powder (Keens)
Pinch cayenne
8 white peppercorns
juice 1 lemon
zest of ½ lemon
zest ¼ orange
12gm salt

Method

  1. Mix all ingredients with the exception of butter in a glass bowl and leave to marinate for 24 hours in a warm part of the kitchen (a slight
    fermentation occurs).
  2. Purée the mixture in a blender and push through a chinois (a sieve to save you looking it up!).
  3. Foam the butter and mix with the purée. Cover and store in the fridge.
  4. It is customary to form the butter into a log, freeze it and cut off slices as you need them.

Keeps for several weeks.

Upon service a round of frozen butter is placed on the cooked sirloin and put under a VERY hot salamander for just long enough to begin to brown the top of the butter (while the butter underneath stays cold).

Ummmm

Cook your steak, let it sit, slice some of the butter on top and put it under the grill until it starts to melt.

Serve with thinly sliced and baked potatoes and an avocado and watercress salad and Vive la Revolution!

Light chicken korma

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Serves: 4

This is a simple and healthy take on chicken korma, save that unless you told your guests, they wouldn’t know.

The ground almonds are reasonably high in calories, though they pack so much other goodness (vitamins, minerals, good fats) that I didn’t (and wouldn’t) take it out of the recipe. Balance and moderation and all that.

Serve with basmati rice and plenty of coriander and this is two weekday dinners – and next day’s lunch packed.

I cut and steamed a whole head of broccoli and added it in at the last minute and you could of course do this with pretty much any vegetable, extending how much food you’re cooking and getting extra vegetables into the picture.

(And despite eating healthy, you’re eating the world’s greatest invention: curry!)

Ingredients

1 tbsp canola oil
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
Thumb-sized piece of ginger, roughly chopped
4 tbsp korma paste
4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts cut into bite-sized pieces
50g ground almonds
4 tbsp sultanas
400ml chicken stock
¼ tsp brown sugar
150g pit 0% fat Freek yoghurt
Big bunch of coriander, chopped

Method

  1. Put the onion, garlic and ginger in a food processor and whiz to a paste.
  2. Heat the oil in a large, heavy pot to a medium heat and add the paste, cooking for 5 minutes until soft.
  3. Add the korma pasta and cook for another 2 minutes until aromatic.
  4. Stir the chicken into the sauce, then add the ground almonds, sultanas, stock and sugar. Give everything a good mix, cover and cook for 10 minutes until cooked and reduced. Reduce further if need be.
  5. Remove the pan from the heat, stir in the yoghurt and season. Serve on top of steamed basmati rice sprinkled with the coriander.