Thread: Anybody out there make their own curry?

I have a character in a short story who has made curry to her own special recipe for many years, and decides to pass her recipe and method on to somebody who has become a close friend.

I don't eat curry, and if I did I would probably buy the sauce in a jar. It would be easy for me to look in a recipe book, but I wonder if anyone on here has a special recipe, maybe one that's been passed down through the family, or a particularly loving method of creating a particular dish where certain ingredients have to be treated in a certain manner or added in a certain order to make it that little bit special, or maybe a secret ingredient. Something that would make the dish very personal, and therefore a highly appreciated gift by the character who is being given this knowledge.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Curry is great stuff. There are quick or slow ways of cooking curry, a lot of Americanized versions are slow cooked, but I heard Indians mostly go with quick ones.

I've played around with it, and a few good tips; always cook off curry powder so there isn't any raw curry flavor, maybe with chili and garlic infused oil and sauteed onions. Some diced tomatoes is always nice to add in some freshness. Don't forget to season to bring out zee flavor. I usually just make the sauce, then add in the ingredients according to their cooking times.

I live in England in an area that has a high asian population. There are many curry houses from different regions, all having different spice mixes and cooking techniques. This is a recipe given to me by a chef I know who works in an Indian restaurant. Most curry recipies do not contain curry powder at all! If you are trying to make the recipe specific to a person then family/geographic history is very important. Some spices that are used in the north of India are not used in the south. In Kashmir for instance coconut milk is often used (this has the effect of stopping the curry being so hot, as does natural yoghurt) wheras it wouldnt be used so readily in Sri lanka where curries tend to much dryer and hotter. A special ingredient may be something like Saffron, which is used more in north African cookery than Asian but I often add it to curries I am making. Lemon juice, Paneer (home made unpasturised cheese), Cardamon is another spice I use often in curries which has a very distinctive taste. Cinamon, Nutmeg and Fennel are others that I have used in curries to sweeten them or lift the flavour a little. The essentials are Cumin, Turmeric and Corriander.

First choose your main ingredients such as vegetables meat or fish, obtain the other ingredients and then cook the sauce as follows.

Ingredients for the sauce.

1 medium onion, diced
2.5 cm fresh root ginger chopped finely
90 ml of ghee (Ghee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) if you cant find Ghee vegetable oil will do.
1 tspn black mustard seeds
1 tspn cumin seeds
1 tspn Salt
1 tspn ground turmeric
3 tomatoas skinned & chopped (score the skin of the tomato and plunge it into boiling water for a few secs and the skins will come off easily)
1 small green chili chopped finely
1/2 tspn brown sugar
2 tblspn chopped coriander
500ml water


1. Dry roast the mustard and cumin seeds in a frying pan until they become aromatic (this doesnt take long and should be done an quite a low heat). Put them in a pestle and mortar and grind them up until they are powdery. Add the turmeric salt & sugar and mix them up.

2. Place the ghee or oil into a large frying pan, add the diced onion and fry on a medium heat until they it goes translucent then add the ginger chili and spice mix and fry gently for 2 minutes. Then add the tomatos, half the coriander & your chosen main ingredient. Coat the ingredient with the sauce and cook for around 5 mins. Add the water and cover the pan tightly with a lid. Time here varies on specific ingredient. If its veg it will take less time than meat.

3. Uncover the pan when you think your ingredient is cooked fuly and raise the heat. Boil rapidly, stiring continually. This process is to thicken your sauce and so you may remove from the heat when desired thickness is reached. Sprink;e the remaining corriander on and serve with rice or naan bread.

Thanks for taking the time to write this out, Monkey Doctor. I've written the part of the story in question, and it'll be posted in the workshop section in due course. It's just a case of making sure I haven't written anything that doesn't make sense, though I think I've tried to avoid specifics and been quite general about the whole process.

Thanks again.

Scott

Be very cautious of curry powder, especially for a traditional recipie. Curry powder is like taking some tamatoes, olives and basil, mixing it all together, and callling it 'italian powder'.

Then again if your characters are from the right demographic it may be apropriate.

My wifes curried sausages include apple, rasins, onions and some mix of spices I'm not going to guess at.

I can tell you from being to tracking camp where we hired a cook so that we could focus on tracking animals (not hunting) that the best curry and food in general is that made from freshly gathered supplies. One day he prepared the meat for dinner in elk fat we found on a dead dear. He then added the meat to his curry along with other things from the forest. Unfortunately I can't tell you a recipe but thought that maybe telling you what we used would help .

Sorry it double posted thought I would just change this one to blankness.

What a hard question to answer.

There can be up to 100 different spices used to prepare a curry powder. There are many very diverse regions in this world that makes curry...which by the way calling something curry is pretty much the same thing as calling something stew or soup.

I've cooked many different 'curries' in my cooking experience.

It would be an easier question to ask if anybody could give you a recipe for a certain dish as apposed to just a curry.

google Indian cuisine for one example of a culture that makes curry.