I haven’t always had a love affair with curry, especially Indian curries. In fact, when I met Tony and we began our long distance, (7,253 miles or 11,671 km), year long courtship between Seattle, Washington and Wellington, New Zealand via email and I learned Indian food was his favorite, a thought crossed my mind that we might not be as compatible as we had seemed in person. I now realize my Indian curry experience had been quite limited.
Hundreds of emails in 12 months where his burning question EVERY day was, “What are you having for dinner?” made me realize the way to this man’s heart was through his stomach. It wasn’t until after we were married and he moved many jars of assorted spices, seeds, pods, sticks, peppers and leaves into the spice cupboard that I learned he was quite serious about his curries. I made a mental note that to have harmony at our dinner table I should learn to embrace Indian curries. As it turned he introduced me to my first homemade Indian curry via his favorite recipe book “Indian Curries” by Madhur Jaffrey. Timatur Murghi (Chicken with tomatoes and garam masala) was delicious! That dish is what I now call my “comfort curry.”
With curry peace achieved my husband cooked about two curries a week for several years. I started reading curry recipes, but felt intimidated by the long lists of ingredients. It’s not unusual for a curry recipe to call for 10 to 15 spices PLUS another five or more other ingredients (meat, tomatoes, onions, etc.). Most curry recipe instructions are fairly precise in the order to add each ingredient and the duration to stir, cook or simmer each before adding the next which makes them seem complex, but once I got brave enough to cook the first few, the steps became logical.
I don’t remember which curry recipe I chose first to prepare on my own and without a pre-made curry mix, but I found cooking Indian curries quite enjoyable. That led to our next step, our 50 Curries Project, where we are cooking our way out of a curry rut of preparing the same 6-8 recipes. We decided to stretch our apron strings and are experimenting with different curry flavors by cooking our way through Camellia Panjabi’s “50 Great Curries of India” cookbook. The photos in the cookbook are mouth watering.
We are cooking the curries at random and a few weekends ago we prepared our eighth curry from Panjabi’s book, Malabar Shrimp Curry (Konju Curry). The photo of this curry graces the cover of the cookbook and is a beautiful combination of red and orange accented with green curry leaves and hot peppers. We made this curry with U15 prawns. The most interesting and different preparation step from other curries we have cooked was heating two teaspoons of oil in a ladle over the stovetop burner and adding sliced shallots and curry leaves to infuse the oil which was poured over the prawns just before serving. We rated this dish 8/10 and will certainly be preparing this curry again.
Next weekend we invited friends to dinner for the ninth curry. I’m pretty sure we will delay making the egg curry, (I’ve got to get my head around hard boiled eggs and curry), or the Aab Gosht (Lamb Cooked in Milk). The photo of Aab Gosht shows white meat, apparently from the milk, served on white rice which doesn’t look too appetizing in the photo. But every curry in this cookbook has surprised our taste buds, so stand by for the next curry post and the rest in this book. We are committed to cooking all 50!
Do you enjoy preparing and eating Indian curries? Check out our Curry Crazy Project on our 50 Curries Project page where we are cooking our way through Camellia Panjabi’s 50 Great Curries of India cookbook!
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My husband has a menu he has long called his “Death Row Meal.” (He’s not planning anything sinister. Neither am I). His ultimate comfort food meal is braised lamb chops with onions and gravy served with boiled potatoes, green peas and cauliflower with English cheddar cheese sauce. This supper is a simple and hearty dish he insists on preparing whenever I bring home lamb chops. If I were choosing my last meal, I think I might like someone else to prepare my dinner. In my research for this post it seems that inmates on death row choose comfort foods or foods unique to their culture rather than meals that are exotic or rare. Some do not make a final meal request. Reportedly the most requested meal by death row inmates is a cheeseburger and fries.
In my research to write this post I learned that cardamoms are part of the ginger family. There are three types: green, black and Madagascar. The Indian curries we cook usually call for green cardamom and we use two to three whole pods which are cooked in the sauce and then discarded. Sometimes we forget to remove them before serving and we find out when we bite into something crunchy and bitter. This recipe, Elaichi Gosht, (Meat cooked with Cardamom), on p. 86 on Camellia Panjabi’s cookbook “50 Great Curries of India”, caught our attention because it is prepared with 35 ground green cardamoms, ten times more than any other curry we have cooked.
My husband prepared this curry with lamb, although it could be prepared with chicken. He ground the cardamom pods in our coffee bean grinder. The black pepper flavor was very intense and overpowered the other flavors, (tomatoes, turmeric, chile, coriander powder). This is our fifth adventure in our “50 Curries Project” and we have no regrets about trying something different, but it did not rate anywhere near one of our favorite curries. If we prepare this dish again, we would season it with about 1/2 tsp. black pepper, add garam masala before serving and garnish with a flavorful chutney.
This tagine was warm without overbearing heat from the chili. Each course of our dinner burst with flavors. We ate interesting appetizers of risotto cakes and chicken wings, a beautiful, colorful salad of roasted vegetables, an amazing fig tart with cardamon cream and nine bottles of fine wines. We enjoyed many laughs and another delightful wine dinner with our friends and we got to eat the leftover tagine which was just as tasty the the next day.
We are big fans of take-out Korean-style beef short ribs, and inspired by a Twitter friend I decided to try them in my new slow cooker. After reading a few recipes, I prepared the ribs as below. Below is the recipe and a few preparation tips.
We finished eating dinner two hours ago and our house still smells like a curry! I broke in my brand new All-Clad slow cooker with an Indian lamb and spinach curry, also known as palak gosht. I was inspired by the recipe in the October 2009 “Oprah” magazine. Here is the link: 
A few weeks ago Scallywag, who as an unusual palate for a six-year old, requested one of his favorite dinners: greenlip mussels. I’m always looking for different “brain foods” to add variety to our diet. Greenlip mussels are reported to have low mercury content and are high in Omega-3 fatty acids. I have prepared greenlip mussels in many different ways, but my favorite recipe is a simple broth of my mom’s favorite meal starter plus chopped fresh ginger, red peppers, white wine, Thai fish sauce and sweet chili sauce. The greenlip mussels we are able to buy in our neighborhood are cooked and flash frozen so we only need to steam them for about eight minutes in the broth before we eat them. In this photo you can see apricot and cream colored mussels. The apricot colored ones are female; the cream ones are male. They taste the same.
Figs are often called a fruit, but the fig is actually the flower which blooms inside the skin and the seeds are the fruit. The fig has a long cultural history starting with Adam and Eve’s fig leaves. The flowers of the common fig are female and require no pollination and some believe the fig is the oldest fruit. Aside from tasting delicious, figs are also nutritious. If you are interested in learning more, I suggest checking out Wikipedia’s entry on figs.
Most often pavlova is prepared as a large, single dish and then servings are cut and shared. As far as I can tell, just about any fresh fruit or combination of fruits can be served in a pavlova. I prefer to make mini-pavlovas from Nigella Lawson’s recipe from her cookbook “How to be a Domestic Goddess” and top them with berries. These look beautiful and I find the presentation more manageable in individual serving sizes. Also, if any of meringue shells crack in the preparation process, repairs can be easily covered up with the other ingredients without ruining the entire dessert.
ine sugar also called caster sugar, and folding in corn starch, white vinegar and vanilla flavoring creating, as Nigella describes “glowing, satiny, snowy meringue.” Next I spooned the meringue in circular shapes onto parchment paper lined baking sheets and created a “bowl” shape in the middle to fill with whipped cream and fruit later. Then the shells bake 30 minutes in a warm oven and are left in the turned off oven for an additional 30 minutes. The shells are a very light brown color when they come out of the oven to cool.
vlova filling, Scallywag and I ventured out to our “secret spot” in our neighborhood to pick wild blackberries. I should have worn long sleeves and pants to avoid getting scratched by the thorns. The end of August is the ideal harvest time for blackberries, which are considered by some as a pesky weed in the Pacific Northwest. Scallywag ate more berries than he picked, but this has become an annual tradition in our family.
