curry chronicles

I love real curries too

I made the horseshoe/jaffrey curry and tried to live blog but I failed on shit like:

Oh whoops I said that I started with 5 lbs of bone-in, skin-on thighs and said it was 6 thighs but oops can't count it was 10!

No wonder browning in batches took a bit.

Also in the future will drain off ALL THE OILS before proceeding with onion browning why b/c it was too much oilies.

All the rest I followed to a T except adding the 1/2 cup H20; I had enough oilies after simmering down to clinginess that no need for that shit.

But end result was awesome; will make again minus excessive oilies.

(FWIW I do think doing the browning with skin on makes for bestest fond and ergo awesome result even w/o 5 Tbs oil for onion frying--just a pan coating would do fine)

(also oop should have used bigger pan for 10 chick thighs than my 12" straight-side pan but oh well shit was pain in the ass to maneuver but DELICIOUS)

madhur jaffrey was on the new girl the other night!

savory fruits is a thing guys, I want all the raisins in my curry ! !

I really didn't notice the raisins in the final product; they all kind of broke down into saucey deliciousness.

I found a south asian supermarket today that had a ton of stuff, just bags and bags of spices, garam masala ground up and also pre-bagged ready to be ground, way cool, I want to make all the curries now

yeah it is pretty helpful to have one around, it would be too expensive or bland otherwise! i gotta get another coffee grinder, i keep saying. mortar and pestle is such a pain sometimes. i also have a curry chicken salad experiment to report on but i'm tired now. later.

I also couldn't find saffron and asked the cashier if he had saffron and he said yeah, how many grams and I said uh, a teaspoon, and he went and got some saffron from behind the counter, it comes in 1/2 a gram and 1 gram capsules, possibly larger idk. felt like I was buying drugs

haha maybe too many indian grandmas were pilfering saffron from his store

yeah they sell them in capsules at the store I go to as well...well, more like vials but yeah, def druglike

how much did it cost dayo

it was $5 for one gram, $3 for 1/2 a gram

oh man my mom has a sweet saffron connect. she smuggled a million pounds of it from kashmir when she first moved here. (don't tell anyone!) she could prob hook y'all up.

I have a vision of your mom on a plane wearing a really heavy coat

tbh i think her mom replenished her supply circa 1989

$5 / g seems pretty reasonable

€7/g the only place i've found it in munich. i bought 0.125g.

my best friend in high school returned every year from visiting fam in iran w/ a huge jar of saffron which they wld hurl carefree into p much everything. if cumin was that expensive ppl wld think it was The Most Incredible Substance Of All Time

just made the chicken korma a la horseshoe - can't wait to try!

man that was really good. I don't even need the chicken I don't think - just mixing the sauce with rice is delicious by itself

yay!

i picked up cardamom pods last week, with this recipe in mind. i just need soy yoghurt and cinnamon sticks and i'm good to go!

cardamom pods are so pungent, it's great! and it's cool to hear them pop on the skillet

Oooh I love cardamom. On a less savory note, I like grinding up the seeds with mortar & pestle and using them in an orange cake. SO GOOD.

I'm wondering if I'll ever invest in a spice grinder. bought ground coriander and already have ground cumin, but they go 'off' or 'flat' eventually!

I think you can use a cheap coffee grinder if you want? I like using whole cumin seeds in curries.

yeah we use an old Krups coffee grinder for our spices, works perfectly.

i got a second coffee grinder for that purpose a few weeks ago but it's better than my old one so i want to switch them out. how do i get old coffee taste out of the old one?

I remember WmC saying something about using (uncooked) rice? I never really understood what he meant by that, but maybe chopping up some rice in there will clean it out?!

clean w/ white vinegar? bleach in the sun?

I have a blade grinder I guess I was just being silly and worrying about mixing up flavors of spices and letting residual flavors get into new batches of spice, I should stop being so silly and go find it and use it!

our garage (where we do all of our stir-frying) still smells like the chicken and the spices, the fried cinnamon stick smell is really nice and pleasant!

Yeah, if I'm switching between coffee and spices I'll grind a 1/4 cup of cheap rice to powder and discard it, then wipe the inside of the grinder thoroughly with a tissue. That seems to get residual stuff out pretty well.

i am making the horseshoe korma right now

not sure this veganized vers is gonna be all that successful

p.s. i think maybe i don't like saffron ? :/

the smell of the saffron in the cream while i was prepping everything else was making me real queasy. i forgot the same thing happened the one and only other time i cooked with saffron.

I dunno if I could taste the saffron in the final product

I think it'll probably be fine! imo the yogurt/cream was just there to thicken up the final sauce, really. the flavor lifting is done by all the spices

and goddamn i am grateful i at least halved the cayenne - it's really spicy to me!!

i had to keep adding more and more coconut milk (probably half a can in the end) bc there wasn't enough sauce (no pan juices)

i also added cauliflower

also i accidentally got decorticated cardamom instead of pods, so i subbed 2 tsp of the seeds for the 12 pods

dayo! if you couldn't taste the saffron you didn't put enough saffron in! nb i might overdo it a little on the saffron. one time i served this dish to an indian lady and she was like, whoa, saffron much?

seeds instead of pods should be fine, i would think.

haha I think I was just thinking of the price of it as I was measuring it. I 'fluffed' it up so that less would fill more of the teaspoon measure! I should probably do it by weight to keep me honest.

i think this is missing a lot without the chicken pan juices/fat. it tastes ok, but not to my liking. pretty sure ytth will like it though, which is good bc i made a HUGE pan of it!!!

i'm going out for dinner

do vegans use MSG?

probably! but i haven't

i did a wine tasting course for work years ago and they made us drink water+msg

it was truly revolting

haha - well MSG can do a lot to make up for missing protein juices, ime

wondering if a bit of miso paste might not do something as well

fwiw ytth DID really like the korma - he's eating the leftovers for dinner tonight. so clearly it was just my taste buds.

2 months off this thread! but it was hot and i wasn't cooking much complicated stuff.

made a really easy madhur jaffrey recipe for ground lamb curry last night. i can't find the blog it was on that had copied the recipe but it was just:
hunk of ginger, small red onion, 5 garlic cloves in food processor and browned in frying pan
add 1 t cumin seeds, 1 t coriander seeds, (actually i fried those in the hot oil before cooking the other stuff so they went in first) 1/2 t turmeric, 1/2 t cayenne
add 1 chopped tomato, 1/2 cup plain yogurt
let that all cook for a minute
add 1 lb ground lamb
while that's cooking a couple diced green chiles and garam masala
then like a cup of frozen peas
when it's all cooked through it's done

i think that's what the recipe said!
i had also boiled some potatoes so instead of rice i mashed them a little and put the curry on top