British Restaurant / Take Away Indian Curry Recipes.

[arfursixpence]

If like me you love the taste of a spicy Indian curry, just as you get it from the UK, then you may want to try this - it involves a bit of fucking around, but once you get it - curries will never be the same.

The first thing you have to do is get a basic sauce together, once you get this, then most curryhouse recipes are simply adding a bit of this and that to the basic sauce. (How else do you think they can cook 100 different types of curry in 15 minutes!) This should make enough base sauce for 4 adults. (Be careful doubling up, not all the spices work like that - you could end up with a plate of sour rotten shit that the dog wouldn't eat)

The Base Sauce - I have added comments here and there to how I fiddled around with the original recipe - up to you if you follow or not!

3TBS Oil (or more - you can always scoop it off the top when it is finished, and the spices just love oil!)

1 Onion -chopped roughly.

4 cloves garlic roughly chopped (note add a lot more garlic to get that dry taste. I like to put a bout 10 or 20 if I am in the garlic mood - and not those little Thai shit things, the big Chinese ones)

1.5" Ginger just hack it into bits, no need to remove skin - just make sure it is clean. (note! Maybe add a little more ginger if you like the taste)

1/2 tsp Turmeric - powdered or chopped, (chopped fresh double the ammount)

1/2 tsp cumin seeds - crushed

1/2 tsp corriander seeds crushed

1 tbs tomato puree mixed with 4 tbs water. (Note 14 oz can tomatoes with 2 tbs of puree is even better)

Green chillies fresh - as many as you like.

Add a few cloves to this to get a tang! (6 is probably enough)

Now this is important if you don't want it to turn out like sour shit!

Cook onion until coloured - 5- 10 minutes, don't brown or caremalise it like they say in some recipes, just soften it.

Add Ginger Garlic Chilli, Cloves cook for 15 minutes

Add Turmeric, Cumin and corriander - cook 5 minutes more.

Now, chuck all of thesel ingredients into blender along with tomato puree and the tin of tomatos and puree until there is absolutely no lumps left at all

Back to an oily frying pand and cook -

Cook everything for 20 minutes.


A few recipes call for you to halve the sauce at this point and make up the curry in separate batches - Fuck that, use the whole thing, just take your time with the spices and maybe try a little less than I have written down - allow 5 or so minutes, taste again and if it lacks the oomph, add the full measure. The worst ones you can overdo (in this order), is adding too much ground cinnamon, then too much corriander seeds, and too much fennel and cumin. (Go too far with these and it is fucked - flush it down the bog! Cut out the middleman and the processing.


Madras/Vindaloo Sauces

Oil
Chicken
Dried Hot Chillies (try more than 6 big ones!)
Chilli Powder (-lots)
1Tsp Ground Cumin
1 Tsp Ground Corriander
1 tsp Paprika or black pepper
Salt to taste use knorr stock cubes or powder 2 cubes or 2 teaspoons should do the trick - just taste it until you get it as rich as you like, my tastebuds are fucked from years of spicy foods, ciggies and beer so I tend to overcompensate.
1 Tsp Fenugreek
1/2 Tsp Garam Masala (use 1 tsp! if you like the taste)
1TBSP of Heinz Tomato Ketchup (honestly, don't skimp on this, it has a load of ingredients that really add to the flavour, and for those of you that are health concious, just remember Ronald Reagan defined Ketchup as a "Vegetable!")

FOR VINDALOO, ADD MORE CHILI POWDER, + 1 TSP OF VINEGAR WHEN COOKED.- Vinegar seems to add little using 1 tsp, try 3 tsp! (you can also add lime juice which I prefer - if you overdo it, just adjust with a little sugar)

Boil your chicken or whatever, dog, cat children in a seperate pan in slated water until cooked.

Heat oil in a large heavy frying pan.

Add the whole dried chillies and fry until they start to swell.

Turn the heat to low, add 1 tablespoon or two of your basic sauce and stir round.

Then add the chilli powder, cumin, coriander and paprika (or black pepper) and fry gently, stirring all the time, for a minute. If you burn it here you will fuck it up completely.

If it doesn't spatter your cooker then you aren't doing it right - you really should end up with a curry covered cooker.

Add the rest of the curry sauce, the chicken, salt and simmer for 20-30 minutes or until the chicken is done. Stir now and again, if the sauce starts to stic, just add a little more water.

10 minutes from the end add the garam masala and Ketchup.

Simmer gently for about another 10-15 minutes stirring all the time.

Just as you about to serve, chuck in a huge handfull of chopped fresh corriander and spring onions just to add that tang! (and a bit of colour)


Next time I cook some, I'll take some photos!

[arfursixpence]

Something seems amiss with my formatting from notebook, just read the solid lines (which I cannot see when I edit it) as if they are just leading to comments or suggestions or not even there! - Sorry!

[Fondles]

4 cloves garlic roughly chopped (note add a lot more garlic to get that dry taste. I like to put a bout 10 or 20 if I am in the garlic mood - and not those little Thai shit things, the big Chinese ones)

10 to 20 cloves, seriously ?

[Kwang]

Cheers for going to all that expense Arfur, do you know how to make a Balti ?

[arfursixpence]

To go with it, try my lazy bastards Nan bread!

4 TBs of flour, doesn't matter what type.

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp sugar

1 egg

a pinch of baking soda (a little bit)

some milk.

Mix it all together until it makes a dough, no need to fuck around with yeast ot waiting 1 hour in the fridge and all that shit.

Flour out a flat surface, flour out a rolling pin - you can use that blue PVC pipe if you don't have the pin.

Get it as thin as you can and dryfry it in a frying pan (NO OIL unless you are a glutton -and it does taste better) until it is brown on one side - flip it over for a minute - and, if like me you have gas - pick it up with two forkes and flame it in the gas flame either side for a few seconds until it blisters.

(i.e. - remove it from the frying pan and just turn it around in the blue flame - be careful as it can fall apart and cause a small fire if you fuck it up.)

[arfursixpence]

Cheers for going to all that expense Arfur, do you know how to make a Balti ?

Trust me, there is little expense once you get a few of the basics, and if you can find the Thai translations, a lot of this stuff is available at your local markets!

I do, but normally I find them rather a poor comparison to a really mouth numbing Vindaloo or a Phall. (I found a jar of Sezchaun Chilli powder last week - jesus, add that to your curry - your lips and mouth feel like they did when you got those injections from the dentist before he pulls your teeth out)

They always seem a little sweet to me and lack the kick of a slow cooked curry.

I haven't bothered cooking one in 10 years, I am a creature of habit when it comes to food.

I have a few extremes you see, I like fiery curry, I like an odd coconut curry, I like Shepherds Pie, Roast Pork with potatoes and all that shit we ate when we were kids, I like Malaysian stuff like Rendang, English stodge like toad In The Hole, but Balti always came across as something from a tin of Pataks sauce.

I hear Birmingham is the best place to try one!

[arfursixpence]

4 cloves garlic roughly chopped (note add a lot more garlic to get that dry taste. I like to put a bout 10 or 20 if I am in the garlic mood - and not those little Thai shit things, the big Chinese ones)

10 to 20 cloves, seriously ?

Cloves of GARLIC, not "cloves" as in the spice. (once you get over the 2 or 3 cloves, you find that the smell or should I say "Aroma" of garlic doesn't change, it simply makes the dish very dry and very hot - it works like chilli once you saturate the dish, fuck I wish I was that [at][at][at][at] Jamie Oliver! No one would molest kids as they would smell too bad! (apart from French people who generally stink anyway)

I used to visit a restaurant in Glasgow that the entire heat of the curry was made from garlic rather than chilly.

They made huge portions and their nan breads were the size of a small coffe table.

Needless to say I couldn't eat all of it so I used to get a doggy bag and stick it in the back of the company car for my drive back to London.

Well, one day it spilled - the car was virtually unusable for a month to anyone that didn't like garlic, and probably offensive to most other people too!

[Kwang]

I hear Birmingham is the best place to try one!

Yep, The Balti Triangle

[arfursixpence]

I remember Oldham and Ashton and a few parts around that area of Manchester dished up a few too!