This weekend I made a curry from scratch (i.e. no pre-made sauces). It was a hit. It was a little runny - need to adjust the recipe for that.
Also it's hard to get ingredients here sometimes - the people who run supermarkets are very xenophobic about food - when something isn't in season here it's very difficult to get hold of. The particular ingredient this time was green chillies (kind of critical to a good curry), which won't be available here until the Ontario green chillies are ripe. I tried at 5 different stores (including two asian specialist stores). Ultimately I used Green Hungarian hot peppers which don't have nearly the same explosive flavour.
None of those stores had curry leaves either. Nobody even knew there was such a thing as a curry plant. I substituted lime leaves instead, which worked well and gave that fantastic aroma that only lime leaves can give.
I was very close to giving up on the ingredients hunt, but I was very pleased to find fenugreek seeds at Vincenzos (a local international food store, mostly selling european foods). The fenugreek seeds are traditionally what you associate the "curry" smell with.
I'm looking forward to making it a second time - it's almost always better when you make things the second time.
The fact that British supermakrets stock foods that are out of season is part of the reason why the quality is so poor. If something fresh like fruit has to come from the other side of the world, it's probably been picked far before it's ripe, and it's a robust easy to move variety, and that's part of the reason why food is so tastless.
If you buy from a real market or direct from the grower, the food is MUCH fresher, and hence has real taste.
A good home made curry is great fun, as is freshly made Naan bread.
Re:In Season = Good Food
Matts on 2005-07-11T15:33:59
It's a tradeoff. Certainly food brought in from long distances isn't as-good as local stuff. However it's better than not having it at all. Frankly I'd rather not have to drive all over KW trying to find the right ingredients. Supermarkets here have a long way to go to catch up with the quality and variety of foods available in the UK.Re:In Season = Good Food
ajt on 2005-07-11T19:37:48
Supermarket in your part of Canada must be utterly awful then. British supermarkets are pretty terrible, the fruit and veg is dull and devoid of flavour, and it's hardly cheap. Any half decent independent green-grocer has a better range of goods, at better prices, and significantly better quality. The snag is that there aren't many left...
I always find the French supermarkets MUCH better than their British equivalents. They offer much more than their British counterparts, and the French are not as easily fobbed of with unrip rubbish as the British are, so the quality is better, and natutrally the price is better too.
Some things keep well, but to be honest I'd rather have seasonal variety and decent food, than bland always available produce. I'd rather have ripe fresh strawberries in July, hard flavourless ones in February.
Re:What, no recipe?
Matts on 2005-07-11T19:47:32
I didn't make this one up sadly - this was my first curry from scratch. So I just used Jamie Oliver's "My Favourite Curry Recipe". Apart from the changes I listed of course.
Here's what I can remember (I won't give a separate ingredients list - I'll leave that as an exercise):
Take a large pot, heat up some vegetable oil. Add 1 teaspoon of mustard seeds. When they've popped, add 1 teaspoon of fenugreek seeds. Then add 3 chopped onions and 2 large thumbs of ginger, coarsly grated. Stir until browned. Then add 1 teaspoon of turmeric and 1 teaspoon of chilli powder. Mix well. Add in 3 chopped, de-seeded green chillis and the curry leaves. Stir for a minute. Add in 6 chopped tomatoes. Stir some more. Meanwhile cook 4 chicken breasts cut into large chunks in a little olive oil and a tablespoon of crushed corriander seeds (pestle and mortar required). Add 400ml of coconut milk to the curry sauce, and simmer and try and reduce some of the tomatoe juice so it's the consistency of double cream (I didn't succeed at this part). Then add the chicken when it's cooked, and simmer for about 10 mins. Serve with rice.
I probably missed something there. It's from Jamie's third book (I think).
Re:recommendation
Matts on 2005-07-13T13:58:29
Thanks. I don't think we'll be making this again in a hurry - the smell still hasn't gone from the house yet!
