CURRY!

Sunday, September 24, 2017

CURRY!

It had to happen eventually so here is our family curry recipe.

This can be tweaked into loads of different types of family curry but as usual I will try and describe a good reliable starting place. And then give a few directions on where we most often go. Follow this path and you will soon have all kinds of tasty curries and find that actually, apart from starting here, they are all your own versions.

The thing is it's so simple. It's basically a bolognaise with everything slightly different. You start by cooking onions, then you colour the meat, then you add spices and liquid and simmer before finishing off with freshness at the end of cooking.

Anyway, This one went like this and was super-tasty and most of it is now in the freezer poised and waiting to be our dinner at short notice. Frozen is a great option for this because like most stewy food it really does improve from being left for a while and freezing is a good way to let it develop. Win-win-win!

Oh yes, the boiled eggs. Well don't ask me ask Grandpa - So we did ask Grandpa, today when we saw him. I was hoping that adding boiled eggs to a curry would have vivid memories of his life in Uttar Pradesh in India but no, his answer was more general than that. He told us about his life as a foundry engineering apprentice at Guest, Keen and Nettlefold in Birmingham's Sutton Coldfield in the late 1950s. Granny and he both remembered the landlady and journeys up and down the newly opened M1 motorway in their Austin Cambridge (or Morris Oxford - I'm not sure). Apparently Grandpa's flatmate was an Indian chap called Kailash Sappoo who was a great cook. He was in charge of the giant weekly vegetable curry that lasted them all week. Did it have boiled eggs in it? No Grandpa laughed and said he only knew two things that used boiled eggs like that. Gala pork pie and Grandma's family beef curry.

Our basic curry must have some roots in the GKN foundry apprenticeship but I don't know where they are.

We do it like this:

About 400g of nice beef or chicken or lamb (or lentils - they sneak in everywhere!)
1 x Large cooking Onion chopped
1 x Tablespoon of grated Ginger
1 x Heaped dessert spoon Garam Masala
1 x Heaped dessert spoon Cumin Seeds
1 x Large can chopped tomatoes
2 x Veg stock cubes crumbled or chopped into fine bits that will dissolve easily.
4 x Cloves of garlic roughly chopped or just cut in half
4 x Whole chillies
Oil
Fresh coriander
2 x Hard boiled eggs without their shells

In a large pan heat the oil over medium heat and cook the onion with the garlic until the onion is translucent (transparent? - cooked looking but not brown). Then add the meat and stir to cook and coat with onion and garlic juices.

When the meat is no longer looking raw on the outside you can add the spices and stir to thoroughly combine them all.

Then add the chillies (go on - they're tasty!) and the tomato. Now add enough water to almost cover - but not quite - and stir in the stock cubes.

Bring up to the boil. Reduce to a gentle simmer add the boiled eggs making sure they're covered in the mixture and cook for 25 mins stirring occasionally.

The curry should now look as if it is one thing instead of all the separate ingredients. And just like a Bolognaise, it can take another 10 minutes to really become properly saucy so you have to judge that yourself. Nicely.

And that's it. Ideally, about 15 minutes before it is ready you can put some rice on (See separate post on rice) and steam some veg. The whole thing is completely forgiving on timing because the curry and the rice both both like to rest off the heat for at least ten minutes at the end of cooking which gives you a good chance to find the yogurt and boil the peas.

I took tons of pictures and then forgot to use them so here is the recipe again in pictorial style so you have a reference of what it looked like step by step when me and mum had it last night.