Cooking curry from scratch

A man of my own heart - real chillies add proper flavour and not just heat!

And curry needs potatoes too!

 

curry was ok .... better than our local village curry take away shop? ....

no not really

 

use 1/2 the recomended amount of cloves, and the curry will be ok

 

Did you use ghee? I find it a little overpowering.
Instead of water, use veg or chicken stock next time.
And for the last 30 mins of cooking add a heaped tablespoon of chopped coriander.
My neighbour would also use about half of the onion and garlic uncooked and the ginger to make a paste.

Cooking curries is trial and error, so stick at it.

 

I use rapeseed oil (even higher smoke point) for most cooking now. Must be cold pressed rapeseed, which comes from a different rapeseed to the common vegetable oil and bio diesel.
Rapeseed oil is sometimes called canola oil and is one of the "good" oils healthwise. One advantage over olive oil is that it is high in Omega-3 fatty acids.
Raymond Blanc is a convert, using it to make Mayo.
Costs about £5 per litre. There are few UK producers but the number is on the rise, so also the green option.

 

This is the one that I use................

R Oil - Our Product

Makes great roast potatoes!

 

I've tried rapeseed oil once (we don't get that in south africa) ... we only had sunflower oil

deep fried chips and never enjoyed the taste ....

so, I stick to sunflower oil for cooking/frying and I use extra virgin organic (tesco) olive oil for salads

might try the R oil and see if I enjoy it

once a year, my aunt sends me 5 litres of olive oil from our farm / smallholding in Greece .... I even struggle to enjoy that and is only used for salad dressing ... it's very thick and very 'cloudy' ....(an acquired taste) ....

she organises that the olives are taken into a village to a guy who presses them ... I don't think it gets filtered ... I've tried filtering it through a muslin cloth, but it still tastes 'different'

 

Dim - Waitrose sell Hill Farm rapeseed oil which is cold pressed (that's the important element).

 

looking at the recipe I used::

How To Make an Authentic Indian Lamb Rogan Josh

the spices and curry was ok, but if you smell the Bolst's curry powder and Rajah curry powder, there is something in those that has a 'real strong curry' smell

looking at the ingredients of Bolst's and Rajah curry powders, both have fenugreek which is missing from the recipe I posted?

so maybe this needs to be added?

here are the ingredients for many well known curry powders:
http://www.lionsgrip.com/curingredients.html

I'm going to study those curry powders and make my own curry using many/most of those ingredients

 

My curry powder of choice is Pakistani Bassar Masala (brand name Al Noon) - available in all the Asian s/markets around here, so is probably pretty common.............

 

Oh, and a heaped tablespoon of chopped coriander leaves 30mins before the end of cooking, plus more when removed from the heat is essential to my taste buds.