Phil,

Yeah - there are lots of chili varieties, and we seem to have a pretty limited selection in my backwoods town. I'd have better luck getting specific cultivars in Vancouver, for instance, as they have much larger population to support such things as culturally themed grocery stores.

Perhaps the difference in color you're seeing, though, is that powdered chilies also may include the seeds, which are pale in color.

Here, I'm stuck with fresh Thai ("dragon") chilies and cayenne powder. Both are roughly the same spiciness level, although the fresh chilies (unless diced) diffuse less readily into the sauce, so they often result in a mild flavor until you bite into a piece, at which point you're suddenly sweating.

Unfortunately, our fresh chilies are useless when it comes to contributing color to much of anything. They are often sold not quite ripe, so can range anywhere from green to red. I once tried making something called Parsee red chicken curry. You add about 10 chilies to it, and the idea is that they make the meal a bright red. Mine was pastel orange... the problem is, the recipe called for Kashmiri chilies, which are both very mild and very red. Thai chilies look red enough, but aren't quite the natural food coloring that Kashmiri chillies are, and also are apparently much more powerful. Needless to say, my pastel-orange Parsee chicken curry was extremely spicy.

I last posted quite a long time ago, saying that I was having trouble getting that restaurant-like quality to my home-made curries. As it turns out, the quality I was lacking was the BIR style, and over the weekend I tried out Cory Ander's base sauce and masala and made a curry heavily based on his Madras curry recipe.

It turned out extremely well! Possibly one of the tastiest things I've ever cooked.



I did a few things differently than Cory Ander - I didn't make the spicy oil, and just used canola. There was also a bit of confusion about what he meant by "chilli powder", as in North America we've got many things that people call chilli/chili/chile powder, and they are all very different. So I used 1/2 tsp of cayenne powder and 1/2 tsp of some home-made garam masala in place of the 1 tsp of chilli powder.

I also tried it (last night) without the garam masala. It definately makes the dish taste a bit sweeter and smokier. It's a good addition.

I also tenderized the chicken according to a method in a Chinese cookbook I have (Easy Chinese Recipes by Bee Yinn Low). This involves dry-rubbing raw cut-up chicken breast with 1 tsp of baking soda, setting it aside in the fridge for 15 minutes, then thoroughly washing the baking soda out with cold water in a colander. Then cook with it as normal. It doesn't leave any baking soda taste on the chicken and makes it amazing succulent. I highly recommend this technique.

The rice is pretty plain - just basmati with a bit of chicken stock, peas, and tumeric. But it tastes very nice when it soaks up all that sauce

I hope to try a chicken korma and a vindaloo soon - I'll post my results when I do!

I've been attempting to cook curries for about 2 years. My friends think my curries are great, but I'm not really that happy with them. I've been working from recipes I found online as well as Camellia Panjabi's book, "50 great curries of India". What I've been doing is cooking mostly basic chicken curries and madras style curries (usually with coconut milk, but sometimes with yogurt).

I buy my spices whole when possible, then roast and grind them in a coffee grinder. I use ghee, brown my onions until dark, then add garlic and ginger puree (made from fresh garlic and ginger) along with fresh red chilies (I can't find green ones or dried red ones). After that, I add the ground spices, cook for about 1 min, then add tomato puree that I make with a hand blender at a ratio of about 3 small tomatoes to 1 large onion. Sometimes I simmer this for an hour, sometimes I serve it as soon as the chicken is cooked. The spices I use change on a seemingly weekly basis, but I always use tumeric, cumin, coriander, and home made garam masala. Just today I used some paprika, which gave a nice color to the dish, so I'll probably stick with that from now on. In the past I've experimented with fenugreek, fennel, star anise, cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, green and black cardamom, clove, and more I have forgotten. Most of these I still put in the garam masala, but that gets used in fairly small amounts.

What I've been finding is that generally my curries lack the flavors I expect, and the tomato dominates. It tastes like a slightly spicy tomato sauce, and the spiciness comes from the chilies more than anything else.

So, I am beginning to wonder, maybe the problem is my expectations? My idea of what Indian food should taste like comes from restaurants, and I wonder if they are perhaps not doing things in the way that most Indian cooks would recommend, but rather catering to western expectations. Their curries tend to be sweeter and saltier. Probably lots of MSG-based chicken stock. But I was kind of hoping that the spices would do the work and taste as awesome as they smell... but so far, I've managed only mediocre results.

Thoughts?