I have a modern slow cooker which is oval, huge, and would feed half of Bengal per batch. I really needed something smaller as I'm the only curry eater in the family - something around 2 litres.

So I started looking around charity shops and came across an original Monier Crockpot. I don't know about the UK but over here they were introduced in the late 70s - the concept died out in the 90s but has been revived in the last ten years or so. In Oz if you say "crockpot" everyone knows what you mean.

I found the device (in orange of course to match your funky Life on Mars kitchen ;D) in a Lifeline (= U.K. Samaritans) shop. Only cost me 6 quid UK money. All electrical items in charity shops must be tested by a sparky, who do it as a community service. Unit works perfectly, I'd guess it's around mid 80s.

So, Sri Lankan Chicken on the bone curry cooking up at the moment, I'll post a pic on serving.
The thing that impresses me about Sri Lankan cooking is that, being a smaller country there seems to be a bit more consensus on recipes than the vast Subcontinent - if you look on various sites the ingredients and methods are fairly consistent. Especially the use of coconut milk, coconut cream, creamed coconut, toasted coconut.. did I mention coconut at all?  Also curry leaves by the wheelbarrow load. Fortunately I have a couple of trees on the go.

With the money I saved I finally bought an electric spice grinder, and made a big batch of Sri Lankan Roasted Curry powder.

How cool is that??   

Get in there,

Nice one. Nice size. Which grinder did you get?

Can't seem to find any platform soles on sale nowadays  ;D

Curry turned out brilliant, not at all like BIR - zesty and really sharp but with a nice cashew and coconut back flavour. It's also hot as a vindaloo. Whoosh. Nice bit of oil separated out as well. I used two birds so guess what I'll be eating for the next few days.


edit: perfect with a pint of my all grain Wells Bombardier tribute made on UK Bairds Maris Otter malt, Challenger and Fuggles hops 

Well I have to say, that curry really does look very good indeed. Its the sort of thing I prefer these days and have started researching more authentic curries rather than the thick sauce style we get in BIR. Any chance you could send me the recipe please?

I bought a "Breville" grinder - that's an Australian brand but made in China of course, such being the state of modern globalisation. It does about a cup measure and it's a rottweiler, totally blitzed cinnamon sticks, cloves and even a couple of cardmom pod husks I hadn't managed to fish out.

I'd gone into the local town on the pretty good local bus service but had to wait a couple of hours to get home, so went on a mini pub crawl down the main drag Victoria Street (the parallel street is called Albert street so that give a clue as to the age of Taree, NSW) and won 50 bucks on the pokieshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_machine so bought the grinder at the electrical store which is right next to the bus stop  ;D

All and all a pretty good day out then ;D

I based the recipe on this two part vid - first time I had actually jointed a chicken or two.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_YAgxIrYk0

However as I have a pretty good curry leaf tree I put a whole sprig of leaves in the dry mix and another sprig in the curry. I cross referenced with a couple of other sites and surprised to see that they were all pretty close with the ingredients and procedures, however I put half a TBS of fenugreek seeds and a bit of extra Haldi in the curry itself, then 10 mins before the end of the slow cooking I put in a couple of TBS of cashew cream I'd whizzed up. I didn't spare the chilli either.

I don't think it's necessary to slow cook, probably 45 mins in a big saucepan would do the trick - apparently they cook in clay pots so I reckoned the "crockpot" would be fairly authentic.