Topic: Scored Myself a "Crockpot"

[beachbum]

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.

[meggeth]

How cool is that??   

[Malc.]

Get in there,

[RubyDoo]

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

[beachbum]

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 

[Malc.]

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?

[beachbum]

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

[RubyDoo]

All and all a pretty good day out then ;D

[beachbum]

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.