With the weekend upon me, it was time again to find a CR0 recipe that I was interested in, do a spot of shopping, then get back to the chopping board.
So here it is, SnS's simple Madras style curry.
At first I didn't have great hopes for this recipe. All this namby pamby simmering and medium heat nonsense. However I was very pleasantly surprised!
Here are my ingredients.
So firstly I cooking the 1/2 onion for around 5 minutes until translucent.
The tomato paste, garlic paste and ginger paste were then added and cooked for a few minutes. At this point I noted how much of a reddish colour the oil took on. Much more than when I fry hot and fast. I looked a lot like the oil I get from the top of a takeaway carton.
I then added the spice mix (which I was a bit dubious about - seemed like a lot of spice mix for not much curry) and the methi (again, this seemed like A LOT of methi). I noted here that the recipe said nothing of crumbling in the Methi but knowing that this is the correct practise, I crumbled away. I was surprised that at this temperature, I still got the toffee smell / chocking, albeit less fiercely.
So I got the pan hotter (still not
that hot but hot enough) and added the first splash of base. It didn't explode as it would usually do but still evaporated quite quickly. I got another unexpected waft of sweet toffee smell here.
10 minutes on, and several small additions of hot water later, the sauce was done. Notice the oil separation, even though I was stirring often.
I put in the handful and king prawns and heated them through.
Here's the finished product served with my own pilau rice made using the tea caddy whole spice removal technique (based on the UB muslin bag technique), garnished with a coriander leaf and bird eye chili.
Result, delicious. Far better than any of my expectations. It tasted very sweet despite the fact that I didn't add any Mango chutney, which I put down to the cooking of the onions in stage 1.
The spice mix was great aswell with the coriander seed and cumin seed coming through just right. I think that using UBs base really complemented the spice mix, since the aromatic spices were there in the background and so no one spice was overly dominant.
The methi was fine too, I didn't feel that it was too much. Despite my initial fears, I really enjoyed this curry and award it 8.5 / 10, and great for a novice to try out.
I now conclude that the heat I have been trying to use doesn't make any difference - it just makes it easier to burn things. Perhaps the maximum heat that my hob can produce just isn't enough to make that difference, and if so, I may aswell stop trying because this way is easier and far less messy. If I am to go back to using high heat, I will still fry the onion gently until translucent, as the resulting sweetness is top notch.
I highly recommend trying this curry - and UB, if you get a chance, try this one with your base and report back, I think you too will be pleasantly surprised.
Topic: SnS's simple Madras style curry (read 37,299 times)
