curry chronicles

the taste is delightful! unwittingly biting into a slightly plumped raisin is.....weird.

it is like a reconstituted grape!

the almond/raisin/spinach curry i have been making is one of the best things

i am going to make all the harbl curries that have been chronicled itt

it is my new project

everyone owes it to themselves to get 660 curries out of the library

my mum used to make curried sausages that was really just a lol 70s Women's Weekly thing, not really indian at all except for curry powder but it had raisins in it AND apples and I loved it

haha that fits conveniently into how i think of australia idk why. i just had a bunch of wine.

660 curries is at my local library! i will get it tomorrow! yay!

ew ew EW my mum used to make the same apple/sausage curry and i HATED it so much

;_;

Yeah that exact kind of aus curry - keens powder with apples and sultanas in curried sausages or chicken wqith a bit of tomato. Blech. Hated it all my life. When I had real curries with like, coconut milk and paneer and things it was a revalation.

I love real curries too

I made the horseshoe/jaffrey curry and tried to live blog but I failed on shit like:

Oh whoops I said that I started with 5 lbs of bone-in, skin-on thighs and said it was 6 thighs but oops can't count it was 10!

No wonder browning in batches took a bit.

Also in the future will drain off ALL THE OILS before proceeding with onion browning why b/c it was too much oilies.

All the rest I followed to a T except adding the 1/2 cup H20; I had enough oilies after simmering down to clinginess that no need for that shit.

But end result was awesome; will make again minus excessive oilies.

(FWIW I do think doing the browning with skin on makes for bestest fond and ergo awesome result even w/o 5 Tbs oil for onion frying--just a pan coating would do fine)

(also oop should have used bigger pan for 10 chick thighs than my 12" straight-side pan but oh well shit was pain in the ass to maneuver but DELICIOUS)

madhur jaffrey was on the new girl the other night!

savory fruits is a thing guys, I want all the raisins in my curry ! !

I really didn't notice the raisins in the final product; they all kind of broke down into saucey deliciousness.

I found a south asian supermarket today that had a ton of stuff, just bags and bags of spices, garam masala ground up and also pre-bagged ready to be ground, way cool, I want to make all the curries now

yeah it is pretty helpful to have one around, it would be too expensive or bland otherwise! i gotta get another coffee grinder, i keep saying. mortar and pestle is such a pain sometimes. i also have a curry chicken salad experiment to report on but i'm tired now. later.

I also couldn't find saffron and asked the cashier if he had saffron and he said yeah, how many grams and I said uh, a teaspoon, and he went and got some saffron from behind the counter, it comes in 1/2 a gram and 1 gram capsules, possibly larger idk. felt like I was buying drugs

haha maybe too many indian grandmas were pilfering saffron from his store

yeah they sell them in capsules at the store I go to as well...well, more like vials but yeah, def druglike

how much did it cost dayo

it was $5 for one gram, $3 for 1/2 a gram

oh man my mom has a sweet saffron connect. she smuggled a million pounds of it from kashmir when she first moved here. (don't tell anyone!) she could prob hook y'all up.

I have a vision of your mom on a plane wearing a really heavy coat

tbh i think her mom replenished her supply circa 1989

$5 / g seems pretty reasonable

€7/g the only place i've found it in munich. i bought 0.125g.

my best friend in high school returned every year from visiting fam in iran w/ a huge jar of saffron which they wld hurl carefree into p much everything. if cumin was that expensive ppl wld think it was The Most Incredible Substance Of All Time

just made the chicken korma a la horseshoe - can't wait to try!

man that was really good. I don't even need the chicken I don't think - just mixing the sauce with rice is delicious by itself

yay!

i picked up cardamom pods last week, with this recipe in mind. i just need soy yoghurt and cinnamon sticks and i'm good to go!

cardamom pods are so pungent, it's great! and it's cool to hear them pop on the skillet

Oooh I love cardamom. On a less savory note, I like grinding up the seeds with mortar & pestle and using them in an orange cake. SO GOOD.

I'm wondering if I'll ever invest in a spice grinder. bought ground coriander and already have ground cumin, but they go 'off' or 'flat' eventually!

I think you can use a cheap coffee grinder if you want? I like using whole cumin seeds in curries.

yeah we use an old Krups coffee grinder for our spices, works perfectly.

i got a second coffee grinder for that purpose a few weeks ago but it's better than my old one so i want to switch them out. how do i get old coffee taste out of the old one?

I remember WmC saying something about using (uncooked) rice? I never really understood what he meant by that, but maybe chopping up some rice in there will clean it out?!

clean w/ white vinegar? bleach in the sun?

I have a blade grinder I guess I was just being silly and worrying about mixing up flavors of spices and letting residual flavors get into new batches of spice, I should stop being so silly and go find it and use it!

our garage (where we do all of our stir-frying) still smells like the chicken and the spices, the fried cinnamon stick smell is really nice and pleasant!

Yeah, if I'm switching between coffee and spices I'll grind a 1/4 cup of cheap rice to powder and discard it, then wipe the inside of the grinder thoroughly with a tissue. That seems to get residual stuff out pretty well.

i am making the horseshoe korma right now

not sure this veganized vers is gonna be all that successful

p.s. i think maybe i don't like saffron ? :/

the smell of the saffron in the cream while i was prepping everything else was making me real queasy. i forgot the same thing happened the one and only other time i cooked with saffron.

I dunno if I could taste the saffron in the final product

I think it'll probably be fine! imo the yogurt/cream was just there to thicken up the final sauce, really. the flavor lifting is done by all the spices

and goddamn i am grateful i at least halved the cayenne - it's really spicy to me!!

i had to keep adding more and more coconut milk (probably half a can in the end) bc there wasn't enough sauce (no pan juices)