{"id":1485,"date":"2014-06-06T15:52:33","date_gmt":"2014-06-06T15:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1485"},"modified":"2014-06-06T15:52:33","modified_gmt":"2014-06-06T15:52:33","slug":"the-curry-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2014\/06\/06\/the-curry-secret\/","title":{"rendered":"The Curry Secret"},"content":{"rendered":"

In what seems like a previous life, when I was just getting to grips with cooking for myself, not long out of university, I picked up a copy of Kris Dhillon’s\u00a0The Curry Secret<\/em><\/a>. The premise of this book is as follows (I paraphrase). British people like going to Indian restaurants. British home cooks like the idea of cooking Indian food at home, but a recipe book describing Indian dishes will almost certainly be describing what an Indian housewife would cook, which is not at all like what a British Indian restaurant serves. Dhillon’s book tells you how to cook British Indian Restaurant Food at home.<\/p>\n

The key recipe in the book is\u00a0Curry Sauce<\/em>. Once you have a batch of this made, you can whip up an curry you like. Chicken curry? Chicken + Curry Sauce. Lamb vindaloo? Lamb + Curry Sauce + chili + potatoes. Prawn\u00a0korma? Prawns + Curry sauce + almonds + cream. And so on. The curry sauce recipe is a bit daunting and it doesn’t look at all appetising until the very final stage. Decades after I bought the book, I’ve gone through the whole process and documented it for you. Quantities are deliberately vague to encourage you to buy the book.<\/p>\n

Step 1.\u00a0<\/strong>Cut up a shit-ton of onions.<\/p>\n

\"curry01\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Step 2:\u00a0<\/strong>Cut up a load of ginger and garlic.<\/p>\n

\"curry02\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Step 3:\u00a0<\/strong>Blend the ginger and garlic together with some water.<\/p>\n

\"curry03\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Step 4: <\/strong>Simmer the ginger, garlic and onion with more water and some salt for a long-ass time.<\/p>\n

\"curry04\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"curry05\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Step 5:\u00a0<\/strong>After it has cooled, blend the simmered onion mixture. Reserve some of the sauce at this stage to cook the chicken in later.<\/p>\n

\"curry06\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Step 6:\u00a0<\/strong>Blend up a can of tomatoes.<\/p>\n

\"curry07\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"curry08\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Step 7:\u00a0<\/strong>Briefly fry tomato puree, turmeric and paprika then add the blended tomatoes and simmer.<\/p>\n

\"curry11\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Step 8:\u00a0<\/strong>Add the onion mixture. Keep simmering and skim off the froth which rises to the surface every so often. Ugh.<\/p>\n

\"curry16\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"curry13\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Step 9:\u00a0<\/strong>Your curry sauce is now ready. You may now prepare the chicken. Cut that sucker up into bite-sized pieces.<\/p>\n

\"curry18\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Step 10:\u00a0<\/strong>Fry the reserved curry sauce with some turmeric until it darkens in colour.<\/p>\n

\"curry17\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Step 11:\u00a0<\/strong>Add the chicken and cook throughly.<\/p>\n

\"curry19\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Step 12:\u00a0<\/strong>Both curry sauce and chicken can be put in the fridge at this stage. After several hours, we are now 20 minutes away from curry o’clock.<\/p>\n

\"curry20\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Step 13:\u00a0<\/strong>I made Chicken Dopiaza. Slice onions and fry ’em up.<\/p>\n

Step 14:\u00a0<\/strong>Add curry sauce, salt, chilli powder and chicken.<\/p>\n

\"curry21\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Step 15:\u00a0<\/strong>Cook until sauce thickens. Stir in more spices.<\/p>\n

\"curry22\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Step 16:\u00a0<\/strong>Serve with basmati rice and sprinkled with coriander.<\/p>\n

\"curry23\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The result was very authentic and absolutely delicious. Worth the time and effort? Ah, well that’s another matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In what seems like a previous life, when I was just getting to grips with cooking for myself, not long out of university, I picked up a copy of Kris Dhillon’s\u00a0The Curry Secret. The premise of this book is as follows (I paraphrase). British people like going to Indian restaurants. British home cooks like the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[107],"tags":[402,401,404,403,405],"class_list":["post-1485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recipes","tag-chicken","tag-curry","tag-curry-secret","tag-indian-restaurant","tag-kris-dhillon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-nX","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1485"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1535,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485\/revisions\/1535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}