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October 30, 2006
indian curries
Sunday nights are officially my lovely fiancé sled's night to cook. Last night he decided to try saag paneer (also known as palak paneer) and found this recipe from the food network. Now the recipe left something to be desired, mostly that they were aiming for far too bland for our taste. Maybe with half the spinach and the same amount of everything else (which is what we did towards the end when it became evident that the recipe was too bland -- we started throwing in more of everything else and were able to salvage it). So I'm not reposting the recipe here, I'm only holding on to the good part, which is the curry powder. The following is cribbed directly from their site. -------------- Curry Powder: Toast the whole spices (coriander, cumin, fennel, cloves, mustard, cardamom and peppercorns) and the chiles in a small dry skillet over medium-low heat, shaking the pan often to prevent them from burning. Toast for a couple of minutes until the spices smell fragrant. In a clean coffee grinder, grind the toasted spices together to a fine powder. Add the turmeric and give it another quick buzz to combine. Use the spice blend immediately, or store in a sealed jar for as long as 1 month. Yield: about 1/2 cup ----------------------- But we just used a mortar and pestle. It sounds like a lot of extra effort and for very large quantities it is. But for half a cup, ::shrug::. And you get to smell it as you crush it. I consider it akin to hand-whipping cream -- it's usually worth it. In fact, I'm quickly coming to believe that it's not worthwhile to buy pre-mixed curry powder. It's much much better when it's fresh and you mix and grind yourself, and the fragrance is both more potent and more nuanced. Thai curries are a little more difficult to make from scratch, just because of all the wet ingredients and the larger volumes, so I could totally see taking a shortcut and using stuff from the can. But with a totally dry curry mix... I think it's always worth it to make it from scratch.
2 tablespoons coriander seeds
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/2 teaspoon whole cloves
1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 tablespoon cardamom seeds
1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns
2 dried red chiles, broken in pieces, seeds discarded
1 tablespoon turmeric
Posted by amanda at 04:38 PM | TrackBack
October 01, 2006
thai curries
I really hate the Thai Kitchen brand of curries. They are everywhere, and not tasty. Better, and usually findable at stores like 99 Ranch, is Maesri curry, the only one I have ever found to make an acceptable Massamun curry. But over the summer I had this truly transcendant green curry. I mean, like no green curry I've ever tasted. I think my aunt had slipped some cardamom into her mix. There is good canned curry, which will get you better Thai curry than you'll usually get at a restaurant if you do it right. But to have a religious experience with curry you have to make your own. I went looking for recipes and to my surprise Epicurious had one that didn't look too bad. (I always thought of them as a little white.) So compiled from several different sources, I put together recipes for red and green curries. Red curry: from epicurious, recipezaar, and temple of thai. 20 dried chilies green curry: from bbc recipes and syvum.com 30 green chilis It's pretty straightforward, but time-consuming. For the dry spices you want to get them whole and toast them in a pan. For the rest, chop it up real good. Then grind it all in small batches in a mortar and pestle. Or, if you're less dumb than me, use a food processor, but then you may have to add a bit of liquid. I didn't find shrimp paste at 99 ranch, probably not because they didn't have it but because it's sometimes hard to find something in all the abundance. But I did have dried shrimp, so I rehydrated them and crushed them with some fish sauce. I kept all that separate from the rest because I have a vegetarian roommate, so I froze that separately in individual doses, to be added to curries she's not eating. The spices used in each curry are pretty similar, but the ratios are different, which I think may be just a peculiarity of my recipe sources. I actually liked the green curry quite a bit better... I don't like having too much spice relative to the other flavors. Don't get me wrong, I like my curry spicy, but I want those other flavors too. If I want spicy I can use a lot rather than a little curry... I'm not going for spice efficiency here. So next time when I do the red curry I'll probably use a spice ratio similar to what I used for the green. And here's what I made: gaeng khiew wan poo (green curry crab... yum!) green curry start by deep frying the crabs. They react violently with the hot oil. watch out. set the crabs aside and sautée the onions in sesame oil. then toss in the eggplant, cut into bite-sized pieces. cut each of the crabs in half and throw those in . stir in a heaping tablespoon of green curry. Soft-shell crab is expensive true, so this recipe would really work nicely with most any seafood. Green curry is particularly tasty with seafood (whereas I think red goes better with land based meat).
4 tsp coriander
2 stalks lemongrass
1 tsp peppercorns
4 tsp galangal
2 tsp chopped kaffir lime leaves or grated lime rind
2 tbsp coriander root or cilantro stems
6 tbsp chopped shallots
1/4 cup chopped garlic
15-20 red fresh chilis
2 tsp gapi (shrimp paste)
salt or fish sauce.
2 tsp whole peppercorns (white would be good, I had black)
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp coriander
2 tsp cardamom <-- not in any of the recipes online but I suspected it was in my aunt's
2 tbsp coriander
1 cup shallots
2 tbsp garlic
2 tbsp coriander root or cilantro stems
1 tbsp galangal
about the same amount, maybe a little less of ginger
2 tbsp (about one stalk) lemongrass
1 tbsp shrimp paste
1 tbsp fish sauce
2 tsp lime rind or kaffir lime leaves
4 soft shell crabs
a bunch of thai eggplants. like, maybe 6 or so. if you can't get those, then try to find some of those cute round ones at the hippy grocery store, or the japanese eggplants. The big dark purple ones are a last resort.
some chopped onion.
maybe some baby corn, though i didn't use it this time.
coconut milk
then a splash of coconut milk, but not much. like 1/4 of a can or less. This is not a soupy curry, it should be thick and mostly clinging to the food chunks. and a nice, dark, green-brown.
Posted by amanda at 10:16 AM | TrackBack