We’re both huge cooks in our house. We love to cook, we love to eat, and we both like to bake as well. I’ve been thinking about posting photos and recipes on a (possibly) once weekly basis, but not sure how well that would be received.
A few people have asked about our curries in the house. We have curry every Sunday night, almost without fail (although it’s a bank holiday today here in England, so we’re having curry tonight instead). We always make the curries ourselves and always make the breads ourselves, too. We’re skipping bread tonight in favor of pilau rice, but I thought I’d give it a go describing how to make a curry. I guess I’m hoping that someone will try to make one, too, and become a convert.
Apologies if this comes across as in any way patronising, I’m going to assume you are like I was the first time I made a curry – scared stiff by ingredients I had never heard of and certainly never used. My first foray into making curry was in Sweden, when I hosted a dinner party that had a number of English folk coming to it. Curry is almost the English national cuisine, I’ve yet to meet someone here who does not like curry, although I am certain there are a few around. In hindsight, I was mental – I chose a curry off the web that had fifty million ingredients, took me four hours to make, and was a bit like throwing a novice swimmer into the middle of the Atlantic. This is a hope that you don’t take that same swim.
We’ve used all kinds of recipes and have many curry cookbooks, but the single greatest curry chef we’ve found out there is Anjum Anand. If you’re going to buy a curry book and give it a try, start with this one. Her recipes are clear, easy to follow, and she really loves what she writes about and it shows. We have had many of her recipes and have yet to find one we don’t like (and we have all of her cookbooks!)
Tonight’s menu is one of hers from the aforementioned book – Chicken in creamy yoghurt (soy chicken for me, the real thing for him) accompanied by pilau rice made from another cook, one Delia Smith. You can find the pilau rice recipe here.
We followed the recipe as she states it, but don’t be freaked out by the pestle and mortar stuff. If – like me – you’d only ever seen one of those in a Victorian hospital drama, just buy the ground equivalents.
(Although it does indeed look cool, we don’t put the ingredients in poncy glass bowls before cooking. It creates far too much washing up. This was for the benefit of the photos.)
Anjum’s most fabulous chicken in creamy yoghurt recipe calls for the following ingredients:
Marinade:
Blend all of the ingredients together (we use 1 1/2 – 2 tsp of all of the spices, and about a thumbs’ length of the ginger and seven cloves of garlic) in a blender with the yogurt (I hope non-specific ingredients don’t stress you out…)
And then marinade the chicken/fake chicken for a few hours in a non-metal pan in the fridge, bringing it to room temperature before you cook it.
Next up – get some oil into a big skillet (I use rapeseed oil, vegetable oil works just as well). Throw in one whole chopped onion. If you like it spicy (and I don’t), then take a few green chilis and put a slit in the side of them. Heat the oil with the onion and green chili, adding a black cardamom pod if you want (you don’t eat those, but they do add some nice flavor).
Add the curry mixture into the pan, and cook for 20 minutes or until the chicken is done, making sure to stir it often so the yogurt doesn’t curdle, and add water if the sauce starts to dry up.
Serve over the pilau rice, with a handful of chopped fresh coriander (cilantro) on it if you’d like – and it’s grand with a glass of Greek white.
If you don’t try this recipe, check out some of the other recipes from Anjum Anand on the BBC website. They’re fabulous and a staple in this household (and the twins both adore curry and eat it much, much hotter than their mum does, too).
-S.
UPDATED-spelling error fixed (good catch Gareth) and if you love the sound of this recipe, leave me a comment and I’ll email you the full deal. Anjum’s book is pricey on Amazon.com, but her BBC recipes are free, and I can email you her recipe in case you feel like giving curry a try!
Except for some of the slightly scary ingredients and lack of a food processor, this makes me want to give curry a try. Beautiful article!
“If – like me – you’d only ever seen one of those in a Victorian hospital drama, just buy the grand equivalents.”
It looks like you were a victim of automatic spell correction? If so, my sympathies. It’s hard to imagine anything “grander” than freshly ground spices!
My first experience cooking a curry sounds very similar to yours – an exotic dish from a Madhur jaffrey book that took four hours, but unlike you I didn’t have the courage to make curry preparation a habit.. :(
Brilliant. Now you need to export that book, as it is used in the States for $45 on Amazon. Unless I looked at that incorrectly. You just gave us the recipe so we would stop inviting ourselves over. ;-) I’ll take a plate of the faux chicken, oh and a big glass of wine.
Ooh you’ve tempted me there. I have only ever made one curry and I have to say I was the dog’s whatsits. It was Rick Stein’s lamb and spinach….worth a google.
I am so very excited! I hope I can find these things in the states, in the south, at Publix… (our shopping selection is so horribly limited.) Thank you so much for taking the time to do this!! I only cook things that come out of books with good pictures. Without pictures I end up with not what it is supposed to be. Thanks to your amazing steps I really think I can do this!
For the benefit of the US readers, rapeseed oil is also known as canola oil.
For the benefit of people who are afraid of the mortar and pestle, if you get into spice-heavy recipes where you really want whole spices (possibly toasted) to start off with, a good spice grinder just happens to be a standard coffee grinder. Not the one you use for coffee, though.
Penzey’s is a fabulous spice delivery group if your local supermarket has a poor selection or low turnover/old, flavorless spices.
I’ve been pushing Evil Rob to learn a korma recipe. Korma is a curry that involves coconut milk, cashews, and tomato paste. Like all curries, though, it pretty much starts with chopped onion and spices in oil. Once you realize that, curries get a lot less scary…
Amy— I’m also very visual when it comes to recipes. I have several cookbooks from Hermes House, which publishes low cost/bargain section books with conversions for all English speaking countries. (mL into tsp, for example.) They’re all full of gorgeous pictures. Have I used them? Not much…
Is olive oil acceptable? Or is it best to stick with canola?
Mmmmm, that looks tasty. How ’bout sending some of us readers on the other side of the Atlantic a sample?
Amy-olive oil absolutely ok!
We had homemade chicken curry last night, and usually eat it at least every other night out when we can find it when we are in the UK. It is so easy to make and everyone here likes it.
Sounds great. Would love to try. Would appreciate specifics.
Thanx
This looks so yummy! Wearing my OCD-container-loving hat, let me just gush for a second over the glass cups and spice labels. Sigh – it’s so beautiful.
Hey mate, LOVE the sound of this recipe, would be grateful to be emailed the full deal :)
PS. yes, I’m still lurking around, I know I don’t comment often, but when life turns to crap yours is still the only blog that is a must read. :) xx
The best curry I ever tasted was in Manchester England (because it was the only place I tried in the UK). Thanks for the post, I’m gonna pull out my culinary skills and try to duplicate.
I would love the full recipe! This looks absolutely amazing.
That actually doesn’t sound too difficult… perhaps I should try to make my own curry. I’ll take the recipe details! Thanks!
I have been wanting a good curry recipe for years. Please send it my way!
Love this new blog direction – keep it coming!
That looks great! We’re huge Thai curry fans here, and we make a variety of curry pastes that we freeze in ice cube trays and store in the freezer so we’ve got a lot of the prep work already done. Nothing beats a good curry!
Sounds wonderful and looks even better. I love reading recipes and looking at the pictures….I love that way better than cooking. I check the recipe, check the pictures and hand over to my husband to do the heavy lifting…he loves to cook, I love to eat. We’re a matched set.
Oh, please post weekly recipes (or as often as your schedule would allow). I would LOVE the full recipe of this. I adore Curry and I have yet to find an easy and tasty way of preparing it. :)
Please send me the full recipe and thanks for sharing!
Oh please email it to me! I have a container of plain yogurt and chicken in the fridge! My dad would love this!
Hmm, this looks fabulous and I hope to try it this week! I would love to see you post more recipes…your writing and beautiful photos can inspire me to cook more adventurous meals if anything can. Thanks for sharing!
Yum!
I’ve made curry before, but only from the pre-made curry pastes. I would love the recipe! Thanks, and LOVE the recipe/cooking post, keep them coming!
Erica
Looks fantastic, thank you for sharing. We usually buy our curry sauce in a jar but I have these ingredients so perhaps I can try making it next time.
I’m curious though – do the twins eat it as well?
Love and could live on curry! Going to Amazon to check out the book.
I love recipe-posts! So please post as often as you possibly can about your recipes. :)
I think that is an awesome idea. I have only made curry once in my life I am deathly afraid of it, but I do love to eat it and would love to learn how to make it!
I would love a weekly recipe post–very fun! I’d also appreciate it if you could email me the recipe for this curry. I can’t get the idea of marinating chicken in a spicy yogurt mixture out of my head! Yum.
I think it’d be brilliant if you did a recipe every week or so!
I’d love to try my hands at making a curry…if you can, I can, right? I’m not a great cook, but, I can follow recipes :)
Ooh would love the full recipe please! I recently finished a full time chef’s training program at a health supportive cooking school but did not get a satisfactory curry education. This looks great, thank you!
I’ve been wanting to do this too. The cooking thing, not the curry, although, I don’t mind a lightly spiced (am a wuss) curry.
So I made your recipe last night, exactly as you wrote it, and it was SO good! I make curries every now and then, so we’re no strangers to them, but the hubster said this was the best one I’ve ever made! So thank you! It was brilliantly easy and I’ll make it again:)
Yum! I adore curry.