Cooking with Jonny69: CURRY!!!

Jonny69

Jonny69

Jonny69

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Cooking with Jonny69: CURRY!!!

Something for the weekend sir? Why yes Jonny. How about a curry recipe? Of course sir, I'll take you through how to cook this beautiful tiger prawn curry:

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I have made this over and over and over again to perfect the recipe trying to mirror curries you get in Indian restaurants. The secret is to make a paste which acts as the base of the curry and then you add various ingredients to it for taste. This is by far the most adventurous of my cooking escapades so far but it's a lot simpler than you'd first think and the results are a satisfying rich curry sauce ready for meat, seafood, fish or vegetables and spices to taste. I'll go through what else to add further down.

Ingredients, makes 4 portions:

8-10 cloves of garlic
2 onions
chunk of ginger about the size of your thumb
1 red chilli
Bunch of fresh coriander
Tin of tomatoes
Vegetable oil
Salt

First we make the paste. Into the blender goes all the garlic cloves, half an onion, a piece of peeled ginger about the size of your thumb and a whole red chilli:

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This sounds like a lot of garlic. It is! But the base of the curry is pretty much garlic and onion, very strong flavours to stand up to the heat of the chilli and other hefty spices you may add. You also only want to put in the one chilli at this point as you can bump the heat up later with chilli powder or more fresh chilli. Add to that a handful of washed fresh coriander, a good pinch of salt and about 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil:

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Again that sounds like a lot of oil but without it the paste doesn't cook well. Blitz that up until it's quite smooth:

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Get a wok quite hot and dump it all in and get it frying down until it starts to darken in colour slightly and the oil will just start to come out the paste:

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Add in a whole chopped onion and cook that in until it softens:

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Once the onion is soft add about half to 2/3 of a tin of tomatoes and continue to fry down until the colour of the tomatoes has darkened down with the paste:

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See how the colour has changed, it now looks like curry and tastes like curry. It's too rough and thick to use as it is so add a small cup of boiling water and allow to simmer down for about 20 minutes. It'll reduce down a little from this:

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To this:

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And basically now it's ready to go. Check the taste at this point. It'll taste like curry, but you'll know how much more seasoning and chilli you need to add. This is your curry base. It's to this that you add meat, seafood, veg or fish and other spices. It's the other ingredients that you add that determine what curry it is you have just cooked.

So to make my prawn curry I have added the following to my pestle and mortar, 1/2tsp coriander seed, 1/2tsp cumin seeds, 1/2tsp turmeric, 1/2tsp garam masala. I ground that up and it goes straight in to the base. I also added 1/2tsp of chilli powder to bring the heat up a bit and about 5 whole cardamom pods.

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I also added a sliced yellow pepper and the rest of the second onion, again that goes straight in as it is and cooks for about 10 minutes:

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At which point the sauce should have taken a more rich colour, smooth texture and the vegetables you just put in are still slightly crunchy:

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I got these raw peeled frozen tiger prawns from China town, undefrosted, they are going in as they are and the ice on the outside will help add to the taste:

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Let that simmer down for about 10 minutes until the prawns are cooked through:

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And now it's ready to serve on a bed of pilau rice with a hunk of nann bread in a large eating bowl:

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Have a go at that, it tastes fantastic!

Some further ingredients to add to the base, depending on the curry: Coconut milk, yoghurt, tomatoes, spinach, almond, tamarind. No end, you just experiment and add it to your taste :)
 
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Nice work, Jonny69, I'll have to give that a go at some point. Just as a suggestion, when I make curries, I find that natural yoghurt makes are really nice sauce when combined with spices and tinned tomatoes.
 
iamdjdz said:
Could you substitute the prawns with chicken or something?
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I'd cook the chicken a bit longer ;) But yes of course you could.

I might give this a go Jonny, what I love doing as well is making a curry and then putting it in the slow cooker all day, works especially well with lamb which just melts and tastes lovely after a day cooking in the sauce.
 
Awesome Recipe Sir!

Have some stars, I always use a bodge it method for making curries but this looks awesome.

Noticed you didnt add any cream/coconut milk at all... When cooking at home it's usually for people that don't like things too hot so normally put some in about when you are adding the meat.
 
A tip if you use chicken instead, poach or steam the chicken until it's cooked, drain and leave aside to cool, then just throw it in and heat for a few mins, when the currys ready.

Keeps it really succulent and moist.
ps - johny can you recommend any books for seafish, as I'm only just started to get into seafish and have no idea how to cook such things, time wise and best methods. Damn parents for hating any type of sea food other than fish.
 
AcidHell2 said:
ps - johny can you recommend any books for seafish, as I'm only just started to get into seafish and have no idea how to cook such things, time wise and best methods. Damn parents for hating any type of sea food other than fish.
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No good with fish unfortunately, I'm very allergic to it!!!

I've watched Rick Stein do some great stuff with fish, wish I could eat it, looks delicious.

Damien. said:
Thats awesome, im gunna cook this tonight. Its got me in the mood for a home made curry ! :)
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:cool: you won't regret it :cool:
 
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