A Gentle Curry

This was from the The Splendid Table website (http://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/chicken-curry-with-gentle-spices)

1 large onion, cut in half

6 large garlic cloves

1 3-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled

1-1/2 generous teaspoons of a blend of ground coriander, cumin and fresh-ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon salt 

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

3 to 4 canned tomatoes

2 jalapeños, stemmed and seeded

1/2 cup water 

Give this a whir and you get a paste. 

You cook this in some oil, add 1/2 c of yogurt (I used my homemade yogurt which I make and eat all the time (see below) and cook that down.  Finally you add another 1.5 cups of yogurt, some water and 2 pounds of chicken and let that cook.  Serve it over rice.  Great taste.

Massaman - take 2

This type of curry, called Massaman curry, is a slightly less hot version of Thai curry. It is from the south of Thailand and you get that sense from the spices you find in it.  Later adventures will include some other curries but my wife has a limit to the heat she can take.  One of the ways it become milder is to roast the chili peppers and garlic and shallot.

Ready for roasting.

After roasting you let them cool and peel them.   You put the seeded, roasted peppers into a food processor and grind them.  Add the garlic and shallots, along with 1/2 c. chopped ginger (below), 1/4 c. water, 4t. lime juice, 4t. vegetable oil, 1 T fish sauce, 1 t. Five Spice powder, 1/2 t. ground cumin, and 1/2 t. black pepper.  Process until it forms a paste.  This is your curry paste and it will keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks. 

To actually make the curry, we're going to use red pepper, potato, onion, coconut milk, chicken and cilantro.

First step is to fry some paste in oil to brown (below). Stir in 1. 25 c of chicken broth, coconut milk, potatoes, onions, pepper and salt.  Bring it to a simmer and cook until the potatoes are just tender, about 12-14 minutes.

Stir in chicken and simmer for an additional 10-12 minutes.   Serve with chopped cilantro and dry-roasted peanuts. 

You can see that once you have the paste, the rest is really easy.  You can buy curry pastes in the stores but part of this for me is finding out what's in them so I am doing it from scratch.

A curry for all seasons

I was looking through a Cook's Illustrated magazine and found a recipe for Thai Chicken Curry and I thought curry sounded good.  It is one of those dishes that is both regional and varied.  I also know my wife really likes it.  The more I thought about it the more I liked the idea.  Like gumbo, the protein can vary to suit mood, shrimp, chicken, beef, pork, even tofu.  There will also be a lot to explore between regional variations.

We also have a cookbook which we've had for many years which has a lot of different curries.

To start I'll go with the first one I found. 

I'll do a more detailed walk through of a later batch.  For this one I had to substitute dried chipotle chilis for the New Mexico chilis.   Otherwise everything was pretty much as written.   I didn't use rice.  The result was spicy.  Not too spicy for me but a bit much for my wife.  Flavor was good.  This was a good place to start.

Still haven't found what I'm looking for....

I'm going to spend some time this morning looking through Epicurious and maybe the Splendid Table website looking for inspiration.  What I really enjoyed about making gumbo is that it's one of classic regional dishes that is famous and made in a huge number of ways.  Chili would be another example and I am tempted to go that route if it hadn't been for the fact that I've made it a few times.  I've certainly never perfected it.  I may come back to that if my search is unproductive. 

The Last Gumbo

No, not the last gumbo I'll ever make.  Simply the last one for this project.  And what a gumbo it was.  Deep rich flavor, great combination of meats.  This post will outline in pictures the steps.   This recipe had as its basis, a recipe from Epicurious.com.  I deviated from the recipe based on things I learned from my other attempts.

At the heart of it is Andouille sausage, a spicy southern sausage.  This brings a lot of flavor to the whole thing.

It is fried in some oil briefly to brown.  It is already cooked when you buy it so this is just a way to up the flavor.

The next step is to make a roux, an essential component of a southern US gumbo.  All roux is is flour that is cooked in oil until it browns.  I let my roux brown quite a bit in this batch, about 7 minutes all together.  You have to stir the whole time basically so that it doesn't burn.

You can see in these three pictures that the roux is growing increasingly dark.  In the picture just above onions are added.  Followed by green bell pepper (another ingredient which seems common to all gumbos), celery and garlic.

These ingredients are cooked over a medium-low heat for about 10 minutes until they soften.

I put in about 1 and a half of these cartons of chicken stock.

This is where I deviate from the recipe.  I just really like tomatoes with these flavors so I added them even though the recipe didn't call for them.   I then let all of this simmer for about 45 minutes.

 Of course, OKRA.  You have to use okra.  This is frozen, cut okra so it's super easy to add.  I use about three-quarters of a package and let it simmer for about a half hour.  I don't like it to get super mushy.

Even though this looks a bit mysterious it's really just frozen scallops.  I put these in to thaw and begin to cook for about 5 minutes before I added...

...shrimp.  Note that the original recipe was for chicken and sausage.  I've made that one as well and really liked but both my wife and I seem to favor seafood a little more.  I've made some all seafood gumbos that were great.  However, the andouille sausage really makes it.   The shrimp cooks through in about 4 minutes and you're ready to go.

On the table I add hot sauce and something called Gumbo Filé.  It's a powdered sassafras root that adds a nice quality.   Eat this with some red wine on a cold day and you will certainly be warmed. 

Ultimately I've found that this is one of those great formulas that can go in all kinds of directions.  Try it some time if this is the kind of thing you like.

Gumbo Roots

I've made two other gumbos since the last post.  One was an all-seafood gumbo which came out well.  The second was a chicken and sausage.  One thing I learned from the seafood gumbo recipe was that if it doesn't have okra that it's not gumbo.  That is because okra in Senegalese is ngumbo, and so okra is a requirement.  I'm OK with that.  I've grown to like it. 

My daughter found this recipe  (http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/senegalese-style-seafood-gumbo) in which the author found the roots of gumbo.  No roux in this one.  This uses something called palm oil, which is a brilliant red color.  It's also all seafood.  I liked it a lot although my taster was less enthusiastic.  It didn't stop here from eating her fill however.

The prep and the meal.

Here are the ingredients assembled.  The one big substitution I made in the original recipe was that I didn't pour the gumbo over rice.  I used quinoa (a kind of grain/seed) instead.  This is because I am a Type I diabetic and rice is not great for blood sugar. 

Preparation was straightforward.  You start by making a roux, which is essentially browning some flour in oil.  This is the basis of a lot of creole/cajun cooking.  You cook the vegetables and spices for awhile, add the tomatoes, clam juice and sausage and let that cook for 15 minutes at a low boil.  This allows a lot of flavor to leach out of the sausages into the broth.  A lot of the flavor of this dish comes from these sausages, which are spicy and garlicky.  I bought frozen okra and added that for another 15 minutes.  Meanwhile I peeled and deveined the shrimp.  Finally I threw in the raw shrimp.  They cook quickly, just three minutes.  And that was that.  As I mentioned I served it over cooked quinoa.

You can see a picture of a bowl of the finished product below.  In the original Splendid Table podcast the old New Orleans chef said that gumbo was always consumed with red wine so I obliged.   It was fiery but not quite enough for my tastes so I added some Frank's Hot Sauce.  Betsy raved about it.  It was on the border of being too hot for her but in all she thought it was great.   There is enough for dinner again tomorrow!

 Big surprise here is that the okra was just great in this dish.  I've had it once or twice when it's been a big slimy but here it tasted great.   This attempt was a great success but I'd like to try a slightly milder, more fish-based gumbo.  That's next.