Grilled Curry Chicken Skewers (well, they almost made it onto the skewers!)

Isn't it funny how I go for weeks not blogging a thing, then all of a sudden I have a mad rush of blood to the head and bingo, there's three blog posts in quick succession.  I have no idea why it happens, but it certainly seems to!

Now, these almost kebabs were so blinking tasty that they just had to be committed to blogdom straight away.  You won't have any idea the tussles I have had with yoghurt marinated chicken, but they have been almost on an epic scale of disappointment.  Hence, having had a taste of these little babies and realised that I'd reached nirvana, I just knew I had to write down the recipe and write it down fast - before it sank without a trace.

Now by rights, I should have laced these pieces of chicken onto kebab skewers and grilled them that way.  However, I discovered at the last minute that the majority of my little wooden skewers had left home, so they just went onto the baking tray and were grilled like that.  I don't think it harmed them any - in fact, I know it didn't.

Usually - and by "usually" I mean "in the past" - my attempts at yoghurt marinated chicken have been pallid at best and watery at worst.  However, in this new and exciting dawn, I am so excited to report that they were neither pallid, oh no, nor were they watery!  Well, they did exude a little water when being cooked, but that soon burned off.

They were deliciously spicy hot, with the warm curry spices singing along in harmony with the tang of lime juice and intense fruitiness of the tamarind.  The acidity of both yoghurt and lime juice had tenderised the chicken and the use of garlic granules meant there were no horrid lumps of half cooked garlic in the mix.  The slight charring on each piece brought out the best in the Tandoori spices and that spoonful of hot curry powder meant you were left in no doubt as to the worth of the sweet & fruity salad, along with the buttery rice.

I am seriously chuffed - maybe even "chuffed as nuts" as Dave Myers (he of Hairy Bikers fame) often says - with this recipe.  I might even need to cook it again, just to make sure it wasn't a fluke.  LOL  So if you give the recipe a whirl, do let me know how you get on with it!

Oh and incidentally - if you put your chicken onto the skewers, they'd be just brilliant cooked on a barbecue!

GRILLED CURRY CHICKEN SKEWERS   (serves 2)

Ingredients :

4 dessert spoonfuls of full fat unflavoured Greek yoghurt
juice of half a lime
2 tsp rapeseed oil
1 tbsp tamarind sauce
4 heaped tsp tandoori curry powder
1 heaped tsp hot curry powder
half a tsp of ground turmeric
1 tsp of dried garlic granules
a pinch of sea salt
pinch of ground black pepper
2 large skinless and boneless chicken breasts, sliced across the grain.

Method :

Firstly, in a large bowl, make up the marinade by stirring together all the ingredients except the chicken breast slices.

Add the chicken slices and stir gently, ensuring that the marinade reaches every piece.

Cover with cling wrap and set aside in the fridge for a minimum of 4-5 hours.

To cook, cover a baking tray with silver foil and spray with a little cooking spray.

Using tongs, remove each piece of chicken from the marinade (taking as much of the marinade with each piece as wants to come) and lay it in a blob on the baking tray, leaving a little space in between each piece.  Alternatively, lace each piece onto a bamboo skewer that has been previously soaked in water (to stop it going up in flames) - not too tightly - and lay the skewer on the baking tray.

Distribute any leftover marinade over the pieces that need a little more coverage.

Grill, under a hot grill (or a hot broiler, if you're American), until each piece has begun to char slightly.  You don't want to have a lot of charring, just a few spots on each piece's high points.  Turn the pieces and grill again.

Serve with buttery savoury rice and a fresh, fruity salad.

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Prawn & Pineapple curry - mmmnn, fruity!

Somehow or another, we've wound up with several little bits of things left over from dishes that either didn't happen, or where ingredients have been too much and a portion of them were put into the freezer "for another day".  One such is a tin of pineapple.  Somehow or another we've managed to accumulate two of them in the tin cupboard, which really is just one too many.

So I set my mind to pondering on what could be done with said pineapple. What it was supposed to be, was part of a salad.  However, England being what it is, the "too hot for anything but salad" days have gone for now and left me with a pineapple glut.  The obvious answer was to bake a pineapple upside down cake - and I wouldn't rule out the second tin being disposed of that way - but I'm afraid I just couldn't justify two cakes in quick succession.  No, I felt sure there was a savoury context I could use a tin of pineapple in - it was just a matter of deciding what.  Once again, the obvious is a sweet and sour chicken dish, but son & heir really isn't keen on that.  Which led me to thinking about the curries that involve fruit.  Our local Indian takeaway does a curry with pineapple and lychee, so I knew it was possible.

What goes well with pineapple, then?  Coconut.  Yep, that's perfect.  Chicken, or fish?  Prawns!  Yes, I believe I've seen salads with pineapple and prawns, so they have to be nice together.  A coconutty, pineappley, prawney .... um .... tomato?  Yes, that'd work, oh and I've got my new tamarind sauce, I could use some of that too!  Coconut cream would thicken it nicely and a combination of curry powders would provide depth of flavour.  And so, the delicious prawn & pineapple curry took form in my mind - and this evening, in my kitchen.

It really proved to be as good as I'd thought it would be.  To my taste buds, it was slightly frisky with chilli heat but for hubby and son & heir, they could have taken it a lot hotter so maybe next time I'll add a few red chilli flakes to just up the heat ante a little.  I could still taste the prawns (which was, for me, a desired result) and the pineapple juice as well as the tamarind sauce gave the curry a delicious acidity, together with - oddly - a degree of sweetness which a handful of peas helped along.

Now as for Cook's Tips, I have just the one which is to make sure that you add the cooked prawns at the very last minute, when you are just about to serve. They only take a twinkling to heat up and you definitely don't want them simmering in the sauce for longer than it takes for them to do that, or you'll have pink curls of prawn flavoured rubber - and nobody likes those in their curry.

So there you are!  The curry took me around 35/45 minutes to make, so it is a good one for an evening when you've not a lot of time or energy.  I really liked this curry and am looking forward to the next instalment of it!  

PRAWN & PINEAPPLE CURRY   (serves 3)

Ingredients :

1 heaped tbsp solid coconut oil
1 red onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped finely
3 tsp medium curry powder
1 tsp tandoori curry powder
half a tsp ground coriander
quarter of a tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground turmeric
2 large vine ripened tomatoes, cored and diced
pinch of sea salt
quarter of a tsp ground black pepper
110g tinned pineapple pieces, with juice
120ml hot water
1 tsp fish stock powder (or a low salt fish stock cube)
1 tbsp tamarind sauce (or 1 tbsp mango chutney)
15g coconut cream
a small handful of frozen peas
15g butter
250g cooked, peeled, cold water prawns.

Method :

Gently heat the coconut oil in a deep frying pan and add the onion and garlic. Fry, stirring regularly, until the garlic is a light golden colour and the onion has turned transparent.  This should take up to 10 minutes.

Add both the curry powders, coriander, cinnamon and turmeric and stir to combine.  Cook for 2-3 minutes until all trace of dry powder has gone.

Add the chopped tomatoes and stir well.  Cook until the tomatoes are beginning to soften, adding the sea salt & black pepper along the way.

Add the pineapple pieces, pineapple juice, water and fish stock and stir to combine.  Bring to a lively simmer and simmer to reduce the liquid by at least half.

Add the tamarind sauce (or mango chutney) and coconut cream and stir through until the coconut cream has dissolved and combined.

Add the frozen peas and butter and stir through.  You can now either simmer until the sauce has reduced to your liking, or add a little more hot water to thin the sauce to your liking.

Finally, add the prawns and stir through.  Continue to simmer until the prawns are heated through properly and serve in warm bowls with steamed white basmati rice.

Printable version

Kari Udang - Malaysian Prawn Curry

When you're a food blogger, recipes come to you by all manner of means.  There's the obvious ways, like via someone else's blog, or by a recipe site such as the great BBC Good Food.  Then there are the rather less obvious ways, such as when someone tweets you to say they've seen a great recipe they thought you might like and point you in the right direction.

Then there's the totally obscure.

Now, I was born in Malaysia and have a marked partiality towards any generic type of Malay recipe.  It's difficult to achieve true "generic" Malay recipes, because - like the U.K. - there have been so many culinary influences over time, that the genuine Malay foods have been rather bastardised over time.  However, when I see a recipe that purports to be genuine Malay, it makes me prick my ears up.

I've recently been promoting the blog gently via LinkedIn (where I'm Jenny Davies, if you're interested in connecting) and was contacted by Gopalasamy Balakisnan who recommended I visit his website www.malaysiaspice.biz where it goes under the name of The Spice Traders.  Just the name was enough to pique my curiosity, but while I was there and having a look around, I came across their Malaysian Recipes page.

There are quite a few recipes that sounded quite a way out of my comfort zone for cooking, but I thought if I investigated the "curries" page, that I might find something that would be a measure of the remainder.

The sauce, prior to adding the prawns

Which is how I came to find the Kari Udang.  (Are you still with me?).  The recipe came care of Mrs.Gandhiri Perumal, which okay I'll accept could have been a made up name just to make it look authentic, but you have to ask yourself why they'd bother to do that.

I liked the sound of the recipe, so onto the menu plan it went.

This curry is very definitely out of the run of the "ordinary" types of curry that I have made in the past.

It uses two different types of sliced onions, at different intervals.  Plus potatoes, aubergine and fresh tomato, along with an exciting list of spices such as mustard seeds, fenugreek, curry leaves and tamarind pulp - along with the prawns.  Now most of the spice list I had in the cupboard already, but I needed to find fenugreek and curry leaves.  Our local supermarket has been known to have curry leaves, because I've definitely bought them there in the past - but didn't appear to have any fresh when we went.  However, in the world food aisle, hubby pounced on a bag which appeared to say "Curry leaves" and all was well.  The fenugreek was a simple matter as they had great boxes of the stuff (which smells adorably like new mown grass).

I couldn't be doing with grating fresh coconut, so used a carton of coconut cream instead.  I suspect there wasn't much difference in the two!

The curry, ready to serve

So there I was, happily following the recipe and adding this, adding that, stirring and observing the dish as it changed and developed.  Until it came to adding the curry leaves - 10 or so - which turned out to be Bay leaves!  Oh no!  As hubby said - he would go and buy the one herb that we're never likely to need, as we have a beautiful bay tree in the front garden!  Which is why our Kari Udang was completely bereft of curry leaves.

Now I can't imagine that it would have made all THAT much difference to the eventual end flavour of the dish - certainly not where hubby was concerned, as he didn't like it at all.  Son & heir and I loved it and ate every little bit - son & heir even ate his Dad's helping.

If I were to make this again, there are a couple of points that I'd observe - and which I've taken account of in the recipe below.  One is to remember to find curry leaves, as they're there for a reason.  The other is to steel myself to hold out until the VERY last minute to add the cooked prawns, so as to prevent their becoming overcooked and rubbery - and decanting all their juice into the curry sauce, which watered it down too much.  Of course, using raw prawns would solve the problem - but then they're much more expensive.

I loved the lighter, fresher feel of this curry.  For all that it contained a complete carton of coconut cream, you could be forgiven for not knowing as the sauce was not heavy or cloying at all.  I think the addition of the large pieces of tomato helped where this was concerned.  I really enjoyed having a flavoursome curry that wasn't too frisky where spicy heat was concerned, but one that demonstrated so many different flavours in the same spoonful.

Don't be put off by the long ingredients list - as many of those ingredients will keep for a long time and thus can be used in other curries.  For instance, the tamarind pulp - I have had our block of tamarind for some months now and have found it keeps perfectly well in the larder cupboard (well wrapped, of course).  I try to bear my ingredients cupboard in mind when deciding on recipes to try, in that I'll pick a recipe that I have the majority of ingredients in stock already.  This makes best use of larger packs of herbs and spices and prevents your racing all around town every couple of days, looking for obscure ingredients.  Although, having said that, I'll be keeping my eyes open for curry leaves in the future!

KARI UDANG (Malaysian Prawn Curry)    Serves 3

Ingredients :

2 tbsp groundnut oil
1 large onion, sliced thinly & another, sliced thickly - used at separate intervals
a pinch of mustard seeds
half a tsp of fenugreek (mine was chopped leaves)
150g potato, peeled and diced small
half a tbsp tamarind pulp (I used dried, mixed with 1tbsp water then strained)
1 clove garlic, chopped
2 fresh green chillies, chopped finely
1-2 tbsp mild curry powder
10 curry leaves
sea salt
1 small aubergine, sliced thickly and cubed
250ml coconut cream (I used Blue Dragon)
2 large flavoursome tomatoes, cut into wedges

300g frozen King Prawns, defrosted (fresh would work as well, just add them much earlier in the process)
cooked white rice to serve, along with chapati or roti.

METHOD :

1.  Heat the oil in a wok and add the thinly sliced onion, mustard seeds, fenugreek and potato cubes.  Saute until the potato are almost cooked and the onion has browned.  Set aside.

2.  Add the tamarind juice to the wok, along with the garlic, green chillies, thickly sliced onion, curry powder, curry leaves and 100ml or so of cold water.  Stir and cook until heated through and fragrant.


3. Add the aubergine and simmer until the aubergine is all but cooked.


4.  Add the coconut milk, the reserved onion/potato mix and tomatoes.  (If you are using raw prawns, now would be a good time to include them).  Cover and simmer until the sauce has had a chance to combine and the tomatoes have lost their rawness.


5.  Milliseconds before you are due to serve, drop in the prawns and simply heat them through.  Do not be tempted to leave them longer than is absolutely necessary, or you will find your carefully crafted sauce begins to lose its consistency.


Serve.


Printable version
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Prawn Patia and an unsuccessful Saag Bhajia.

I was really quite keen to try Anjum Anand's Prawn Patia recipe (from her book "I Love Curry").  My interest in the dish stems back to when I was courting my ex-fiance (some 34 years ago) and we would habitually go out for a curry on a Friday evening, after having spent some time in the local pub.

One such evening, said chap was feeling unusually generous and coughed up for a starter as well as a main course (we knew how to live, in those days!) and I indulged in a Prawn Patia on a chapati.

The memory of that dish - its colour and flavours - have obviously stayed with me ever since.  Which is more than can be said for the fiance, who blotted his copybook and got kicked to the kerb a very long time ago.

Hence, I was quite excited to find a recipe for Prawn Patia from such a trustworthy source.  I was ready for the end result to differ somewhat to the memory I had carried for so long, but as it turned out, it was remarkably close!

Which, as an aside, got me to thinking that a 34 year old English recipe almost certainly wouldn't taste similar these days!  It just goes to show how recipes handed down in other cultures have the ability to stay so close to their roots.  Mind you, I suppose a Roast Beef dish wouldn't be so different now to one roasted in Medieval times - provided we roasted it over wood, instead of in an electric oven.  Still, interesting, eh?

I will admit to getting a little bit frustrated with the recipe, as it seemed to involve a lot of creating a reduced sauce, then diluting it, then boiling to reduce it again - which seemed to be wasting an awful lot of time and energy.  However, in restrospect, if I had have measured the liquid accurately instead of by eye, I might not have experienced such a lot of "reducing the sauce".  (I couldn't find the measuring jug and didn't want to disturb hubby to come find it for me). I wound up with a sauce which was too watery, for two reasons.  One, because I needed to have more patience with the reducing of it and two, because the prawns I used were inferior and carried a lot of water.  Next time, I'll use the better type of prawns!  Can't guarantee having more patience, but I'll try, honest!

The flavours were lovely  - sweet, sour and spicy - and I can absolutely see how it would have been so close to the memory as to have been satisfyingly similar.

The Saag Bhajia, however, was a different story.  What I SHOULD have done, was take the recipe for the Saag Aloo and just left the potato out.  *sigh*  What I did, was find a different recipe, which sounded as though it would end in a Saag Bhajia that would be very like one from your local takeaway.  Wrong!

The end result was overcooked slimy spinach in a gritty mixture of spices that were way too hot for a bhajia.  Both hubby & son & heir tasted and immediately rejected their portions - and I could understand why.  I ate as much of mine as I could - after all, it was spinach and spinach is incredibly good on the Inflammation Factor scale, so I didn't want to lose that goodness.

I will have another go at the Patia, as on another (more comfortable) day and paired with a lovely saucy vegetable curry, it will be a completely different story.  As such, I recommend it to you - but be prepared to be patient with it!

PRAWN PATIA   Serves 3

Ingredients :

4 red chillies

4 tbsp sunflower oil

2 onions, chopped

3 large tomatoes, quartered

3 garlic cloves

1 tsp ground coriander

1½ tsp ground cumin

½ tsp garam masala

salt to taste

2 tsp sugar

1½ tsp tamarind paste

400g raw prawns

handful fresh coriander, chopped.

Method:

1.   Heat the oil in a wok. Add onions and cook for 10-12 minutes until really brown.

2.  Place the tomatoes, garlic and chillies into a food processor and blitz until a paste.   (The tomatoes will make the paste more of a liquid than a paste, but ensure there are no big bits of ingredients left unblitzed).

3.  Add to the pan with the spices, salt & 350ml water.  Bring to a boil and cook for about 20 minutes, stirring. The sauce will thicken and darken.

3.  Stir in the sugar, tamarind and a little more water if you think it needs it.  Bring to a boil until the sauce is very thick. Add the prawns and heat them through as quickly as possible, so as not to release too much juice into the sauce.  

4.  Taste and season and add more tamarind or sugar if required. Sprinkle with coriander.

Serve with a vegetable curry and steamed white rice.

Inflammation Factors (approx) for the Prawn Patia : 1786+ (595+ per person).

Goan Fish Curry

Original version, minus okra

This was my first go at a) a Goan curry and b) a fish curry.  I'd say it was - for me - around 85% successful, however for my son & hubby, 95% successful.

For me, it was a little one-dimensional.  The original recipe didn't contain any lemon juice or okra and even with the tamarind paste, I felt it just needed that sharpness that lemon juice brings.  I had dithered and dathered over whether to include okra or not and was dubious about the texture of okra combined with the fish.  However, having sampled the original version, I'd definitely include okra in the mk. 2 version.

I used cod in the original version and again, I'd change that to haddock when I try it again.  The flavoursome sauce did a very good job of wiping out the delicate flavour of the cod, so I feel that haddock would stand up to it a lot better.

I served ours with rice, although I can't help but think that with the addition of a carbohydrate-based vegetable to the curry - such as potato, or sweet potato - you could easily dispense with the rice and just go for Naan bread as an accompaniment.  Served from warmed bowls, with naan to dip and scoop with, would be ideal.

Goan fish curry - very good with a Cobra beer!

GOAN FISH CURRY  (serves 3-4)

Ingredients :

2 tsp ground coriander

½ tsp ground cumin

1 dried red chilli

olive oil

1 onion, halved and sliced

a small piece root ginger, finely grated

2 garlic cloves, crushed

½ tsp turmeric

400ml tin coconut milk

a handful of Okra, top & tailed, then diced

1 tsp tamarind paste 

1 tbsp lemon juice

2 green chillies, finely sliced

300g firm white fish cut into chunks

fresh coriander, to garnish

Method :

Heat a little oil in a pan and cook the onion with a big pinch of salt until soft and golden.

Add the ginger, garlic, turmeric and ground spices and fry for 1 minute.

Add the coconut, tamarind, lemon juice, okra and green chillies and simmer for 5 minutes.

Add the fish and cook for 3-4 minutes until just cooked.

Sprinkle with chopped coriander and serve.