Curry made simple

A story about curry and a simple recipe to share

A few years ago, my sister was organising a potluck curry night and we were to bring a curry or a side. Being the organised person she is, she wanted to know who was bringing what, and I think her focus was on Thai style curries. I didn’t think it mattered, but I decided to bring a Sri Lankan style curry. By the way, some details of this may have been lost over the intervening years and I could be making some of this up. What I do remember about the event, was that it was a mortal sin in the food world of my sister to mix my cultures! Needless to say, I haven’t changed much.

I love the fact that the Australian food culture has become a very multicultural mix. We didn’t have much of a food culture before the influence of the immigrants that brought a widely diverse range of foods. Thank goodness is all I can say. Corn beef and damper with limited vegetable options is not much of a food culture. Of course, the people that were here before the English settled our country had a food culture, but sadly a lot of that knowledge was lost when European farming took over. That is not what this discussion is going to be about though.

This discussion is about Curry and has been inspired by Lisa McLean and Annada D. Rathi decision to host a Curry Night Event.

While my favourite book about curries, is Charmaine Solomons Complete Asian Cook Book, my go to curry these days is simple and never fails to taste good. One of my sisters was visiting recently, so I decided to make a chicken curry, using my Basic Curry recipe so that I could post about it. The recipe I use, which is at the end of the post is not really inspired by any culture, you can use any meat, any veg or no veg, and as I discovered the other day, buttermilk can be substituted for coconut milk. I’m a firm believer in substituting if I don’t have the correct ingredients and I encourage my readers to be versatile also.

I didn’t realise that I was out of coconut milk and while I am fully aware how to make coconut milk, I chose not to. As a side story, many years ago when I first received the above-mentioned book, canned coconut milk was not something you could buy in the shops in Central Queensland, so I had to make it following Charmaine’s instructions. Incidentally you couldn’t buy any curry spices either - only a very basic curry powder! When we’d go to Perth to visit Kim’s family, his sister would take me to her local shop to buy a supply of ingredients to take home. She’s married to a Sri Lankan so they eat the best curries…..anyway, I have digressed again! Actually, I think it was Kim’s sister Gill that gave me the book.

I’ve been making butter lately, so I just swapped out the coconut milk for buttermilk because it was in the fridge and needed using up. I did marinate the chicken in the spices and buttermilk for a little while first. I find chicken breast can be pretty dry (even our home-grown ones) so marinating helped with that a bit.

Sometimes when I make curry, I just add extra veg into the curry and serve it with rice like I did for this Goat Curry.

I do love to have all the accompaniments with a curry and because I know I was going to post about it, I thought I’d go to a little more effort. Not a lot of effort though as some of the accompaniments were pre-made.

I made a pumpkin sambal which was originally my brother Joe’s recipe (now I get to remember him every time I make it….). Joe’s recipe used coconut cream to mix through the pumpkin, but as you know I didn’t have any canned coconut products, so I cooked the pumpkin with some desiccated coconut. It worked a treat and I’ll continue to do this. Cut up some pumpkin, peeled (I did about 1.5 cups), cook in salted water or stock, with about a tablespoon of desiccated coconut. Don’t use too much liquid, because you want it all absorbed by the time the pumpkin is cooked. While that’s cooking, dice some red onion and chilli. Mix this into the cooked pumpkin.

Cucumber and Yoghurt are a classic and always tastes good - I added in some fresh mint as well. You could also add garlic if you wish.

I like having sauerkraut on the side and also included some tromboncini kimchi.

I received eggplant for one of my milk swaps this week so I fried up some slices and at the end threw in some sliced garlic. I also had a little tamari and sesame oil sauce left over from something else, so I tossed that in at the end as well. Yes, another cultural mix! This sauce included tamari, fish sauce, honey fermented garlic, chilli, rice vinegar and sesame oil.

Lime Chutney was the final accompaniment. I made this a year or two ago and keep forgetting to eat it. Kim doesn’t like it, but I do - it’s very strong with that preserved lime rind flavour. I would have the recipe somewhere if anyone wants it….

On to my easy and go-to recipe for curry.

Basic Curry

Use Blade, Round, Chuck or other stewing beef, or lamb or goat or sausages or chicken or any other meat that you wish. This should serve 4-6 people.

Ingredients

600g Meat – cut into chunks

1 large onion - sliced

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 tablespoon fresh ginger – finely chopped or grated

1 tablespoon each coriander, cumin and turmeric powder

1 Chilli (optional, or to taste)

1 400g tin of coconut milk

1 400g tin of tomatoes

Method

Heat up some coconut oil in a saucepan. Add onions and fry until lightly browned, add the coriander, cumin and turmeric and fry for a minute or two – until fragrant.

Add the meat and the garlic, ginger and chilli. Stir around to coat in the spices.

Add the tomatoes and the coconut milk and simmer for approximately an hour or two depending on what cut of meat you’re using.

Notes:

Serve with rice and stirfry vegies, or cauliflower rice if grain free, as well as any of the usual curry accompaniments.

When I’m making a quick curry, I add in some vegies when cooking the curry. Vegetables to add would be any of the following: carrots, potatoes, sweet potato, pumpkin, zucchini, squash, peas, beans, choko, celery, capsicum. Add these in the last half hour or less depending on what veg you add and how long they take to cook.

If using sausages, chop them into pieces after they are cooked.

Chicken curry using buttermilk instead of coconut milk.

Basic Curry

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