Category: curry

masala beef with curried pumpkin

Post author By Gary @ BigSpud
Post date January 16, 2010
6 Comments on masala beef with curried pumpkin

The most recent series of The F Word (which changed inexplicably mid-series to Gordon Ramsay’s The F Word) played host to local restaurants, pitting them against one another to find the best UK local restaurant. I’m not sure how you compare carbonara to chow mein to see which is “best” but the competition was entertaining enough. The show would have been improved tenfold if it had’ve been only clips of Jean-Baptiste stumbling though a pad thai, but there you go. The winning restaurant was Lasan, an Indian restaurant – what’s this, Gordon has a new book and series based on Indian food out? Well that is a coincidence.

Serendipity aside, I loved the sound of the dish that swung it for the Birmingham curry-house; masala beef with curried pumpkin. It seemed like a skillful blend of techniques and ingredients, and given I have a bit of a home-cooked curry fetish lately I thought I’d give it a whirl. I made some changes to the original: my budget didn’t stretch to fillet this week so used some casserole-type steak and braised it for a long time, and my house is not so spicy so I toned down the chilli element. I also chose to forego mustard oil, substituting oil steeped in yellow mustard seeds for a similar burn. I didn’t have time to grab veal bones so a little beef stock concentrate had to do instead, and finally tinned tomatoes seemed like a decent enough substitute, and I didn’t fancy a real tomato in January being worth cooking with. Other than that I was fortunate enough to grab some khudu, or Indian pumpkin, from a superb little Asian grocer’s near me.

The results? The curry was absolutely delicious. Rich and meaty, while still spiced and sweet was a very complex and deep flavour. The sweetness of such things as cassia bark came through, while the last-minute addition of cashew nut paste brought a richness to the sauce. A triumph. The pumpkin, while tasty enough, was a little watery. If I’d known this in advance I would’ve perhaps salted the squash first to draw the excess moisture out. That said, it was a refreshing taste alongside the rich curried gravy. With recipes like this, I can see why head chef Aktar Islam took the trophy. I’d certainly love to see a book of curries like this.

PS. leftover cashew nut paste, blended with a little cream and sugar and a hint of cardamom, makes an excellent lassi to follow this.

Masala beef with curried pumpkin:

750g casserole beef, diced

For the marinade:

1 tablespoon garlic and ginger paste

2 tablespoons papaya paste

2 tablespoons mustard oil

1 teaspoon tandoori masala

½ teaspoon chilli powder

½ teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon turmeric

For the sauce:

4 green cardamom pods

3” cassia bark

3 bay leaves

1 large onion, sliced

½ tablespoon garlic and ginger paste

½ tablespoon ground coriander

½ tablespoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon chilli powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 tin tomatoes

1 litre beef stock

5 tablespoons smooth cashew nut paste (toasted cashews blitzed with a little water)

For the curried pumpkin:

500g pumpkin, peeled and diced (approx 2cm squares)

½ teaspoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon coriander seeds, cracked

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 teaspoon tomato paste

1 onion, finely chopped

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon turmeric

½ teaspoon ground chilli powder

100ml water

Handful fresh coriander, chopped

Combine the beef with the marinade ingredients and leave for about 6 hours for the spices to penetrate the meat.

For the sauce, seal the beef in a large casserole pan then remove to one side. In a little oil crackle the cassia bark, cardamom and bay leaves for about a minute. Brown the onion, then add the garlic and ginger paste.

Add the dry spices and cook out for a few minutes, add the stock then bring to the boil. Scrape the excess marinade off the beef then add to the pan. Leave to simmer uncovered for 2 hours. Check the beef is tender before serving.

To finish the sauce add the cashew nut paste and ground cardamom just before serving. Adjust seasoning if needed.

For the pumpkin, crackle the seeds in a little oil for a minute then add the onion and garlic.

When the onions have softened add the pumpkin and toss in the mixture. Add the water and cover, cooking quite vigorously until the pumpkin is tender. Top with coriander and serve immediately.

Aktar’s original recipe is here.

Tags aktar islam, gordon ramsay

chicken curry food

chicken balti

After favourable experiences with their wonderful lamb, I thought I was on to a winner with a jar of Balti paste provided by Abel & Cole. It’s not by them but by a company called Geo Organics. You mix it with raw meat (chicken in this case) then add tinned tomatoes. I served it with rice and spicy cabbage.

It was disappointing – very little flavour to speak of, just a harsh burning sensation masking any real spices or aromas. It only goes to cement my notion that curry pastes really can’t be done in a jar – they are best prepared at home, with your own masala, with your own tempering. It’s a shame as I really wanted to like it; Geo Organics’ credentials are superb and you have to applaud the type of products they are making and the way they approach it. Unfortunately the flavour was just not there in this case.

curry food lamb tomato

lamb rogan josh

I’ve got a bit of a thing for curries at the moment, helped by recent repeats of Floyd’s India on Five. There’s tons of Keith Floyd’s typical ease, wit and of course plenty of great recipes. He tours the country and attempts to distill the tastes of the region into a handful of recipes. It never fails to impress me how different the techniques are around India yet still maintaining similar techniques: crackling, tempering, masala, gravy etc. I recently enjoyed a chicken tikka masala made at home and just had to do something from this series. The one that stuck out to me was a lamb rogan josh. That was the recipe sorted, what about the meat?

I was fortunate enough to be sent a boneless lamb leg by Abel & Cole. Their specialty is weekly veg boxes, serving up a random assortment of organic, locally-grown produce delivered to your door. Unfortunately this service doesn’t quite suit me; I’m a weekly planner who organises food for the week and getting a bunch of stuff I have to plan around just doesn’t fit. In addition to this however they also act as a butcher and grocer; including this lovely joint. I opened it out so I could cube it, trimming away the excess surface fat (if I was roasting this would have been extremely welcome, but not suited to the pot-roasting I was about to do). Cutting first into strips it was clear this was great-quality meat; an even marbling of fat within, a healthy ruby colouring and a loose texture.

On with the recipe then, the few unusual quirks to it were: onions (plus a couple of garlic cloves) were fried first to get a little colour, before being blitzed and added to the pan. After an hour or so in the curry this left a lovely sweetness that I really enjoyed. Also it’s in two parts; the lamb is cooked down with the spices first until it goes fairly dry – much like a rendang (or is it penang?) from Thai cooking – before adding the remainder of the ingredients. This caked the flavour right on to the meat in a very pleasing fashion. Towards the end I added ground almonds and possibly overcooked them a touch – they came out gritty and slightly bitter. That said the overall flavour of the dish was tremendous, giving and giving as a good curry should, with fragrant cloves to begin with, sweet onions and tomatoes, leaving with a slightly peppery finish. I love to eat a curry with a decent naan bread, pushing the meat ‘n’ sauce around and scooping up. This was perfect for that, as it had a quite thick gravy with which to mop. Next time however I’ll add a little more cardamom, and perhaps not let the almonds cook out so long – in face I might be tempted to leave them out altogether.

And the meat? Superb. It yielded beautifully in chunky flakes, and despite being up against the strongest of flavours you could still taste that it was lamb underneath all the spices. About half an hour into cooking I had a sneaky sample of the sauce and you tell that the lamb had started to release fats into the mix, as the slightly greasy – yet delicious – unmistakeable lamb flavour started to seep through. It was a beautiful piece of meat from Abel & Cole, and while I might not personally consider them for weekly veg (I have a friend who swears by their boxes) I will definitely go back to them for special joints of meat. In fact, I think I’ll be ordering my Christmas gammon from there any minute now…

Lamb rogan josh:

2 onions, sliced

4 garlic cloves, peeled

4 cardamom pods

2 cloves

1 tablespoon ginger paste

1 teaspoon chilli powder

1 teaspoon turmeric

1/2 teaspoon paprika

300g plain yoghurt

1.5kg lamb leg, diced

1 tin tomatoes

2 tablespoons ground almonds

2 tablespoons coriander, chopped

Fry the onions and garlic in a little oil until softened and starting to colour. Transfer to a food processor and blitz until smooth.

Add some oil to a pan and fry the cardamom and cloves over a high heat until a fierce crackling noise is heard (about 2-3 mins).

Turn the heat down and add the ginger and onion pastes. You should stir continuously to avoid sticking and burning. Add the chilli, turmeric and paprika and stir well to avoid the powder clumping together.

Add the yoghurt and stir until combined, then add the lamb and a good pinch of salt. When everything is well mixed transfer to your lowest hob heat and leave to bubble gently, uncovered, for about an hour and a half. Stir every half an hour or so.

When the the mixture has gone quite dry add the tomatoes and ground almonds and simmer for another 30 minutes. Check the seasoning and stir through coriander. Serve with rice, naan, a vegetable side or all three.

Tags keith floyd

cauliflower chicken curry food rice

chicken tikka masala

Every couple of months I get the urge to make another curry, and I’ve made plenty in the last year. It was a Saturday dish, so I had to time to put a little effort in. After a little research I settled on Jamie Oliver’s chicken tikka masala from Jamie’s Dinners. I still had some garam masala left over from a Heston-inspired blend some months ago so that was going to be my main spice base. Also with recent experiments in brining being met with a great deal of success I had to stick some brining in as the first stage. You could skip this bit if you wanted to, but I love the moistness and depth of flavour this imparts.

I wanted a vegetable side-dish and love the way cauliflower absorbs curry flavours. The key for me is to almost overcook it – a soft, squishy floret bursting with spice is the way to go here.

Plain rice is always sniffed at in my house so I have to be creative with it. I remembered a delicious rice dish by the cuddly Nigel Slater, from my most favourite of his books Appetite. I’ve eaten it before just on it’s own, but gently pared down it makes a tasty – yet interesting – bowl of rice.

The curry itself was time-consuming (aren’t they all?) but thankfully very, very tasty. In fact about the most ‘authentic’ (yes, of course I mean authentic to that you find in a takeaway) tikka masala recipe I’ve eaten. Creamy, nutty and boasting spice from within. The cauliflower was a tasty foil for the curry, with aromatic rice to back it up. (On a side note, both Jamie’s and Nigel’s recipe called for at least 1 chilli in each – we’re not so crazy about super-hot things in our house, so I’ve omitted them to let the spices speak for themselves. By all means chuck some in if they’re your thing).

A dead tasty nottakeaway.

Chicken tikka masala (serves 3):

For the brine:

1 litre water

2 tablespoons sea salt

5 tablespoons honey

2 cloves garlic, crushed

2 cardamom pods, cracked

3 cloves

2 chicken breasts, diced

For the tikka marinade:

6 cloves garlic, grated

3 inches fresh ginger, grated

1 tablespoon mustard seeds

1 tablespoon paprika

2 teaspoons ground cumin

2 teaspoons ground coriander

2 tablespoons garam masala

200g natural yoghurt

For the masala sauce:

2 onions, sliced

2 tablespoons garam masala

2 tablespoons tomato puree

2 tablespoons ground almonds

120ml double cream

Handful parsley, chopped

Mix the brine ingredients together and soak the chicken in the water for at least 2 hours, anywhere up to 8 hours.

Drain and rinse the chicken well. Discard the liquid.

Heat the mustard seeds in a splash of oil until they start to pop (about 2 minutes). Remove the seeds from the pan and stir into the other ingredients. Coat the chicken with the yoghurt mix and leave to marinate for half an hour.

In the same pan the mustard seeds were warmed in, add some butter and fry the onions gently with the garam masala. Leave to sweat and soften for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, grill the chicken pieces on both sides until cooked through.

Back at the onions, ad the tomato puree, almonds, 1 litre water and a good sprinkle of salt. Allow to bubble and reduce until thick.

Add the cream and check the seasoning. Add the chicken into the sauce and stir well to coat the meat and let the flavours mingle.

Stir in the parsley and serve.

Gobi masala:

1 head of cauliflower, cut into small florets to cook evenly

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon garam masala

200ml vegetable stock

Heat the butter in a small saucepan until foaming. Add the spice and cook for a minute.

Add the florets and toss well to coat in the spice butter. Cook for another minute.

Add the stock and boil fairly fast until the cauliflower is knife-tender.

Turn off the heat and put a lid on it for about ten minutes. The cauliflower will soak up some of the excess fluid.

Aromatic rice:

1 onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, peeled and bashed

1 cinnamon stick

3 cloves

4 cardamom pods

1 cupful rice per person

Fry the onion gently until softened, then add the garlic.

Add the spices and stir, allowing them to warm.

Add the rice and a generous sprinkle of salt, stir will to coat the rice in the spiced oil. Top up the pan with three times the amount of water to rice. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer.

Cover the pan and allow to simmer for ten minutes – do not lift the lid.

Turn off the heat and leave for a further ten minutes, leaving the lid on.

Stir through with a fork and grind over plenty of black pepper. If you have any left over from the curry, throw in some parsley too.

Tags jamie oliver, nigel slater