Basic Curry Sauces
According to this Indian restaurant owner,
the trick to highly authentic and delicious
Indian food, is using two very similar "basic curry sauces". I
make up about four or five pints of each at a time and freeze it.
I found to my cost that you must stick
absolutely to his recipes to get that true
Indian restaurant taste.
Here's how to make the sauces:
4lb (1.8Kg) cooking onions (in US, white onions)
4oz (100g) coarsely chopped fresh ginger
4oz (100g) coarsely chopped fresh garlic
5 1/2pints (2 litres) water
2 tsp salt
1 16oz (450g) tin tomatoes (the ones with no salt, spices or herbs added)
16 Tbsp of vegetable oil (I use olive oil, this seems a lot but it all
works out as you'll see)
2 tsp tomato puree
2 tsp turmeric
2 tsp paprika
Put the ginger and garlic in a blender with about a pint of the water.
Blend until very smooth...about two minutes.
Peel and coarsely slice the onions and put them in a large saucepan with
the rest of the water and the blended
ginger/garlic mix.
Add the salt and bring to the boil Leave on low simmer, with lid on, but
stirring occasionally, for 45 minutes.
Leave to cool.
When completely cool, pour as much as your blender can take and blend
really, really smooth, at least two minutes. This is very
important. Empty into a large clean saucepan.
Repeat with the rest of the boiled onion mixture
a blender-full at a time until it's all done. Keep some of this
"white basic curry sauce" in one-pint freezer containers (old
margarine containers?), and freeze. It seems to
keep indefinitely, but we've never had any long
enough to be sure!
Open the tinned tomatoes and pour into the rinsed blender and blend until
very smooth. Again, smoothness is important, so blend for two
minutes. Into a clean saucepan, put all that
oil, the tomato puree, turmeric and paprika and
add the blended tomatoes. Bring to the boil and then simmer,
stirring occasionally, for ten minutes.
Add the onion mixture and bring back to boil, and then simmer for 25
minutes, stirring often.
At this stage you'll notice that an oily froth rises to the surface. You
must skim that off three or four times during the simmering.
Keep some of this "orange basic curry sauce" in one-pint freezer
containers, and freeze.
From now on, to make many of these Indian recipes, all the time-consuming
work is done. You just have to remember to get the correct sauce
out of the freezer well before you start to
cook.
Rogan Josh Recipe
Submitted by Michael Leesley. Michael is a Yorkshireman, now living in the USA. Thanks Michael!
