Curry & Beer

       

I love curry. I love it so much that I would happily eat it forever. Indian food is the ultimate comfort food, spicy, robust and social. You can prepare it a day or two in advance or make it quickly when you get home from work, but it always tastes better the day after you make it, having had time to soak and blend all the flavour. 

When I first started experimenting with curries, I thought that they were really complicated, almost exclusive, with alien ingredients and complex methods. It turns out actually it's very much like making stew. I'm not pretending that I know everything about curry making at all, in fact I know very little in the grand scheme of things, but I make simple curries that I like to eat.  

This recipe is an Indian curry, I find Indian curries easier because, being British it's what I'm more accustom to eating. It's based on a Murgh Korma from north India, very similar to the Chicken Korma from a takeaway. I'm not a huge fan of chicken in a curry, I much prefer beef or lamb as it gives a better texture and holds its own flavour well, but if you wanted to you could swap out the beef in the recipe for chicken legs or breast. 


My song of the week this week is by Lykke Li - Gunshot It's such a powerful song take a look, and also while you're there check out a very inspiring man called Javeed Moore, he came in to do a lecture at university this week, explaining how cerebral palsy effects his life. Javeed Moore

Beef Korma

500g Good quality stewing steak
2tbls sunflower oil 
1 Large onion
1 Thumb size piece of ginger
4 Cloves of garlic
1tsp Coriander Seeds
1tsp Paprika
1stp Tumeric
1tsp Garam masala
Large bunch of coriander
1 Tin of coconut milk (or unsweetened organic yoghurt)
1 Small green chilli (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste
Natural yoghurt to serve


Start by finely chopping the onion, garlic and ginger. Put a large heavy based pan on a medium heat and add the oil, add the coriander seeds, onion garlic and ginger, simmer for a few minutes until soft and translucent. 

Add the spices, salt, pepper and the finely chopped green chilli (if using). Let the mixture cook for about 3-5 minutes, making sure that you scrape all the spices off that may have stuck to the bottom of the pan, if it is beginning to brown to fast, simply add a few table spoons of water to soften the mixture. 

Once the spices have cooked through, add the meat that you are using and brown it off with the spices, this will take about 10 minutes. Add the coconut milk, or yoghurt a little bit at a time to stop it from curdling. I always taste at this point as you can alter the amount of heat, I made mine a little too spicy, so I added a drop of milk and some honey to tone down the heat. 

Pop a lid on and simmer on a low heat for as long as possible, you can eat it after about 20 minutes (this is when you could do the rice) or leave it for hours, it all depends on how much time you have. I like to leave mine as long as I can, adding some water occasionally if it gets too dry. 

Serve with rice, coriander leaves, a blob of yoghurt and a beer.