After failing to decide what to have for dinner and the wife having already eaten, I decided it was the opportune moment to have a go at the Viceroy Omelette. The Omelette was made to spec though I was tempted to add some chopped mushrooms. Served it with a minted salad and Aloo Jeera.

Will I be making it again, oh yes. I was really surprised how much I enjoyed it. I don't know why I thought it would be perhaps not to my palette but it was very tasty indeed. I might cook the onions a little in advance of adding the remaining ingredients next time as I felt they were still a little undercooked, and despite using 2 finger chilli's I feel there is room to add 3, but other than these very minor observations, it was thoroughly fantastic.

What did they think would happen?


http://youtu.be/lXqLZDw7kdo

During the week I had ordered a few take away's and had some left overs which I had kept to do a little experiment with. Whilst I did have some main and side dishes left, these were consigned to a foil tray and frozen for another day. But the fridge received several small polystyrene pots of mint sauce, 1 mango chutney and crucially, 1 pot of coconut chutney.

Now the coconut chutney is the thick dry red masala paste that is used by the Shanaz to make the Tikka Masala gravy. A spoon of this stuff on a popadum does wonders after a few pints, give it a try

Anyway, best laid plans were thwarted when we decided in last minute fashion to have chicken kebabs. So rather than resort to my normal shish recipe, I thought i'd try a go at using the left over chutneys. With this I mixed equal amounts of the mint sauce and the coconut chutney and tasted it, it wasn't too bad missed that curry tone. So I opted to then add an equal amount of the IG spice mix, bingo!

So I then set about mixing up enough to marinade 3 fat chicken breasts that had been cut into tikka sized pieces. I added just a little Mustard Oil and small squeeze of lemon and mixed everything together and let the chicken marinade. 

Oven was set to 250c and the now skewered chicken was cooked in the oven for 20 mins.

Result, wow what a fantastic conclusion to the test. The flavour of the tikka was pretty close to the mark and so to was the colour. I shall certainly be doing it again if I have left over chutneys. I urge those that can, to give it a go, at least just to see the results for yourselves. If you cant get the thick masala paste from your local, check out the following topic http://cr0.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=7860.0

Cheers,
Malc

Getting back into currying again, i've been thinking on trying new things. Over the past months i've been trying to make my food look and taste better but always seem to struggle with presentation. I think in the main, this is because my portion sizes are far to big to allow for delicate plating. :

Anyway, I put this dish together yesterday which was: Poached Chicken breast with Bengali spiced potatoes and a Hyderabadi style curry.

I was quite pleased with it but felt I had plenty of room to improve it. Not sure what you guys will make of the pic, but all comments (good and bad) are welcome.

Cheers,

Malc.

This question came about after a conversation I had with Ali, the owner of the Shinaz in Lewes. All of the curry dishes they serve are runny (accepting that some dishes are meant to be this way) however,  I asked to have a Dopiaza made dryer. He had absolutely no trouble with my request and infact commented that he too, prefers a dryer Dopiaza. Of course it begged the question then, why does he serve a runnier curry to his customers? He replied "this is how my customers expect and prefer them, who am I to argue".

In contrast, the Indian Garden in Burgess Hill that serves some of the best curries I have ever tasted, would serve a much dryer curry in respect of say a Karahi (Korai on their menu) or Dopiaza for example. There are other differences between theses two restaurants in that the Runnier Shinaz curries often have alot of smaller chopped onion and green peppers with plenty of base, whereas the dryer Indian Garden dishes would have large chunks of onion and green pepper with much less base.

So ignoring the curries that are meant to be runnier like the Madras and Masala etc. How do you prefer your curries in general?

Cheers,

Malc.