Sunday, November 20, 2011

How To Enjoy: Curry

As I mentioned earlier, I've made a pot of curry today. While I posted the gluten-free recipe here, today I made it a little differently. There are a few minor differences like using all purpose wheat flour and a larger amount of solid ingredients, but things did change a little in the process. Probably the biggest difference in this pot versus the last I made has to be the curry powder I used. Previously, I've used S&B Oriental Curry Powder and a random Thai brand depended on what was available. This time I used a new container of cheap powder that's made for Chinese tastes instead.





There's more star anise and less cumin in this one than I'm used to, so the kitchen smells vaguely of five spice powder. This is absolutely not a problem, and it still tastes like liquid gold. Things came out a little runnier than I would've expected, but otherwise I can't complain about it.

There is a minor difference when talking about Japanese-style curry that most Americans don't pick up on. "Kare" simply is the spicy sauce, with or without vegetables. Most people think of "kare raisu" when they think of curry - sauce with extra ingredients ladled over rice. While if you just go to a place and order a plate of curry, you'll most likely get curry rice, there's plenty of extra ways to do this as a meal.

One of the oldest methods comes with curry itself from the British. You simply pour the sauce over a slice or two of bread and eat it like an open-faced sandwich, with or without anything other than the usual carrots, potato, and maybe meat. There's a drier form of curry which I have not made yet (simple called "dry curry;" Hiroyuki wrote about it in his blog last year), and of course serving curry stirred with udon or ladled out beside a fried meat cutlet (katsu curry).

My personal favorite has to be curry rice, but katsu curry comes in as a close second!

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