Pick up one of Madhur Jaffrey’s guides to Indian cooking. They’re fantastic.
For those looking for a curry recipe that’s easy and tastes like takeout, try this Chicken Jalfrezi. Yes, you have to grate an onion, but the taste is phenomenal.
Yum! I’ve seen her cookbooks. I saw it at Costco the last time I was there and by the way, I love spicy Indian food also. I’ll pick up the cookbook the next time I’m there. I am just disappointed by not being able to replicate any Indian dish that approximates the restaurant fare.
What would happen if you replaced ghee in a recipe with regular butter? Would it still work out? I’m just not sure what “clarified” means… if someone could just clarify that for me it would be great.
Ok. So I still don’t know if you could theoretically just use regular butter…? If you weren’t cooking something at a super hot temperature would it basically be the same?
Hmmmm, I don’t know, I’ve heard of people using clarified butter as a substitute for butter but not the other way around. In the comments section of the previous link someone mentions a quick method of preparing clarified butter they picked up in a restaurant, sounds easy enough to make it a moot issue but I haven’t tried it (yet).
ETA: here it is
"Subject: Restaurant trick for making clarified butter quickly
I used to work in a restaurant, and there I learned a trick for making clarified butter quickly. Melt your butter in the microwave in a square container, let it settle a bit, and skim the top. Then pour the fat off the top over one of the flat sides.
This allows you to pour more fat off before you start to pour milk solids as well. You’ll still have to spoon some off, throw some out, or do some straining, but if you’re in a hurry and you’re willing to waste a little fat (as is nearly always the case in a restaurant setting) this is a great trick."
Interesting. I’m just wondering if it’s necessary is all. Being a vegetarian and therefore not cooking meat, I don’t tend to need to cook at really high temperatures.
Hopefully we’ll hear from someone who has tried it but it seems that the only difference would be the regular butter has more milk solids, doesn’t seem like it would ruin a curry dish. The last curry recipe I made called for whipping cream, I didn’t have any and used sour cream and it came out fine. I think there’s a pretty decent margin of error here (compared to baking say).
Ghee is essentially an oil, so substituting veg oil would be more appropriate than regular butter.
Jjimm’s got it right; my family tends to find ghee too heavy for curries leading to them being too greasy, so we use sunflower oil instead. Works pretty well…
Wow, so many responses!
After posting this question, I had to be away from the computer for the rest of the night, and really didn’t realize how many people here were both passionate and knowledgeable about curries!
For anyone who asked, no, we don’t have a Japanese market, a Whole Foods market, nothing like that. This is Cumberland, a little tiny city in western Maryland. The closest we have to an “ethnic” market would be Emerick’s; because of its local fame for selling venison balogna, venison sausage, breaded “fish tails” and the like, it could technically be classified as “ethnic redneck”. 
I can’t even imagine walking into a place like that and asking for curry! Heh.
So, can I gather that Thai curry is spicier than Indian curry? If I buy a bottle of curry powder or some curry paste, will the container specify whether it’s Thai curry or Indian curry?
Thanks for all the info so far!
Unfortunately, that question doesn’t really have an answer either, because there are dozens of different kind of Thai curries too. Thai green curry can be blisteringly hot with green chillis, or really mild; same with red. Massaman curry is not usually that spicy-hot. Panang curry isn’t spicy-hot at all. It’s down to your personal taste. What distinguishes a Thai curry is usually: coconut milk, lemongrass, galangal (a kind of ginger), cilantro, kaffir lime leaves, fish sauce, and chilli. You can make it with no chilli in it at all, if you like.
If you’re buying generic powder or paste made for a western market, it will almost certainly denote the origin*: but they’re so amazingly different that one smell is all you’ll need to work out what’s from where, for the rest of your life. Most western-bound pastes will indicate how spicy-hot they are, too.
*Though I think something just labelled “curry powder” will be Indian/south-Asian garam masala, with stuff like turmeric, coriander seed, cumin, mustard seed, fenugreek and so on in it - and if it doesn’t have chillis on the ingredients label then it will just be aromatic, not spicy-hot.
Yeah, but it wouldn’t taste the same. (I’m going from the quote on the linked page “Removing the milk solids and impurities allows us to retain much of the flavor of butter while being able to cook at higher temperatures.”)
Oh, and what are “kaffir lime leaves”? They are one of the stumbling blocks in my ever having been able to follow a recipe to make a Thai curry from scratch.
We’re just trying to curry favor.
I’ll have to stew over that before I can respond properly. . .
Jjimm, I understand from your response that my question doesn’t have a real answer, but your response has given me lots of info to use as a “jumping-off point”, so-to-speak.
Geez, it just occurred to me, Jjimm, that between this thread and my thread about buying wine at Aldi, you’re going to assume I’ve never been out of this hick town! 
I actually grew up in a suburb of Baltimore, but grew up eating my Mom’s “cooking” (yeah, I put it in quotation marks for a reason). My Mom was good Irish woman; I think her family had a law that every-single-freakin-thing you cook has to be either totally devoid of flavor, or has to be disposed of immediately!
norinew writes:
> For anyone who asked, no, we don’t have a Japanese market, a Whole Foods
> market, nothing like that.
So drive to the Washington/Baltimore area and go to some ethnic markets. You come here for Dopefests, so it shouldn’t be that hard to drive here every few weeks to shop for things that you can keep for a while.
The first time I ever tried currry (powder) was in an American style curry sauce of some type that I believe was accompanying ham, of all things. It was the typical yellow curry powder that one can commonly find on a supermarket spice rack. My first impression was that I didn’t like it, at all. It has this weird overtone of maple and a sharp muddle of acrid pungency. I enjoyed the slight heat, but it didn’t really seem to have a defining note… it really just seemed like a bunch of spices thrown together that had no Harmony. However, I did find that I enjoy curry pastes and fresh, properly developed curries… I believe it was just the inauthentic style of curry sauce that first introduced me to it was poorly made, and gave me a bad taste impression. I’ve since had it as a “highlight” spice in things like chicken salad and when used in proper amounts it is tasty and awakens and brightens flavors.
Kaffir lime leaves are, well, leaves from a type of lime tree, they are loaded with essential oils that perfume the dish with a citrus flavor. They are not really to be eaten and are probably analogous in use to the bay leaf in western cooking. I think I can get them powdered and frozen at my local thai market.
Leaves from a lemon or garden variety lime tree can also substitute, I’ve found.
If I can define what I want, it would be even easier than that. My hubby actually works down in Baltimore, and if I can tell him exactly what to get and where to get it, he will. However, he’s amazingly non-experimental about cooking, so he wouldn’t have a clue as to how to find me something.
We do try to get to a Trader Joe’s once in a while when we’re down that way (I don’t just come down for Dopefests, he and I both have family down that way).