Curry Sauce Question

Cafe Society
1

I’ve slowly been learning how to cook over the past year. It’s a slow process, particularly since I’m not much for cook books. I tend to go to the grocery store, buy some produce and other basic ingredents, and then throw it all together and hope for the best. This has worked fairly well so far…almost everything I fix is edible (sparse praise, I know). I tend to tinker with a dish for a while, trying to figure out what is missing to make it right.

So, this weekend, I acquired curry and cumin spices and assorted vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, potatoes and mushrooms) and set about cooking them all together.

This is what I did:

Boil potatoes.
Throw broccoli, cauliflower and some olive oil in frying pan.
Add 1 tsp of cumin and curry power.

Stare at it.

Add 1/2 cup water.
Add potatoes.

Stare at it.

Add 1 cup chicken broth.
Add mushrooms.

Stare at it.

Ponder adding flour. Reconsider and dump rice in there to soak up extra liquid.
Throw in a dash of pepper, because, damnit, I bought pepper that one time.

Call it a night.

It really wasn’t bad - I don’t think I ever experiment quite enough to risk fixing something truly inedible (ignoring that unfortunate artichoke, of course). However, the sauce wasn’t quite right.

I poked about online for a while, and with my copy of the Joy of Cooking, but I haven’t come to any good conclusions as to what is missing. I mostly want the sauce to be thicker, and hopefully, more savory.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I’ve come up with cream, yogurt (yuck), and coconut milk as possible future additions. I’ll probably throw some tofu in next time, but that isn’t going to fix the sauce issue.

Thanks!

2

I noticed how many people claimed they couldn’t cook indian food in a recent thread. I think it’s basically that you have to have a good handle on how to adjust temperatures-it can be pretty tricky on an electric stove. Also, I (just personally) feel that there’s a certain order to cooking it to make the natural juices flow out and create the curry. I rarely add water.

  1. Heat oil-add 1/2 tsp. sugar…the oil is hot enough when the sugar melts

  2. Next step add onions and fry till golden brownish

  3. Add your curry powder and fry-you have to reduce temperature at this point to keep spices from burning usually

  4. If you want mushrooms-add them now…they’ll release their own water. If no mushrooms, then add a can of chopped tomatoes at this point (amount equivalent to how much sauce you like). If you want mushrooms in the curry AND you plan to make it tomatoey…add cook the mushrooms first. Then add the tomatoes. But that’s just my preferance.

  5. Add your vegetables and gently simmer…they release their own liquids into the curry-then, if you like you can add some garam masala on top while it’s simmering and stir it in (this creates a nice smell). I recommend peas, potatoes and mushrooms as a combo that goes together well. Frankly the idea of broccoli in a saucy curry makes me shudder but I loathe that vegetable in general. I still think broccoli/cabbage/cauliflower belong only with dry sabji-style sautees.

  6. Add greek style yoghurt for creaminess and to thicken AFTER you reduce the heat and it has “gone cold” for a bit. If you add the yoghurt while it’s too hot the protein will “break”-I don’t know how else to explain it. But I can tell pretty easily when someone has added yoghurt when the curry is still too hot (temperature wise).

You can add regular yoghurt if you wish but I prefer greek style because it doesn’t have as much tang.

You can also google aloo mutter if you like.

3

I know what you mean, I think - rather than being smoothly, evenly blended in, there are little bits of white matter scattered throughout the sauce, where the proteins separated out from the heat.

4

Yes-little curdly bits. My mom calls it “breaking” the curry.

5

Even if you don’t like yogurt, it tastes quite different when cooked and in a curry. I prefer it to cream in my various curries and it’s a little bit better for the waistline than coconut (although when it comes to many Goan and Thai curries, you pretty much have to use coconut for the right flavor).

The best primer I’ve seen to Indian cooking is Madhur Jaffrey’s books on the subject.

6

Is the sugar just a temperature thing? Or are you by chance Gujarati, who seem to add a little bit of sugar to most of their dishes? Just curious.

I seem to recall that Madhur Jaffrey remarks that most people undercook the onions for Indian dishes and cook them under too low a heat.

7

Anu-lala is right but I must also add not to use olive oil. I find it has a strong taste of its own and drastically changes the flavor. Stick with vegetable oil.

You could also add some cayenne for some heat.

ETA: Oh, and I am Punjabi and never add any sugar to any of my foods. That is most definitely a regional thing. All according to taste.

8

No, I’m a Southie…half Goan/half Marathi. My mom is the Konkani (aka Goan) half though, and she taught me that. I just figure the OP is asking about north indian style food which is what most people around here are asking about. I asked my mom what the point of the sugar was and I think she responded that not only does it indicate that the oil has heated up, it also adds a brownish colour to the onions without making them go completely soft.

On onioning-in a lot of traditional Konkani shrimp coconut curries, we fry the onions till they are very soft and then add them AFTER we make the curry sauce out of other ingredients…at the end. It gives a very interesting oniony flavour to the curry.

I’ll admit that because I am a) lazy and b) spoiled with c) parents who have a lot of free time…my mom makes me the masala base for all the south Indian curries and all I have to do is defrost and add vegetables. I think North Indian cooking is comparitively easier because I don’t feel I have to bust out the food processor and blender quite as much.

If you’re interested in Konkani food try Aayi’s Recipes. She has the most comprehensive site for all those traditional favourites. Aayi means “Mother” in both Konkani and Marathi by the way.

9

Hmmm…good advice so far. Thanks to everyone who has replied.

I’m not advanced enough of a cook to divide dishes by region. I tend to group food into “tasty” “not tasty” and stop there. I really…just wanted to thicken the sauce. It tasted good, just thin.

Okay, so the broccoli was perhaps not traditional for a curry. Like I said, I just throw things together. I tend to keep broccoli on hand because it goes so nicely with a baked potato when I am running late. I believe my thought process in including it was “I like broccoli. How bad could it be?” I think this is the logic behind a lot of my cooking.

My mom, who is not Indian and whose sole claim to cooking expertise is a Chinese stir fry class taken twenty years ago, just suggested cornstarch. “I still have a box of it from 1989! It lasts forever!” she said. I’m not sure this is a great endorsement. She also hates curry, so I can’t rule out sabotage.

Does Coconut milk work well? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before.

10

My advice - am not of Indian heritage, and certainly of the cobbling-it-together school of cookery:

Seems to me the onions are pretty important for the sauce texture - actually blending them briefly in a food processor before frying can work well, as when fried they are a sauce in themselves.

Black pepper is good for an underlying bitter heat, while garlic adds a good depth to the taste, and turmeric may taste dusty, but makes the curry look the part.

And finally, if the sauce appears too watery, you may just need to simmer it without a lid to lose some liquid.