Curry

I do like a good curry but finding one can be hard and making one from scratch always seems to involve a lot of forward planning. Of course, there’s the option of having a jar of curry paste in the fridge but I’m never quite sure how much sugar, salt, oil or other preservatives they contain and it also feels a bit too much like cheating.

A couple of times this year I have been organised enough to gather all the raw ingredients and make up a batch of my own curry paste but it always seems to make enough for about three curries. The surplus is placed into a pot in the fridge and somehow always gets pushed to the back and forgotten about until it goes off.

For a couple of years now I’ve been buying root ginger in bulk from the fruit and veg stall at work – anything in a bowl for £1. I take it straight home, peel it and then chop it finely in a food processor and use it to fill an ice cube tray. This way, whenever a recipe calls for chopped or grated ginger, I take out a cube or two – simple! It suddenly occurred to me that I could do the same with curry paste. I really don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner!

Anyway, a trip to the fruit and veg stall resulted in a haul of limes, chillies, ginger, garlic and coriander; out came the mini-food processor; the spice rack was raided and I was all set. Well, nearly all set. I did actually need some recipes. Fortunately Jamie Oliver has a selection of 5 different Indian-style curry paste recipes on his website and the BBC provided a simple Thai curry paste .

 

As you can see, my chillies were red rather than green so my Thai green curry paste was always going to be a little different. This is what I tackled first. I actually had some small pots which had originally contained Indian pickles from Tiffins our local Indian take away (a rare treat but somewhere where you can be guaranteed of a fresh, healthy, locally sourced meal!) Since the recipe says it makes enough paste for a curry for 8 people, fitting it into three of these pots meant that it should make three generous curries for two, with perhaps a bit left over for someone’s lunch or dinner the next day.

I next moved onto the Jamie Oliver recipes and took a while deciding which ones to make. Over a cup of tea I settled on the Korma and the Rogan Josh as the seemed to offer distinctly different flavours. These I did put into ice cube trays. Fortunately there’s no worrying which is which thanks to the quantities of tomato puree, roasted pepper and paprika in the Rogan Josh, which gives it an unmistakable red hue. Of course, once frozen it would be easy to pop the cubes out of the trays and into a freezer bag, which would be easier to label.

Korma paste

Rogan Josh paste

Having three different curry pastes in the freezer now means I have spicy variety to hand. And yes, I’ve used some already in the form of a Thai fish curry with mango and a Cauliflower biryani – delicious (even if I do say so myself!)