Re: Can it be Curry?

>>> Sibyl said:
>>> It's easy enough to make an amateur American curry, I used to do it
>>> all the time when I was the cooking half of a young couple and broke.
>>> Authentic cooks mix their own curry powder seasoning, and every one is
>>> a little bit different, but you can buy just "curry powder" on the
>>> spice rack at the store. The brands vary enormously in hotness, so
>>> it's best for a beginner to start with just a little, like a teaspoon,
>>> and then judge if you want more and hotter for the next time (it needs
>>> to be cooked at the beginning, so you can't really "add more to taste"
>>> at the end).
>>>
>>> The way I do it is to chop an onion, maybe with garlic, and fry it in
>>> a little oil with the curry powder, then make a "white" sauce or gravy
>>> beginning with that oil. For super-simple, add a can of condensed
>>> mushroom or cream of chicken soup, with a little liquid, probably
>>> water. Then add whatever meat you're using-- chopped leftover
>>> chicken, canned tuna, whatever. When it's about the right thickness,
>>> serve over cooked rice, like spaghetti sauce on spaghetti. There
>>> should be a "sambal", served separately (fancy banquets may have a
>>> dozen sambals, all in separate dishes so one can have one's choice) to
>>> sprinkle on the top by the eater at serving. They might be such as
>>> raisins, sliced bananas, chopped onions, peanuts, crumbled crisp
>>> bacon, snipped chives or green onions, on and on.
>>>
>>> You can get very elaborate from there, but that's the basic idea.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Huh?
>>
>> Start by heating the oil, fry your onions (some curries call for a lot
>> of onions, others just a little) and adding the spices, then brown the
>> meat - not pre-cooked left over meat - raw meat. Beef, chicken, lamb -
>> I favour lamb, myself. Curry is a stew and the meat should be cooked
>> with the spices, simmered gently for a while - sometimes even left
>> overnight to cool and then re-heated next day so that the spices infuse
>> the meat. I cannot imagine a curry made with canned condensed soup.
>> <shudder>
>
>Every one is different, really. I'd rather make a gravy or white sauce
>from the beginning, myself, but a lot of Americans _do_ use canned soup
>for gravy or white sauce to make it easier, and Laurie wanted "simple".
> Your way is nice if you're using fresh meat for the meat, but again, I
>described "simplest" and said you could go on from there as you liked,
>if you like the curry flavor and want to get more authentic, either
>British authentic, Scottish authentic, or India authentic. Mine was
>American "get a cheap supper in a hurry, that tastes good" authentic.
>
>But it's not a casserole, it's not all mixed and cooked together, any
>more than canned spaghetti that's already saturated with its sauce is
>"spaghetti". The canned spaghetti is the "spaghetti casserole". You
>could better call it "stew on top of rice" (which is also possible for a
>supper, but if the rice is cooked _in_ the stew, that's all stew.)


Don't get me wrong, I have cooked and eaten plenty of cheap slop in my day, but I wouldn't post the recipe as advice on how to cook curry.

Maryann