Halloumi Curry
Posted at 12:47pm on Sunday, February 6th, 2011 by AndyA really tasty curry – the garam massala and cinnamon balance the heat of the chillis and the richness of the tomatoes nicely, while the Halloumi gives an interesting alternative to meat.
This is a simplification of the Halloumi Curry recipe on The Superflux blog (thanks to Anne for pointing me to it!)
- Preparation time
- 15m
- Cooking time
- 45m
- Difficulty
- 2
- Serves
- 2
- 2 small onions
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 1 inch thumb of ginger
- 1 tsp mustard seeds
- 2 tsp cumin seeds
- 2 birds eye chillis
- 4 cloves
- 1 bayleaf
- 1 cinnamon stick
- ¾ tsp salt
- 2 fresh tomatoes
- small bunch (approx. 15g) of fresh coriander
- 1 can whole tomatoes
- 1 ½ tsp garam massala
- ¼ tsp turmeric
- 1 ½ tsp ground coriander
- 150g pack of Halloumi cheese
Peel and finely chop the onions. Peel and grate the ginger and the garlic. Finely chop the chillis (seeds in or out, depending on your heat preference).
Get the oil good and hot over a medium flame in an oven proof dish (casserole dish preferably). Once it’s up to temperature put the mustard and cumin seeds in. As soon as the mustard seeds start to pop put the chopped chillis, the cloves, the cinnamon stick, the bay leaf and the onions, garlic, ginger and salt in the pan. Give it a good stir over a high heat for a moment or two, before turning the heat down and cooking gently until the onions go soft and translucent (which should take a little over 5 minutes). You’ll need to give it a little stir every now and again as they cook.
While you’re waiting, finely chop the tomatoes and the fresh coriander. When the onions have softened turn the heat up a little and put the chopped tomatoes and the chopped coriander in. Give it a good stir and cook the tomatoes down for another couple of minutes. Once the tomatoes have broken down nicely add the can of tomatoes. Bring it up to the boil quickly, before reducing the heat to a simmer. Now add the ground coriander, the turmeric and the garam massala.
Leave it to simmer uncovered on a low heat for about 30 minutes. You’re aiming to thicken it, but not to the point of it catching on the bottom of the pan. If it looks too thick you can always add some water. It will depend on the amount of juice in your can of tomatoes. Once you’re done pull out the cinnamon stick and the bay leaf (and the cloves if you can find them!).
At this point you can leave it to cool for later, or move straight on to the next step.
About 15 minutes before you’re ready to eat, reheat the sauce and, once it’s bubbling nicely, chop the Halloumi into cubes and add it to the pan.
When the cheese feels soft it’s ready. This should be in about 12 to 15 minutes.
Serve with Cabbage Sabzi if you’re feeling virtuous or Ginger and Pepper rice and some Naan if you fancy a full on blow out.
Blogging from Forkd
Posted at 9:16am on Sunday, April 20th, 2008 by AndyWe built blogging tools into Forkd pretty much right from the start. Jared, one of the two main brains behind the idea, is a heavy food blogger and he (quite rightly) didn’t want to have to type his recipes in twice. Indeed, the ultimate target was to provide a single central repository for your recipes from which you could publish to multiple places (a la Flickr for photos or Youtube for video).
Sadly very few people so far have used the facility. No great surprise, I guess, in that few of our users as yet are bloggers and that it takes quite an investment and some experimentation to get a nice layout. We’ve done our best to produce microformat-like HTML for the recipe that we post to the blog, but you’ve got to style it regardless.
Still, as one of the people that built it and as both a blogger and keen cook, I thought it about time to actually use the tools myself. I’ve got approximately 20 original recipes on there now; variations on recipes from a wide range of blogs and books. Here is my current favourite:
Chicken Vindaloo
Hot, sharp, genuinely interesting; this isn’t as hot as its British curry house counterpart. Instead this is based on more traditional recipes (primarily this one at Aayi’s recipes). Worth noting that, whatever we may have been led to believe, the aloo in vindaloo doesn’t mean potatoes. Instead it means garlic (explanation at Wikipedia). The use of caramelised onions in the marinade make this a truly unusual but extraordinarily tasty dish.
- Preparation time
- 30m
- Cooking time
- 20m
- Difficulty
- 2
- Serves
- 2
- 2 skinless chicken breasts
- 1 medium onion
- 3 tbsp groundnut oil
- 1″ thumb ginger
- 3 cloves garlic
- 1 tsp mustard seeds
- ½ tsp coriander seeds
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 1 tsp fenugreek seeds (optional)
- ¾ tsp salt
- 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 3 birds eye chillis
- 1 tomato
- 25g fresh coriander (small bunch)
- 125 ml water
Chop the chicken breasts into roughly 1 to 2″ cubes
Peel and roughly chop the onion. Get 2 tablespoons of the oil good and hot in a frying pan over a high heat and fry the onions until they go properly brown. They provide the unusual colour and flavour; you are looking to almost burn them they should be that brown. Once they are browned drain them of any excess oil and put them to one side.
Peel and roughly chop the garlic and ginger. Roughly chop the chillis (seeds and all) and the tomato. Put the caramelised onions, garlic, ginger, chillis, tomato, mustard seeds, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, fenugreek seeds (you can leave these out if you can’t find them), salt and red wine vinegar in a blender and whizz them up until you have a thick but smooth paste.
Put the diced chicken in a non-metallic bowl and thoroughly coat it in the paste. Leave it for a minimum of 30 minutes (and upto 4 hours).
When you’re ready to cook get the remainder of the oil hot over a medium heat in a wide pan. Put the chicken and all the marinade in the pan and stir fry for a few minutes.
Add enough water to make a thick gravy and turn the heat right down. Leave to cook for approximately 15 minutes.
Finally, finely chop the fresh coriander and put it in the pan. Turn the heat up fiercely for another 1 or two minutes to drive off any excess liquid and wilt the coriander leaves and then serve.
Slow cooking
Posted at 4:33pm on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 by Andy
It’s finally here. Dave, Antony and Tom have been toiling away over a hot stove for the past few weeks and Forkd is finally ready for the tasting. It’s the feta release right now (d’ya see what we did there?) – if you’d like a feta tester account mail me. They’re very limited, but so is the readership of this blog… You’ll need a genuine love of food, a desire to show the world your cooking and the patience to log good bug reports and feature requests. If you’re interested please drop me a line (andy at isotoma.com will do it).
