...or The Best Curry I've ever made.
Please excuse the superlative title of this post. But it was really rather good.
I was aiming for a Rogan Josh style curry, and wanted a slow cook to maximise meat tenderness and flavour. The result was perfectly tender turkey chunks (yes not your obvious curry meat, but cheap and very tasty so give it a try) in a rich, silky, tomato-based sauce. The effort required was minimal. All round the ideal meal really.
Being a curry the list of ingredients is as long as your arm, but it's mostly spices and I reckon you can just give it a bash with whatever you've got in.
Ingredients:
• 600g diced Turkey Thigh
• 2 tbsp Plain Flour
• 1 Onion
• 2 tsp Ghee (or Oil)
• 3 tsp minced Ginger & Garlic paste
• 1 tsp Cumin seeds
• 1 tsp Fenugreek Seeds
• 1 tsp Mustard Seeds
• 1 tsp ground Turmeric
• 4 tsp Curry Powder
• ½ tsp Chilli Powder
• 1 x 400g tin Chopped Tomatoes
• 250ml Passata
• 250ml Beef stock
Method:
• Pre-heat your oven to 140-150°C.
The bit with all the flavour (10 mins)
• Heat the ghee in a large pan.
• Add the onion (chop half finely, the other half into thin slices/chunks) and begin to sweat over a medium to low heat.
• Add the ginger/garlic paste and the seeds to the pan and continue to cook on medium.
• When the onions have sweated down nicely, add the powedered spices and cook for anothe rminute or two until you have a pan full of flavourful paste/onions.
• Transfer to a casserole dish.
The meat (5 mins)
• Turn the pan up and if it's looking dry add a little oil.
• Coat your meat in the flour and add to the pan to sear/brown the outsides (may need two batches, dont crowd the pan).
• Transfer to the casserole and stir into the pastey mix.
The sauce (1 min)
• Make up the stock (I used half a stock cube)
• Pour the tomatoes and passata over the meat with the stock and stir together. (it should just about cover the meat)
Cooking (2-3 hours)
• Cover the dish tightly with foil and/or a lid if it has one.
• Place in the oven and wait.
• Check around 2 hours, if you're in, that it hasn't completely reduced or dried out (not likely, but add some liquid if so).
• After about 3 hours reomve from the oven and serve as traditional with rice and naan, and anything else you usually have with your curries (I made a quick chickpea dhal to go with this one)
(Serves 2 heartily, or 3 with plenty of sides)
Notes:
• You can add some veg to the dish too if you like, I've done it with red pepper chopped up and thrown in.
• Curries don't photograph well!