The life of Austen

Ghee. Not like gee whizz or 9.797 645 m/s², but clarified butter. Clarified butter is made by heating butter so that the milk solids stick to the bottom of the pan and the butter fat, or ghee is left as a golden liquid at the top of the pan. With true Indian ghee the butter is heated so that the milk solids become slightly brown, giving a mellow, nutty flavour. However, not all of us have either the time or the patience to perform this precise task, as if the solids burn, all is lost(i.e. no cigarette breaks, drinking binges etc). That is probably why I've always used olive oil to make my curries up until now. What a shame it has been, as I found out after making this vindaloo. Now, with the ramadan coming up, the local halal slaughter-house has started stocking ready-made ghee! Excellent!
As I'd never made a curry with ghee before, I admit that I was excited to see how the final result would differ from my current attempts, bearing in mind that this is the true Indian method and that my vindaloos have not yet reached perfection.

It is very time consuming to make a decent curry(from one to two hours preparation and cooking time), so if you're having friends round make sure that they're kept busy chopping ingredients between beers, be certain to have all of the ingredients as it's almost like a Ducasse recipe (apart from the fact that you don't need to start preparing your ingredients a week or so before (or have thirty people in your kitchen) and make loads! The base of this curry is from Madhur Jaffrey, but I have been modifying and perfecting it over the last two years, so it's now quite different from the original recipe in flavour.
This is what you will need:

Ginger and garlic paste:
1 full head of garlic
1 decent sized cube of ginger (3cm cubed)
3 tb hot water
(Peel and chop up the garlic and ginger, then blend in a mixer with the hot water until a smooth paste is obtained)

Spice mix:
1 tb cumin seeds
1 tb coriander seeds
1 tb paprika
2 1/2 ts garam masala
1 ts black peppercorns
1/2 ts yellow mustard seeds
1/2 ts brown mustard seeds
1/2 ts turmeric
1/2 ts fenugreek
5 - 25 dried small red chillies (I use seventeen at the moment)
(roast the whole spices (except the chillies) in a pan with no oil or ghee until slightly browned. Let them cool and then mix with all of the other spices in a coffee grinder until everything is completely ground up into a powder)

Tea bag:
20 cardomome seeds
3 bay leaves
3 cloves
(It took me ages to find empty tea bags in France which they are very convenient as they save you having to fish out the whole spices(which is a real pain) or having nasty surprises(a mouthful of three cardamome seeds and a clove, for example). Tie it up well with cooking string as it will get battered around (you can even put one inside another).)

Onion and tomato mix:
4 onions (chopped or sliced)
1 tin peeled tomatoes
250 ml chcken stock
(heat plenty of ghee in a non-stick frying pan and when hot add the onions. Cover and mix every so often (It is important to cover the onions so that they do not dry out and burn) cook until the onions will not go browner without burning(If you burn them it ruins the entire curry so start again, or stop before, even though they're not entirely brown (this will mostly affect the colour of the sauce, so it is not the end of the world)) If you think that the onions may burn, add more ghee). Remove from the heat. Put the tomatoes, stock and tepid (or not too hot) onions in a liquidiser and mix until smooth)

Chicken:
1 1/2 kg boned chicken cut into small pieces
1/2 ts Nigella
1/2 ts brown mustard seeds
1/2 ts yellow mustard seeds
1/2 ts fenugreek
2 cinnamon sticks
(heat some ghee in a non-stick frying pan and add the above spices along with the tea bag. When the mustard seeds start to pop, add the chicken and brown slightly (It is better to undercook it rather than overcooking it as it will cook more in the sauce). Cover.)

Other ingredients:
Ghee
15 curry leaves
1 tb white wine vinegar(can be replaced with cider vinegar)
1 tb salt
1 tb sugar

Sounds daunting? It is! Prepare everything as above before starting the main cooking to save last minute rushes. As you get better you can do several things at a time, but I generally have a few beers in-between so that it is less intensive.

Heat some ghee in a big (enormous) pan and add the ginger and garlic paste when hot. stir and cook for a couple of minutes, then add the curry leaves. Cook for about another minute, then add the spice mix. Stir continually until a paste is formed without it sticking to the pan and add the onion and tomato mix along with the salt, sugar and vinegar. Cover and let it cook, mixing regularly so that it doesn't stick, for about ten to twenty minutes. This sauce can be frozen for up to a month and a half (I tend to divide it up into five or six freezer bags for easy "meals for two" so that you can add it to the meat of your choice whenever you want. This also means that you don't have to eat curry for a week, which if you are on your own or are a couple is quite an unreasonable feat to subject yourself to).


Add the chicken, including the cinnamon and tea bag, then cover, leaving the lid slightly open (if you open it too much, you will have greasy bright red spots everywhere). Cook for 45 minutes or so stirring as often as you can. If it gets too hot, turn it off for a few minutes, then heat it up again.

A peaceful place.

It's a shame that everything in my life is not as peaceful. I would be a happy man.

Strange stuff!










Where do you go to come up with this sort of stuff, Adrian, man?


I'll invite you over so that we can do a bloginterview!

# posted by Austen @ 4:01 PM 2 comments

So what's happened to the TIPP(the variable tax thresholds on petrol prices)? The government is making so much money on high fuel prices that they probably won't use this fiscal tool, ever. Two years ago the same amount of petrol would have cost me under €50. I'm glad the tank was not empty, othewise it would have cost me €90! I guess it's time to get a hybrid(which I probably would if there weren't such ridiculous laws about borrowing money in France, i.e. the loi scrivener). Please note that some yobbo has torn off the Euro sticker at the 'price per litre' display which gives the more realistic price of 1.436 Francs per litre - €0.219!

To more important things....
Looks great! I especially like the "soyez un vrai barman" yeah! Shame Kronenbourg haven't brought out a 1664 one of these. I'll get a couple, invite the lads round and we'll test it out! Another brilliant excuse for a drinking session. Don't worry, Olive, I'll get some lemonade for you so you can drink shandy, then you won't be scared to come over and come out with one of your usual excuses: You're sick, Silvia's sick, the car's in the garage, friend's wedding, etc, etc. I mean you could prove to us that you can drink more than Adrian or Tof at least. After Tof's last feeble effort, "oh you know I've been up since 5am, I'm really tired", etc passing out in front of the chimney when I'd had two hours sleep in 48 hours, I'm sure you could handle it Olive, mate - you just have to get here!!!!

As I said I was going to put a few of Adrian the surfmeister's best links in my latest entry(some of which are 'vintage'), here they are:
USB coffee cup heater
Salad Bar Competition
10x10 one of the best yet!
I have kept all of Adrian's best links, so there are plenty more to come!

After having read an article in the Herald Tribune the other day about a private members-only 'club', whereby the only way of becoming a member is to be invited by someone who already is, I found it rather strange that we were not already members as we most certainly have all the right connections and are particularly elegant, sophisticated etc etc(without blowing our own trumpets, but when one observes the low-life, tracksuit-wearing, backslang-speaking car door kickers it is evident that we are members of a certain elite). Maybe someone we know who is a member will see this entry, we'll buy them a few drinks in the Hemingway bar where we shall see are good old friend Colin(who we haven't seen for ages and feel a little ashamed about it) and get invited so that we, too may share our well-connected Concierge skills in the type of society which we strive to uphold.

Tof just showed me his blog, and there are lots of restaurants(as he has more money than me, there won't be so many on my blog) but it looks quite cool, even though I haven't read it yet! Check it out!

Some good-for-nothing scum has put a dent in my car door! With their foot!! I would imagine that they had attempted to break into the damn thing, even though it's completely worthless. I mean it has two hundred and forty two THOUSAND kilometers!!!! Even if they had broken into it, they would never have got it started as it has a coded ignition, ie they absolutely require THE key to start it unless they're a computer genius, which they are obviously not. Just some socialist, low-life, jealous, everybody has it better than me union-member. What are the police doing! Out catching innocent hard-working taxpayers for insignificant momentary speeding, that's what it is.

I am extremely disappointed with all of this. It's the last straw. Hither to the Capitalist Revolution! (We'll start off with capital punishment and the death penalty)

Other than that, the bottle of Pomerol I'm drinking is not too bad, but It's difficult to find decent wines for under €20. Oh and the Prince had a fly in his salad! I always thought that it should be in his soup! Beat that, Heston Blumenthal!!!