The most dreaded page for me in Jamie's Food Revolution has always been "Easy Homemade Curry Pastes" on page 99. So, please imagine me being dragged to the kitchen kicking and screaming while you read this. I have looked at this page at least one hundred times in the last 346 days and each time I looked at it I first heard the sound "cha-ching" because I was sure the ingredients would empty my kids college savings accounts. The second thing I heard was my own voice saying, "Why would I want to do this when I can find a perfectly good jar of curry paste on the shelf at the grocery store?" Just like the Roast Dinner chapter, this was one part of the adventure that was very intimidating. But since we have just 9 days left, it was time to stop the kicking and screaming and get on with it.
To help the "cha-ching" problem I headed to Whole Foods with my gift card that I got for teaching my class in January. I did a little research about freezing curry pastes and I decided I would take a day and just crank them all out, freeze them and actually have things in my freezer besides frozen waffles, peas and ice cream.
Like my first roast dinner, it turned out to be just as easy as Jamie said it would be and I was dead wrong. I don't know what I made all of that fuss about and I could hear Jamie having a good laugh over my drama. It was still a bit pricey to buy things like almond flower and lots of unusual spices but, once I got the ingredients home, the pastes were easy and quick to make. All of the pastes are made with the same method: you toast some seeds in a dry pan, mash them up with a pestle and mortar, put them and the rest of the ingredients into a food processor and whiz them around until they form a paste.
It really didn't take to long to make them all and then I used the Rogan Josh paste to make the Rogan Josh Lamb curry (pg. 81) for that night and it was really good. Another recipe in the same chapter is Vegatable Bhajis (pg.92 )which are kind of like a Indian veggie hash brown. I also took a portion of the rice and used it to make spicy chile rice (pg. 96). I'm way too much of a spice wimp to ever make this again. I feel like the rice helps to cool down your mouth so making the rice spicy too felt counter intuitive.
So, in one afternoon and evening I was able to make five paste recipes, one curry recipe, the last of the rice recipes and the Bhajis for a grand total of 8 recipes for the day! I popped the rest of the pastes into the freezer to use another time and let out a big "phew." I was super proud of myself!
Wow! I was shocked to find the whole page of curry pastes on Jamie's website! Very cool…check it out…
http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/curry-recipes/easy-homemade-curry-pastes?clicked_from_search_results=true&query=curry%20pastes
149: Rogan Josh paste
150: Rogan Josh curry
151: Vegatable Bhajis
152: Korma paste
153: Jalfrezi paste
154: tikka paste
155:vindaloo paste
156: spicy rice
Recipes cooked: 156
Recipes left: 17
Days left: 9
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ooh - is that what you had made the night that i stopped by?
ReplyDeletei found a recipe online for a chicken curry recipe made in the slow cooker. I'm going to try it this week. I hope it turns out as yummy as it sounds.
Wow! 8 recipes in one day, kudos from me! I bet you will be happy to have all those curry pastes in the freezer....just think how much they would have cost you to buy.
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