Ray Street

Just what is curry powder and garam masala?

Well, in their simplest forms, they are mixtures of spice seeds that have been roasted, crushed and then mixed with other spices to give a delicious blend of spices.

There are lots of different recipes for making curry powder and garam masala, and people have their own favourites. A curry powder recipe on the Curry Focus website has coriander seeds, cumin seeds, fennel seeds, cinnamon and cloves being dry roasted and then ground together, with the resultant powder being mixed with paprika, turmeric, chilli powder and garam masala (garam masala is something similar where spices such as coriander seeds, peppercorns, caraway seeds, cardamom seeds, cumin seeds, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and mace are roasted and then ground together).

You can make your own curry powder and garam masala or you can buy readymade (most supermarkets sell curry powders and garam masala and you can buy them from bulk bins in most good Indian stores and supermarkets). Making your own curry powder and garam masala can be a satisfying experience but the convenience of buying readymade cannot be overlooked.

Curry powder was originally made for the British who returned from India and wanted to continue to enjoy the spicy food tastes that they had enjoyed in India. Spices themselves were hard enough to buy in Britain so a readymade curry powder was ideal.

Of course, like a lot of British curry related products, you will hardly ever see curry powder and garam masala for sale in India. Cooks over there either make their own powders or just use the spices directly in their cooking. Most of my curry cookbooks have pictures of people pounding away using mortars and pestles to make their own powders.

There are wildly different opinions on whether or not you should use curry powder and garam masala. Some purists say that you should make your own spice blends and the more radical purists say that you should just use the spices themselves. There are good arguments from all sides. For people who cannot, or can only barely, cook then readymade powders are fine. For those of us who can follow a recipe (like me) then I use whatever the recipe calls for (I am not a good enough cook to make up my own recipes). Most curry recipes that are on the Curry Focus website use individual spices but some do call for curry powder. And some recipes even use individual spices as well as garam masala.

For myself, I just follow the recipes and find out what tastes good. If the recipe gets me to roast spice seeds and then grind the seeds into a powder then I do it – it’s a lot easier now that I’ve bought a spice grinder instead of using a mortar and pestle.

My local spice store has a blend of curry powder and garam masala that I like so I buy these when I’m running low. I keep all of my spices in airtight jars and only buy enough for a few weeks so it is very rare that I have any that lose their flavour and go stale.

So now you have an idea of what curry powder and garam masala are all about. If you’re keen, you can buy some spice seeds and make your own curry powder and garam masala. But there’s nothing wrong with using readymade powders – really.

The important thing to remember is that curry powder and garam masala are blends of spices and are to be enjoyed.

Curry Focus

http://www.curryfocus.co.nz/

Great curry recipes and recipe reviews

[email protected]

Virgil Evetts

I’ve written before about my passion for nuts. I just love them, I really do. I’ve been caught up in various waves of determination over the years and tried growing my own almonds, pistachios and peanuts to mostly meagre success. It’s too humid here, our winters aren’t cold enough. You know how it goes with food gardening. Even as I write these words there are two cashew seedlings peeking over my monitor – taunting me with what will probably never be.

Yet for all my toiling with the improbable, I’ve overlooked something far more attainable, and just as rich, delectable and versatile as the very best nuts: pumpkins seeds. Not nuts as such, no, but with their high (mostly unsaturated) oil content, sweet nutty flavour, and penchant for roasting, they might as well be. 

It was only desperation that opened my eyes to the pleasures of the emerald seeds, when midway through making pesto a few months back I discovered I was bereft of anything suitable nutty (curse you late night cravings).  As I dug deeper into the archive of good intentions that is my pantry, I found some long-forgotten and still snugly sealed pumpkin seeds. I sulkily plodded on, expecting very little, and pining for pine nuts.  Well, who needs pine nuts (especially if you consider my unfortunate run-in with them last year)? The pumpkin seeds turned out to be perfectly pitched for the job.

So, more than a little encouraged, I took to tossing the seeds onto pizza, through oil-base pasta sauces, into salads, in fact anywhere at all I would usually use pine  nuts, pistachio or slivered almonds. As with true nuts, pumpkin seeds only really come alive after sautéing or roasting. Oh you can try to tell yourself raw nuts are best if you like. Due to their high oil content, pumpkin seeds burn very- and I mean very- quickly and they  pop quite explosively too, so don’t walk away for even a moment and keep the lid handy to deflect escapees.

I shouldn’t really have been surprised by my pesto success. Pumpkin seeds are used in a similar capacity in many famous Latin American sauces (including the sublime mole verde), providing an unctuous, binding texture and a warm toasty flavour. 

I rather suspect that it’s only for a want of a more glamorous reputation that pumpkin seeds are so overlooked. They’re cheap and abundant, and come from a rather utilitarian vegetable. Hardly sexy, or the stuff of a chi-chi rep. Nevertheless they are a force and a flavour to be reckoned with.

This summer I grew a crop of Austrian oil-seed pumpkins, a variety grown for their large hull-less seeds, rather than their rather watery flesh. Each hefty, tiger-striped fruit yielded a cup or so of ready-to-eat (once dried in the sun for a day or so) seeds, which collectively should keep me going for some months. Hopefully.

Trouble is I’ve just discovered the pleasures of pepitas, the very addictive Mexican bar snack made from spiced, sautéed pumpkin seeds . These are altogether too delicious and easy to make, and I fear for the longevity of my seed crop.

Pepitas

Ruinously More-ish. You have been warned…

Ingredients

1 cup pumpkin seeds

1+  small dried chillies-finely chopped

1tsp salt

½ tsp sugar

3 cloves garlic- crushed

Method

The following should take place very quickly- only a few minutes from start to finish or the seeds will burn.

Toss seeds in a hot, dry pan until they start to pop. Add the garlic, chilli and salt. Continue stirring over the heat until the seeds no longer clump around the garlic. Add sugar, stir once more and remove from heat. Cool on kitchen paper.

Eat with drinks or whenever the mood takes you. The pepitas store well in an air-tight container, but unless you make them in serious bulk this is unlikely to be an issue. Some recipes suggest serving with a squeeze of lime juice and a little finely chopped fresh coriander. A sprinkle of smoked paprika doesn’t go amiss either.

Virgil Evetts

Some of you might recall me banging on about my breakfast conundrum  a while back, when I first started working from home. I’ve never been a breakfast person and am rarely moved by anything I might have in the pantry. When I worked at the Museum there were plenty of decent cafés nearby, so I could always pick up a brioche or croque monsieur when hunger finally drove me to distraction. Well, I’ve tried a few things since leaving the big house, but none of them really took. Cereals bore me sooner or later, toast is really just toast, and porridge is too much trouble for the most part. I do like a bit of porridge though, especially with cream, sweetened condensed milk, brown sugar and butter. Which brings me to another relevant detail of late. 

As I’m a parent now, I’ve realised I really ought to keep an eye on my health, rather than throwing caution to the wind and similar laissez-faire sentiments.  So I booked one of those men’s heath check-ups with my G.P.  This involved various measurements being taken, flasks and test-tubes being filled ete etc. For the most part, I passed swimmingly. Heart rate: good; blood pressure:  good; no ‘occult blood’ (which is always reassuring); and an acceptable amount of ‘bad cholesterol’ in my blood. My ‘good cholesterol’ levels are apparently through the roof, which I put down to a massive consumption of olive oil. So all good news really… except that is for my Doctor’s parting comment: “you could afford to lose 10 kilos… you’re a bit heavy”

Based on what I told him of my usual eating habits, he suggested that I needed to think about when I was eating, more than what I was eating.  Irritating as it is, I fear he may be on to something. So. Breakfast is back on the agenda, and hopefully my late night tendency towards carb-craving will subside.

I’ve always liked toasted muesli, or at least the idea of it. Trouble is, most of the commercial versions are either too sweet, not sweet enough, lacking in what I like (quality dried fruit and nuts), or loaded  with things I despise (raw peanuts and those horrible nuggets of yoghurt-wax or whatever the hell that stuff actually is). Call me slow off the mark but it only very recently occurred to me to simply make my own muesli. And I do mean simply.

I looked through dozens of recipes on-line. Some were monastically chaste and others little more than confectionary. They had little to offer my fickle tastes, but eventually I gleaned from them a common method. The only essential ingredients in toasted muesli, as far as I could ascertain are oats, honey and vegetable oil (well I suppose you could use animal fat of you really wanted to…). Every things else is dependent on personal tastes, and what you’re looking for in a muesli i.e. tasty, slow-release energy food, or high-health oral flagellation. Needless to say I am firmly of the former persuasion.

So I went shopping. The bulk bins at my supermarket are well decked out for the health conscious kind (it is perhaps telling that I have only recently discovered this fact). I was able to choose between a vast array of fruit and nuts with which to festoon my muesli, but eventually settled on the deluxe berry and deluxe nut mix’s (un roasted, unsalted, no peanuts), and dried papaya with lime. By this time I had a squawking baby Olive to placate, so I filled my bags and carried on shopping with my newly acquired frazzled parent haste…

Later that night

Using the basic method below, I made what really has turned out to be, my ultimate breakfast food. It’s loaded with carbs, protein, vitamins, minerals and copious quantities of my own backyard honey. It’s contrastingly crunchy, sweet, tender and toasty. Better still, such is the variety of ingredients, that every mouthful tastes different to the last.  A modest bowl of this stuff fills me up till well past midday, and my late night pangs appear to be subsiding.

The only real drawback came when I looked closely at my supermarket receipt. I had paid over $30 for those ‘deluxe’ fruit and nuts. Might just use the scales next time.

Virgil’s Ultimate Toasted Muesli

Ingredients

4 cups rolled oats

2 cups dried fruit (I use currants, raisins, cranberries, sultanas, goji berries and papaya)

2 cups raw nuts (I use brazils, walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts, cashews and almonds)

1 cup desiccated coconut

¾ cup honey

¼ cup vegetable oil (I use sunflower)

½ tsp salt

Optional: Whatever takes your fancy

Method

Pre-heat oven to 180C.

In a small saucepan, heat the honey and oil. Do not allow to boil.  Mix together the oats, nuts, coconut and salt. Add the oil & honey. Mix together thoroughly and  leave well alone for about 15 minutes.

Spread the mixture in a thin layer in your biggest oven tray. You may need to do this in batches. Bake until just turning golden (about 10 minutes), stir and repeat. The muesli will be damp and sticky until it cools. Remove from oven and cool thoroughly. If still slightly damp return to the oven for a few minutes.

When completely cooled and crunchy add fruit and blend thoroughly. Store in a moth-proof, airtight container.

Note: If you’re hung up on the benefits of raw nuts, add at the end along with the fruit. Don’t blame me it tastes all beige though.