Recipe help?

[johnpalmer]

I have this dish I make. (No, kightp, this isn't the famous "Tuna Salad With Shredded 'Angel Hair' Cabbage" that really needs a more descriptive name, so people aren't surprised when they eat it and find out what it's really like.)

I take some oil - olive oil, or maybe clarified butter - and saute some onion. Then I throw some kale in the pan, then once it starts to wilt, I add lentils and then water, and boil it until most of the water is gone, then add garlic and let it cook, then add coconut milk, and curry powder.

And that last step, that's the problem. "Curry powder" means "we put these together, and called them curry powder." Can anyone help me figure out a good starting point for separate spices that make up curry powder in approximate ratios?

Comments

[irismoonlight.livejournal.com]

Here you go. Make your own curry powder. Proportions near the bottom.

Also, Recipes for curry powder (indian)

One of my fav sites, cooking for engineers, has a aery useful description of ingredients in many different kinds of curry powders, but no proportions.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you! These look good, and I think I'm understanding why there's so much "curry powder" out there - that's a *lot* of separate seasonings!

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

I misread your parenthetical as "Tuna Salad with Shredded Anger Cabbage", which is altogether different image and also a good sign I should go to bed.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Nod. It's actually shredded angle hair cabbage, which shows you that when angels get really angry, their hair sticks out in very interesting patterns relative to a tangent line.

[64tbird.livejournal.com]

Depends on the KIND of curry, doesn't it?
I have three completely different pre-mixed curry spice jars in my pantry. Garam Masala, yellow curry, just curry curry...

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Heh. Well, yeah, but I'm okay with "well, for lentils and kale, I'd recommend...".

I'm slowly switching from strict low-carb to adding pulses, and lentils are one of the safest things to add. Their protein to carbohydrate ratio is high, and they have lots of fiber which is supposed to help slow absorption of carbohydrates, and help regulate blood sugar[1]. I know that dhal is a staple in many diets, and I already have the clarified butter to make it with, so I want to play with that a bit.

(Especially because I can make lentils before work, but other beans require either working from home or being done on the weekend.)



[1] and right about here, I remembered I was talking to a vegetarian who probably knows this better than me... ah well :-)

[64tbird.livejournal.com]

No worries ...
For one thing....I am not much of a legume fan, vegetarian or not.

That said, I will eat lentils cooked by actual Indian people who know what the heck they are doing.

I can make food with curry, but I can't cook Indian food. It's on my bucket list to learn though. I may start with Naan and stop right there as well. Though I LOVE me a good pakora, and a good saag paneer.... And now I'm craving Indian food...

(Wait, I always crave Indian food)

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Everybody else already chimed in, but I'll just add that what we think of as "curry powder" is just a masala (spice mixture) on the Indian subcontinenet. And as others have pointed out, there are a zillion different ones.

The yellow stuff you find on supermarket spice racks is usually heavy on tumeric, with coriander, cumin, fenugreek, garlic and red pepper. It's considerably more bland than most home-made masalas.

My go-to place for Indian recipes, including all kinds of masalas, is http://www.indiandelicacies.com - be warned, a person can get lost in there. (-:

Oh, and this database, from Death By Curry, has some great dal (lentil) dishes:

http://rubymurray.com/curry/typeidx.php

[laurarey.livejournal.com]

No curry advice, but Tuna Salad with Shredded Angel Hair Cabbage? Any chance you'd post the recipe when you have a moment? :)

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Oh, that... I make tuna salad - tuna, mayonnaise or Miracle Whip, pickle (relish), onion, celery, any other this-n-that you like in your sandwich tuna salad - and then, I mix it with angel-hair cabbage - cabbage that's been shredded super-fine (like angel hair pasta), as if for cole slaw. The joke was that the name says exactly what it is, and I was saying that I needed a more descriptive name :-).