Cookaholics Bulletin Board

In a Serious Eats recipe by Daniel Gritzer today he mentions this French-style curry sauce - vadouvan. Google gives many recipes - do you have a fave

Thanks!

I found a blend from the Spice House that I liked a lot. I used it in curries with coconut milk. It seemed like one of those blends where you end up with ten different things that you only use once.

Link? I don't see that article.

Aw shucks, that's because it ain't vege, ya know...

Here ya go, http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2015/03/roasted-chicken-curry-soubise-onion-sauce-recipe.html

Well, I made a double batch of vadouvan I did this because of the rave reviews given in an Epicurious article that included a recipe from Gourmet.

Here is that recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/vadouvan-indian-spice-blend-243607

In Gooogling it, I came across an article from Serious Eats (2011) explaining the story behind this "Frenchified" curry:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2011/01/spice-hunting-vadouvan-french-curry-masala-powder.html

BIG apologies to Fuzzy in that the original recipe that I included above was for using vadouvan with roast chicken, hence my "vege" comment. Vadouvan is entirely vegetarian.

Because I could not find it to buy, I made it. It starts as a big gloppy mess of onion, shallots, garlic and a bunch of spices slowly cooked in oil. This is cooked down slowly in something like a roaster and then transferred to a parchment lined cookie sheet to slowly dry out to a very dry paste in a low temp oven. It seems obvious to me, since it is sold as a powder, that this drying process can continue to that dry stage but the recipe calls for a very dry paste that is refrigerated or frozen for later use.

The Serious Eats article makes a good case for trying it on almost anything

Last night I made the soubise sauce that was in the Serious Eats link above - WOW!

Relatively simple, but time consuming, this sauce is amazing. 2 large onions, sliced very thin and slow cooked in a large skillet with butter, are slowly reduced of their water content but not caramelized. This reduction concentrates the sugars. Cream is then added and slightly reduced with the final product placed in a blender (Vitamix would be best but not required). Press this through successively finer meshes if you want ultra-smooth texture (again, not necessary) and you have the desired sauce.

The addition of curry or vadouvan is not necessary and is not in the soubise recipes from Julia Child or Larousse. However, my home-made vadouvan was very successful and that was pretty cool because I had never made a curry-like seasoning from scratch

This sauce would be a great addition to any meat (fowl, fish, hoofed, etc.) or vegetable dish.

I'm playing with the amount of curry/vadouvan to add as we found the recommended 1 teaspoon to be too light. I am also testing whether it can be used again after freezing.

Wino,

Thanks for that. I'm not sure I'm ready to get back into cream sauces; I wonder if the vadouvan seasoning would be good without the cream?

I don't believe the results justify the necessary work; it is a sort of like a mild curry so why not just use a mild curry or less of whatever curry one has on hand. It was a lot of work. Also, it does not dissolve readily, which is why putting it through sieves is very helpful.

I happen to love the results of using multiple sieves and my guests always express amazement at the texture that method delivers (as does my fave guest )

Great, now I need multiple sieves.

Mary

This sounds really good. I read the article when it came out and wasn't too impressed, but Wino's description has me interested.

--Lisa