Cookaholics Bulletin Board

So, my boys love butter chicken. We don't have an Indian place nearby, and a couple of times I've bought the stuff in a jar that you just dump into the pan with the cooked chicken as a stop gap. Last night I found the Patak butter chicken paste in the store and made butter chicken using that and fresh cream. Very simple and quite good. And ready in the time it took me to make basmati, steam green beans and thaw some Naan bread.
While I'd love to make the recipe from scratch (and have a few bookmarked) this fits into a weeknight meal quite easily and I can see the kids making this on their own soon.
Any other types of curry pastes you guys have tried and would recommend?

Pataks pastes are very good. My kids are also curry nuts and so I used the opportunity to ramp up the nutritional value, creamed spinach, canned tomatoes, frozen peas, etc. not a paste, but I really like the Penzey's curry powders as well. And for you, Ms. Mass Prouction, I made a bunch of Thai curry pastes on a Sat. with a friend and stuck them in the freezer. Excellent fast food.

Mary

The only "Butter Chicken" I have made from my books (or have seen in my books) has a marinade (sort of a paste) with yogurt, garlic, ginger, and garam masala (and probably some other things I can't remember), but it starts with a lemon juice, salt, and kashmiri pepper rub, then has even more ingredients added AFTER the marinade, so it is not a quick recipe. Maybe the paste is simply all those ing., with the cream added?

Like Mary, I always have Thai curry pastes in my freezer, to semi-thaw in the MW, and make dishes that take less time than the rice takes to cook! Just have to figure out a place that has recipes to clone those Indian pastes, to do the same thing. If like the homemade Thai pastes, they will be far superior to the canned.

Dave, this is the one I have bookmarked, marinade then sauce like you said. http://www.canadianliving.com/food/butter_chicken.php
I'd like to try this one day just for fun, but the paste includes a lot of the ingredients in the recipe from what I can tell.
I love the idea of making the pastes at home, but I don't ever cook Thai, it's the one food we've tried that the kids don't like at all (??) so it's a restaurant treat for me and dh. Also, I'd be worried I'd lose small amounts of stuff in the deep freeze. And finding all the ingredients would make my head spin in my small town grocery stores. However if you guys come visit you can show me how to make these as I'm sure you are right that they would be far superior.

Ha! I remembered those pastes because I found one in my freezer 2 years later. They are not all that hard and the ingredients not that odd, lemon grass maybe. I really need to make those again.

Mary

We like Patak's Vindaloo paste but it's very hard to find at the usual sources around here. Rogan Josh is pretty easy to find.

The Vindaloo goes well with chicken, pork, or lamb, using the shrimp recipe on the label (IIRC 1/2 pound of meat with some diced onion and a half can of diced tomatoes plus water)

Jean,

I just googled"How to make Indian curry paste" and came up with a bunch of recipes, including a Vindaloo paste. That one, the second link, looks like the best to me, mainly due to the method used for preparing the dry ingredients, as they are toasted, rather than being put in raw. Check them out, and see if any sound good.

Check out the Jamie Oliver ones too. I got that book for my husband and he made the vindaloo which was quite good.

Mary

My staple curry recipe is with the Pataks mild curry paste (sometimes I use the hot too, although it's got a zing when the jar is fresh). Sauté a diced onion in some oil, add in a package of cut up boneless chicken thighs, then about 1/4 cup of the paste. Sauté a minute or two, then add in a can of whole tomatoes. I add in a bit of extra cumin and some dried thyme, and if I'm being fancy, a few black cardamom pods. Add in a chopped red and a yellow bell pepper, simmer until the tomatoes break down. Season with sugar to taste (the tomatoes usually need some). Sometimes I add in a bit of cream, or some coconut milk, but usually I just serve over rice with raisins and cashews as garnish.

The madras paste with beef is good too (I follow the recipe on the jar).

Those looked good, too, and each of them had at the end of each set of ingredients "spices for toasting". Thus, that method that impressed me in that vindaloo recipe, is used in all of her's.

Lemongrass may actually be one of the easier to find odd ingredients (showing up in supermarkets sometimes, at least around here). Galangal and shrimp paste are two essentials, and lime leaves are in some pastes, but in almost all curries, and almost all are finished off with Thai basil. All ingredients I am NEVER without. BTW, I don't make my own shrimp paste! LOL