Val's Curry Powder

And in the post this parcel arrived. Contained therein was a present pour moi: proper homemade curry powder! Curtesy of Val up in the Charente.

After bewailing the dire situation of not being able to make a reasonable pot of curry in France because the available curry powder is of only one type, and that is insipid, Val sent me down this parcel.

And here be two packets of homemade curry powder: one is chilli-hot and she has written a warning to this effect on the packet. And, bless her, she has also enclosed the recipe. So I thought I would share it with you. Will let you know what it tastes like when I next make a curry, but it smells obligingly hot and spicy, and that is through a sealed packet!

Val's Recipe:

The following is 6 teaspoons each:

Coriander
Cumin
Garam Masala
Ginger
Turmeric
Garlic granules

Then you need to add only 2, repeat TWO of the next:

Chilli powder
Cayenne

I guess you mix it all up in a pot, and then store in a dry and sealed environment.

Will let you know how I get on with it! But will have to be sparing with my donated supplies, because I doubt I can obtain the necessary ingredients here. Of course, I could always try ordering over the Internet! Will let you know how I get on with that as well, when the time comes for me to shopping for spices over the 'net.

I close off with Val's sign off: "Hope you like it, and good cooking". (There are updates below photo).

02.08.09 First try of curry and it was gorgeous. As per instructions from Val I was careful with the amount I used, and when first eaten the taste of curry was quite mild, almost hesitant. On being left for a few hours, the taste matured and the flavours sprang out more. It was fab!
10.08.09 Val said that the curry needs to be put into a sealed glass jar. Keeping it in a plastic packet is likely to make the curry powder absorb the taste of plastic.
She also said that this is an authentic recipe, given to her by an Indian gentleman. Well done that man! Apparently they always make their own curry spice mix, and this is his.

Marrow Ginger jam

Oh yummy yums. Had to share this recipe with you although there is room for improvement in my making of it. It's taken from 'What will I do with all those courgettes?' by Elaine Borish. ISBN 0952488159

This is my first year of the courgette experience and already I have been caught out by a couple of specimens which seem to have gone at a mighty gallop of growth. So, a quick look through this book and I found the jam recipe.

You need:
4lbs (2kg) peeled, seeded, then cubed, marrow.
3lbs (1 1/2 kg) Preserving sugar
1oz (30g) root ginger. Crushed. I did this by first peeling the ginger, then putting it into a plastic bag before bashing it with Hub's hammer. And perhaps wiser to put a cloth in between the hammer and the bag. I didn't and I got a squelch as a result when the bag burst open. But ginger is easy to scoop back together, unless you are bashing the bag with a hammer on the ground outside. Then you will have to be careful of gathering up any other detritus with your squashed ginger. The hammer cleaned up quite easily though.
3 large lemons, thinly peeled rind and juice. I couldn't peel my lemons, so I used a gadget which gives the peel a grated texture.
You will also need: A thick bottomed saucepan, a large spoon, and endless patience. This is quite a long winded jamming experience. Plus you will need a muslin bag to put the ginger in, and the lemon peel. I didn't have a muslin bag so I cut a circle out of an old piece of voile, put the ginger in the centre of it, then brought all the edges together, fixing them firmly into place with an elastic band. The recipe says put the lemon peel in as well, but I thought I would save the lemon gratings and pop them in to add extra texture later on.

1) Put marrow pieces in bowl with one third of the sugar, and leave to stand overnight. Haven't the faintest idea why one should do this, but did as instructed.

2) Into saucepan goes everything. Bring to the boil slowly, making sure the sugar is dissolved.
3) Continue to boil steadily until marrow looks transparent. Mine never did.
4) Taste after 15 minutes to adjust flavour, removing muslin bag if necessary.
5) Cook until setting point is reached.

Well, I boiled and boiled away for ages, testing frequently but the mixture didn't seem to want to oblige and turn itself into jam.

I originally thought that this was a large pot of jam to be making, but it takes so long to set that it is best to start off with a large quantity of mix because a lot of that is going to evaporate away.

I kept testing the mix, leaving the ginger in for most of the cooking time because it didn't seem to be too invasive to the taste.

I popped in the lemon gratings towards the end, when the ladle I was using to occasionally stir the mix starting dragging as I moved it round the saucepan signalling that things were starting to thicken. I'm not sure whether you should stir boiling jam, but I am cooking on a caravan stove, and can only heat up one side of my saucepan leaving the other side to be off the boil.

Finally, after ages and ages, I decided that it was as set as it was ever likely to be. Denise over at Much Marlarkey Manor had already warned me that her marrow jam took a while to set, and that it was of a consistency which dribbled off her toast. This type of jam has to be eaten with care, since the drip factor is high enough to leave runnels down the chin and from thence onto the bosoms if one has them. Or one's lap, or over one's hand and up one's sleeve, or onto the table, or floor, or dog. This is a messy type of jam, but no less enjoyable.

Anyway, I decanted about four and a half pots, the marrow sitting in suspension quite happily making me believe that the jam would stiffen as it cooled. It didn't.

So onto the Internet to see why this was. No help anywhere, apart from the advice that it would take upwards of two hours at simmer to set. Someone on a forum had fetched up with the same lose jam, and had reboiled it after which it had set. An investigation into my old cookbook gave me the info that the end of season marrow is best for jamming.

So: I jammed a marrow when it was too young. I didn't simmer the jam for long enough, but boiled it instead which risked giving a singed taste to the jam as the sugar got fed up and burnt. And I didn't feel like reboiling it, because the caravan is a very hot place to be making jam in especially if the jam is going to take hours to reach set. The heat from the stove added to the heat from the sun, makes the caravan a place which is needed to be evacuated from.

But: this jammy syrup, which is what I ended up with, is gorgeous. I keep having a swig of it as I pass by, and as I said in my blog today, entitled 'We had a bit of a blowing' (17 July 2009) over on 'Snippets from our smallholding', I am in danger of becoming a marrow and ginger jam junkie. I am going to have to put the pots away in the cupboard, out of sight, otherwise I will keep on dipping my fingers into it to sample the delightful taste.

Lessons I have learnt: That I love ginger.
That lemon bits in jam are superb.
That this is a recipe which has potential.
That one can always clean the kitchen, do a bit of crocheting, file one's nails, and wash the kitchen ceiling while waiting for the jam to reach setting point.
That one can always use this syrupy jam for putting over things, like puddings and yoghurts, or in my case, as a comfort food!

And here's a spare pot of jam for you!

25.07.09. I have been using this jam on the top of cakes, and in rice puddings. The pieces of marrow have now turned gingery in taste, and the stickiness on top of cakes gives an unusual flavour. Drizzle the jam on before the cake goes into the oven, and / or drizzle it once out of the oven.

Jamming: Granulated sugar or Preserving sugar?

"Here's some plums. Do you want to take them to make some jam?" Sara a friend of mine said, as she thrust a bowl of quickly ripening wild plums into my hands, "And here is some sugar as well" she finished off with, handing me a bag of Confisuc sugar.

Since I am living in France, and the sugar was bought from a French supermarket, the bag of sugar was, of course, written in French. I can use lose transation, but decided not to on this occasion, and took pot luck with the normal one to one sugar to fruit recipe.

So on and past the rolling boil stage, and crikey! The jam was set in a matter of minutes!

Onto the next batch of fruit, curtesy of Sara again. This time I used granulated sugar. The fruit took forever to set, and reduced to nearly half the amount of jam that the first batch had made.

'Something wrong here' I thought. Better have an investigation of the Confisuc sugar. A friend was phoned up. "Oh yes," she said, "That's conserving sugar, especially for jams".

I looked on the back of the packet, and did a translation of sorts. She was right. Now in the UK, when undertaking jam making projects, I always used granulated sugar plus a lemon if the recipe said so. Never preserving sugar. My jams were OK, but then I didn't make huge amounts of them and anyway, it was a long time ago. Actually, come to think of it, the likelihood is that preserving sugar wasn't available at the time anyway. As I say, it was a long time ago.

So I go off to the supermarket to buy some of this Confisuc sugar which seems to make jam making a doddle, only to find that it was double the price of the granulated.

Being on a budget I bought the granulated instead, did a bout of jam making only to find that the jam took ages to set and didn't make more that two pots.

A phone call to my friend again. Her response was that she always used the Confisuc / preserving sugar because it saved electricity as it brought the jam to set quicker, and that it made a good amount of jam because the quicker setting time meant that the jam was not boiling for so long and therefore reducing its liquid content as a result. Yes, it was more expensive, but you gor that back in terms of more jam for your money, plus you didn't use so much fuel boiling the jam.

That seemed logical. So my next time of jam making I made a compromise: I used half and half preserving sugar to granulated sugar, but not because I was a skin-flint, but because I had run out of the Confisuc!

Jam OK.

Lessons I learnt: That it is better not to be a skin-flint when it comes to sugars, because the less time one has to deal with a boiling pot of jam the less time is the likelihood of getting singed by the splashing of the jam!
That it is best to keep a store of sugar in the cupboard if one is likely to be donated fruit by kindly neighbours, and that keeping the sugar in a plastic bag tends to confuse the errant ant who is having a recce in one's cupboard for lunch and reduces the possibility of opening the cupboard door later on to find all the ant and its friends all come round for dinner. This only really applies if one is living in a caravan. You're probably OK if you are living in a house.

PS. A conversation with Denise over at Much Marlarkey Manor produced the info that preserving sugar has pectin in it which apparently helps jam to set. Presumably Confisuc has it in as well, but have yet to wade through the writing on the packet to see if it actually does.