We wanted a fish curry tonight, so I decided to try this recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible. We've had a lot of success with recipes from this book in the past; the lamb with potatoes (made with pumpkin instead of potatoes) is a great favourite, and I made the lamb bhuna a few weeks ago to great acclaim from Tim and our guest.
This recipe was less of a success, though. It's extremely labour-intensive; I halved the quantities, which meant we only had to grind 2oz of sesame seeds, and that took us three-quarters of an hour of passing the grinder between us. If I had been making the full recipe I think I might have given up in disgust and decided to make something else. And neither of us felt that the finished project justified the effort. Tim has less of a tolerance for spicy foods than I do and definitely thought it was too hot. I thought it was OK but the flavours lacked depth and subtlety, probably unsurprisingly given that the sauce was cooked very quickly and then the fish was only simmered in it for about quarter of an hour.
Not one I'll be making again, I think.
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Couldn't you just use tahini instead of grinding your own sesame seeds?
ReplyDeleteI did wonder about that, but the recipe has you grind the seeds with spices (cayenne, turmeric, coriander) and desiccated coconut and it actually comes out as more of a powder rather than a paste. I think tahini would work, but it would take a bit of adjustment to the rest of the recipe.
ReplyDeleteI've never been bothered to acquire a mortar and pestle and you're not entirely selling it to me now! Would it be possible to grind the sesame seeds in a blender/food-processor? (Works well with nuts and seeds generally)
ReplyDeleteI do look forward to reading about your culinary exploits :)
@Itchy: I don't use a mortar and pestle to grind spices (although we own two of them!); I have a spice mill. It works fine for small amounts, but 2oz of sesame seeds gets a bit tedious.
ReplyDeleteI don't know whether using the food processor would work; my suspicion is that the seeds would be too small and a lot of them would end up underneath the blades and not getting ground properly. I may be wrong, though.