Hello sirs.
The food eaten in the southern part of India has quite a few differences when it comes to ingredients, herbs and spice blends when compared to north India. A few days ago I made sambar, which is a spiced lentil soup with lots of colorful vegetables and a tamarind broth. The spices and herbs used are red chillies, fenugreek seeds, coriander, cumin, black pepper, black mustard seeds, turmeric powder and most importantly, curry leaves! It's a very flavorful and slightly tart because of the tamarind, with a nice light broth. It's probably one of my favorite Indian dishes. Paired with the sambar is Chettinad pepper chicken, a spicy semi-dry to dry curry with lots of black pepper and some aged basmati rice, which is very aromatic and delicious. The brand that I used for Laila, in the green package.
The curry leaves that I used were nice, but the taste wasn't as pronounced as I expected. I think that the fresh leaves are the best, but you can use frozen leaves as I did because I'm a cheapskate. Dried leaves are really weak, fyi.
For the best taste I'd recommend making your own masala/spice blends with freshly toasted spices, so much more flavorful than ground spices bought in stores. Doing this however requires you having quite a few whole spices already and having either a mortar and pestle, an Indian wet blender or a coffee grinder. If you're not in the mood to undertake such a project then you can just buy the masala powders at your local Indian or Asian store. Brands like MDH, Everest and MTR are good.
If you like Thai curries and soups then you'll probably love South Indian food. Give it a try!
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Chettinad Pepper Chicken (I seared my chicken beforehand, not traditional but it gives more flavor so why not?)
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That looks good!
I made a huge batch of chicken tikka masala the other day and it's come out well. I used this premix:
and it's good but it's not particularly fragrant. Could you recommend a better brand if I wanted to make this again?
Also, I'm thinking to make chicken kalimirch next time as I've really enjoyed that whenever I've ordered it. Any hints? That one you've made is a bit similar to a kalimirch by the looks of it.
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I think the fragrance part really comes from using fresh ingredients (
), which means doing a bit of preperation when cooking. The sauce/gravy of Tikka masala has in comparision to most other Indian/BIR curries a lot of tomatoes when compared to the amount of onions. Luckily nearly all the ingredients are easy to obtain in regular supermarkets (onions, ginger, garlic, tomatoes, chicken, cream, etc). Fresh tomatoes here in swamp Germany are mid so do buy canned tomatoes, which are much more ripe and sweet! For the spices I'd recommend buying turmeric powder, coriander seed powder, cumin powder, chili powder (kashmiri for the red color and maybe a hotter one for spiciness if you're into that) and garam masala (ground of course). Kasuri methi, which are dried fenugreek leaves are often added at the end but it isn't a major flavor so don't worry if you can't get it.
This is a good recipe:
https://www.indianhealthyrecipes.com/chicken-tikka-masala/
After googling chicken kali mirch I think that dish and mine are quite different. Chicken kali mirch has a thinner white gravy with yogurt, onions that are more beige in color than brown and no red chili powder and turmeric. It looks tasty for sure, quite different than the usual reddish orange/brown color of most curries.
https://www.cubesnjuliennes.com/murgh-kali-mirch-chicken-kali-mirch/
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