My First attempt at curry making
I always liked to cook, but I had never tried to cook a curry. I had managed to cook some pretty decent chilli con Carne in my short cooking career, but any attempt at a curry just ended as slop. So, I just got my fix from takeaways and eating out. I was given some spices for my birthday from a girlfriend who knew my newfound passion for curry, but again, it was always a disaster. Eventually, I was in a bookstore when I caught sight of an Indian cookbook by Mridula Baljekar. The cover picture caught my eye, and I flicked through it. I drooled over these beautiful glossy pictures and bought the book there and then.
My First Curry.
The one that really caught my eye was a meat Bhoona Ghost. So, I went out and bought all the ingredients, including many I had never heard of. One that sticks in my mind was cilantro dried coriander leaf. I was used to garlic but had never used ginger, and then there was this funny mixture called garam masala, which I found out was a blend of spices added at the end. Armed with a Chinese wok, spoons, spatulas, and a trusty can of Carlsberg, I made a start. There seemed to be a lot of fuss about frying the onions, ginger, and garlic – lid on, lid off, high heat, low heat. But when I added the ground spices, the aroma was a delight. The meat was added and cooked faithfully to the recipe, then went in those funny dried leaves and the garam masala. I remember looking at the dish as it neared its end, and the oil had risen to the top of the pan, and the dish looked deep red. But what the hell had happened to the three large onions that had brought me to tears? They just seemed to melt into a rich sauce. Finally, it was tasting time, although I had tasted it all the way through, LoL. I'm surprised that there was any left in the pan. But something had happened when the last two ingredients had gone in; the whole character of the dish had changed. Wow, this was something special, and I had made it. Excitedly, I took a plate into the living room where Mum and Dad were watching telly and offered it to them. "Hmm, that's nice," they said, "What is it?" "It's curry," I explained. "Oh, okay," they replied. You have to remember this was in the early nineties, and English people still ate normal food. Eventually, my curries were tested on them often, and occasionally they would ask, "You doing curry tonight?"
With the success of the first curry, we set up the curry club Alresford style. There were five or six of us that would get together once or twice a month around at Mandy and Jody’s to try new recipes. A bit of an excuse for another party, they were fun days.
I very soon became confident about cooking most Indian dishes, and we cooked them everywhere. Every holiday or adventure was an excuse to break out the spices and the curry pans. Campfire curry was basically the one I have just described and became a benchmark for all of our outings, from rock festivals to cooking in the Australian outback and on my African adventure.
The Curry two
Eventually, my brother and I set off on another adventure to ride our bikes all around Europe and just get away from the dreary weather in the UK. We fancied a long break and figured two years would do it. We could work on the way, live in campsites, and sing "born to be wild" as we rode our motorbikes through Europe.
Once again, the spices made many appearances on this fantastic journey, riding through France, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, over the water to Greece, and then finally Cyprus, where we would meet up with our sister and her family. What I didn't figure was that at the time of writing this, we would have been here 23 years. Wow, where does the time go? Well, the holiday was over for Jeannette, and they all went home.
We then decided that we might stay on in Cyprus for a bit and really get some sun. But we couldn't afford to stay in Protaras hotels (no campsites there), so we moved on to Paphos on the west side of the island, where we hoped to find cheap accommodation and possibly some work. It wasn't long before we met George Michael as he introduced himself – no, not the singer, although the famous singer did actually come from the Paphos area.
George was here to start a new life with his girlfriend, and we all became good friends. George also liked curry and seemed to magically appear every time I was cooking one. His spoon would rap on the door loudly, and as we opened the door, he would say,
"egh Stevie, you avin curry again" in his broad Halifax accent. But why did he have a spoon?
Anyway, George became my official taster. One day, I had made chicken madras, and George loudly declared, "EGH STEVIE, THIS CURRY'S MAGIC." So, the name Curry Magic was born.
Time was moving on and we were running out of money, and my chief taster suggested that we set up a restaurant, or at least a takeaway. We laughed it off, but it was actually a good idea, especially as we hadn't tasted a decent curry from a restaurant since we had arrived. It just wasn't up to standard, and the chefs were changed every five minutes, so there was never any consistency to any of the places we tried. The idea of a takeaway was growing into a good idea, but how could we do it?
We scoured shops and places that might possibly do for a takeaway, but the greedy owners wanted stupid money for shops that had stood empty for years – we were stuck. We planned that maybe we could do a delivery service from home to build up a client base and then approach a bank to see about a business loan?
That's what we did. My hours were spent cooking and developing recipes that could be cooked quickly and in bulk if necessary. Try this, try that. We worked so bloody hard, and the money was running out big time. We had made lots of new friends, so there were plenty of guinea pigs to try all the stuff that we had put into the Curry Magic system.
A basic menu was designed on a 100-pound computer with Corel Draw, and finally, we had a product and system to deliver it.
We edged to an opening night. We prepped up all day in readiness and opened the phone. We had dropped off a few menus here and there, not too many, as we didn't want to be swamped and not cope on the first night. It was a nerve-wracking ordeal, but the night was quiet. However, there was one order, which turned out to be Val and Thomas from the famous Thomas the Jungle Bar. The order was for one chicken dhansak and one chicken bhoona with rice, papadoms, and pickles – that was it!
We were in business. The feedback that came back was very encouraging, so we persevered. The next night, more orders came in, and then the next and the next; the evening was becoming quite busy, and we were becoming popular.
A month had passed, and a routine was becoming evident, and then there was a knock on the door one morning. There were about ten plain clothed coppers stood outside; they came in and started asking questions about what we were doing!
We explained that we had set this up as a test for a takeaway, and we had applied for Curry Magic Limited as a legal entity. They searched everywhere – god knows what they were looking for, and then they started gathering up our stuff. I asked them what was going on, and they said that there had been seventeen complaints about us – some from other restaurants, actually all from other restaurants.
We had inadvertently stepped on lots of toes, and now we were to be punished!
We were then invited to the station with our pots, pans, and papadoms, Honestly they took the frikin poppadoms as evidence!
We went through the rigmarole of the police interview; they wrote our statements for us LOL and told us to sign here (our side of the story wasn't allowed). We were then told that we could leave with our stuff and yes that meant the popadoms!
We had to hire a taxi to get it all back home. I couldn't believe what had just happened – we were so stupid not to have followed the rules, but every time we tried, we were pushed from pillar to post, getting nowhere. We went home, and then went into Thomas's bar and got very, very drunk. I went home and cried myself to sleep.
We were taken to court and fined one thousand six hundred Cyprus pounds and told to stop doing this. Laughably, we were told that we could take the evidence back home with us by the judge who gasped that the evidence had already been released.
I gave up the curry idea and went back to being a humble electrician. However, I can't say that I totally gave up on the idea; let's just say it's on the back burner for now.
To Be Continued.....
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