Saturday, February 25, 2012

Curried Eggs

There are some very simple, quick to make, reasonable in cost and excellent to eat dishes about. This is one of them.

CURRIED EGGS

You will need:
Oil (any cooking oil)
Eggs
Flour (plain)
Curry powder (Madras mild or any other)
Stock cube (beef or chicken)
Soy sauce (for colour and salt)

Hard-boil the eggs (1 or 2 per person) by bringing them to the boil from cold water and giving them exactly 10 minutes boiling after that.
As this is happening, in a bowl mix, say, 3 heaped dessert spoons of flour and 2 of mild curry powder (or paste). Mix them well.
Put oil in a saucepan and add the flour/curry powder mixture. Add a stock cube. Stir this together, and after heating it through, add, say, a pint of water, and then some soy sauce for colour and saltiness.
Now whisk this well and keep whisking until the sauce is smooth, scraping inward any mixture caught in the lower side edges of the pan. Keep whisking occasionally.
The sauce will thicken. Dilute it with water to obtain the desired thickness, as some like a thick sauce and some a thin one. Test the sauce.
Now comes the time to fine-tune by adding any (or none) of the following: peanut butter (excellent), Worcestershire sauce (excellent), Tomato ketchup (also excellent), more soy sauce or salt. You might even want to add more chilli (powder).
Keep testing, adding what you will. But it shouldn’t need any more attention.
You will by about now have strained the water from the eggs, rattled them around the saucepan (in one kept specially for boiling eggs) to break up the shells, added cold water, and left them for a little while to ease the shelling process.
Add peeled eggs to the sauce. Eat.
Any sauce left over will make the start of a soup by adding water and stock cubes. You might want to fine-tune the soup. Do this as above.