Writer, Agilist, Elder Geek
Been cooking my last curry variant for awhile, and it’s good enough to consider another Milestone. So here’s the summary of my experiments – I wanted to remake it a few times, and after remaking it so often without tweaking it it was like “yeah, that’s pretty good!”
So here’s the full recipe!
Well been on a roll with the Japanese Curry testing – because I’m going to make it for friends this weekend, and two have lived in Japan, so it’s a big test. Also, hey, curry.
So my latest experiment is just modifying proportions, and using that Big Mess of curry to try adding 50% more cocoa powder.
Now cocoa powder is a fascinating spice. It’s bitter, earthy, and rich – and it interacts with ingreedients in fascinating ways. If you’ve tried different kinds of chocolate, used it in chili, etc. you know what I’m talking about. My energy bars mix vanilla, cocoa powder, maple syrup, and peanut butter together to make oatmeal into bars – and the taste is really hard to describe.
Cocoa powder’s bitterness can work against you like any spice if you’re not careful, so you also don’t want to overdo it. The first time I tried cocoa powder in my Japanese Curry I put in too much and the bitterness became an unpleasant edge, despite the richness of the overall taste. I cut it in half and was pretty satisfied with the result – my last Milestone Curry with the cocoa and maple syrup roasted together in the roux is quite a good testimony to what it can do.
But I began wondering if in my quest for richness and depth (OK, kind of an obsession) if maybe I’d cut it too much. So I upped the cocoa powder to 50% more as noted.
The result? It definitely added what I was looking for; richer, deeper, more complex without a noticeable increase in bitterness. Like several of my tweaks I think it enhanced the sense of spiciness, but as noted cocoa powder is a wonderfully complex spice. It’s also a good reminder how the “parts” of a spice’s taste can vary with combinations and preparation – I thought it would add more bitterness.
So another lesson is I probably cut too much in the first place. Each spice works differently and has to be adjusted differently.
I also have to wonder what I could do with cocoa powder and Mexican or Indian food . . .
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.
Well the last time I made curry, I experimented with mixing the Maple Syrup into the roux, not the broth. It changed the flavor, and got me thinking. The roux is where the flavors really combine, so what else should go in there?
So this time, I added the cocoa powder to the roux. Did it make a difference? Yes, enough to call it a Milestone It’s a more subtle improvement than I got from adding the Maple Syrup to the roux, but it is a definite improvement.