Radio Curry Challenge

Curry.

A bit of an obsession of mine. Pretty much the only thing I can cook besides pasta. It's something that gives me a vague pride in living in Tooting. "You know, Tooting is where you can get the most authentic Pakistani curry in all of London" is what I said to my flatmate when I was first showing her around the flat.

So, when I became the editor of the last episode of the Round 1 project, I knew that it had to end with a curry cook-off!

Malaysian Chicken Curry, Indian Paneer Curry and Jamaican Curried Goat.
All next to a gleeful Rashmi 

However, since we were an Olympics show I put a international spin on it. We had a slim team of three people: Shamara - a Jamaican, Rashmi - an Indian, Me - a Malaysian. Three great curry nations. So, we battled it out for the honour of  being taking home the Gold medal for curry excellence. To be precise, we were battling it out to win 'The Round 1 Spatula'.

I decided that on top of the tasting of the curry we would have each do a small report on the curry we were making - so, several pieces of curry goodness sprinkled throughout the show. Incidentally, when I emailed our supervisor the plan for the show on the night before he was a bit concerned, replying with "it's the last day of the Paralympics, why are you spending half the show on curry?!?". I justified it noting that it was in the spirit of international competition and the curry chimed well with being in East London. I think he bought it.

Shamara made a delicious goat curry. It was actually the first time she had ever cooked a curry, so she took careful instructions from her mother on how to prepare an authentic Jamaican dish. This curry genuinely blew me away. I remember saying with a measure of surprise, "Wow, this is ACTUALLY really good". Succulent, herbal and really tender.

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Rashmi prepared a Tamil paneer curry (Paneer is a type of cheese, though it has a consistency similar to a tough tofu) . We were all a bit apprehensive, because less than a week before Rashmi became violently ill as a result of a dodgy curry she cooked for herself. Her curry was decent, though as our judge said, it had a Heinz tomato soup element to it as a result of the cream she added.

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I myself prepared a Malaysian 'Kari Ayam'. Essentially I cooked a normal chicken curry, but threw in some Malaysian curry powder. I actually hadn't cooked a chicken curry in a while, so asked my cousin Kenneth for some advice since he is generally an expert at all things food related. He has actually been a vegetarian for several years, so he was going on some old memories. I was somewhat pleased with curry, though I held back on the spice (I usually really go to town with the chilli) since I was unsure about how much our guest could take. This turned out be my downfall, since the curry ended up being a bit too mild.

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For our judge, I enlisted the expertise of Lily Rae, who was also coming on our show to perform a 'Canal Sessions' song for us. She is a fantastic songwriter, plus she also writes on a food blog called http://badsalad.wordpress.com/, so I figured she would be a perfect candidate to judge the curry. Her friend Lawrence (who is her guitarist) also had gave his opinion on the curry.

Lily Rae and Lawrence

Shamara, the Round 1 Curry Champion!

She gave a great analysis of our curry and rightly awarded Sharama the award as Round 1 Curry Champion, bestowing on her the Round 1 Spatula. To hear the important curry tasting stuff, skip to 20 min 50 secs in of the soundcloud post (remember you can download it too!):