Curry Powder and ginger powder in coconut dahl

That looks delicious.

A cube of your frozen ginger would be a good substitute for the fresh ginger. I would just leave the curry leaves out if you don't have them. Do you have the rest of the spices?
 
Yes thanks. What's the point of the chilli if it's left whole? I thought the spiciness comes from the seeds or white bit on the inside.
I have rapeseed and olive oil, but no Sunflower oil. Which would you recommend?
 
I use ghee for Indian cuisine. I never use refined seed oils so it would have to be olive oil if I was forced to use one over the other. Personally I would be using fresh chili's and more than one but I suspect this person chose 1 whole not to alienate the average cook, but again recipes are basically someone's interpretation and personally speaking I've actually never followed a recipe exactly anyway and I always encourage new cooks to be explorative and it's in those future adjustments that make a person a better cook and helps people overcome their indecision and anxiety by not having the exact ingredients of a particular recipe.
 
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I rarely use dried chillis (although my wife uses a lot). If I do, I cut them into short lengths with scissors and ensure to keep the seeds.

Dried red chillies s.jpg

Dried red chillies s.jpg


Other that that I grind them to a course "powder".

chilipowder.jpg


I agree with garlichead about using fresh chillis if they are available.

Curry leaves are not related to curry or curry powder. I use dried for only one Indian dish that I cook (balti potatoes) but that's only if I have them (which is rare).


curry-leaves.jpg
 
Yes, you can use your frozen ginger and curry powder - but they won´t taste as good as if you used the individual spices in the recipe.
Frozen ginger loses its bite and tang, IMHO, and curry powder could be quite good, or appalling. Curry powder also contains a crazy mixture of several spices (often an excess of turmeric and fenugreek) and cheap spices to fill out volume.
Dried chiles, for many Indian cooks, provide the flavour without the heat, so they will treat them as a different ingredient than fresh red or green chiles. Chile powder is, again, quite another animal, and you´ll be able to find (relatively) mild chiles (like Kashmiri) and some extra hot powders.
Curry leaves are from the murraya koenigii bush. No relation to curry powder, no similarity to any other herb I know. Typically very common in Southern Indian cuisine - but the South of India is huge!!
 
Amateur1 said:
I have some frozen crushed ginger (1 cube = 1 teaspoon) and some ground ginger and some medium curry powder.
Can I use these in place of the ginger and curry leaves mentioned in this recipe? If so, how much would you recommend?

One-pan coconut dhal recipe | BBC Good Food
Click to expand...

1 thumb sized piece of ginger is usually between 1-2 tablespoons of ginger. So I'd be looking at 3 of your cubes. I routinely freeze pureed ginger and don't find any loss of flavour or bite at all but my ginger has a massive kick to it. I usually freeze it in tablespoon size cubes... I'd be using 2 tbsp sized cubes for that recipe.

Curry powder and curry leaves are, as you have probably established by now, not interchangeable. If you can get some, do so. They are a revelation and worth trying to find. Fresh is better than dried, and they do store in the freezer. I keep both available.

Leaving the dried chilli whole will add some spicy heat to the dish but not a huge amount. If you were to add 4 and leave them whole (it serves 4) you'll get more of a chill kick. It depends entirely on how much heat you want in the dish. The entire reason for leaving them whole is easy extraction at the end. You could easily substitute the dried chilli for a teaspoon of chilli powder (or ¼-½ tsp depending on how hot the chilli powder is and how hot you want the end product).
 
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