He uncovers recipes for fragrant kormas, delicate spiced fish and slow-cooked biryanis, all the while gathering ideas and inspiration for his own take on that elusive dish – the perfect curry. He has written over 25 cookery books, a memoir and made over 30 programmes including 12 cookery series. Take heaped teaspoons of the kofta mixture and, using wet hands, roll into small balls roughly 5cm in diameter. He has cooked for The Queen and Prince Philip, Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher, French President, Jacques Chirac and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Rick Stein - Biography and TV series guides Rick Stein - Biography and TV series guides

Add the garlic and ginger and fry for a minute, then stir in the tomato passata and bring to a simmer for 5 minutes. Extracted from the book, these 5 essential tips form the building blocks of accomplished curries, helping you to cook them from scratch with ease. Roast for 15–20 minutes, or until lightly charred in places but not completely cooked through, as you’ll finish cooking them in the sauce. Add the chicken and stir around for 1-2 minutes, then stir in the garlic, ginger, sugar, salt and all of the spice blend, and fry for 2 minutes. Add the water, and cook for about 10–15 minutes, stirring often and adding more splashes of water if needed to stop it sticking to the pan, until the chicken is cooked through and the sauce thick and reduced and clinging to the chicken.

It’s the lichen off a tree, known as dagarful, kalpasi or stone flower, with a flavour like cinnamon. In Rick Stein’s India, our favourite itinerant cookbook author journeys across India meeting the chefs, home cooks and street food vendors who hold the secrets to accomplished Indian cookery.

Rick Stein Butter Chicken Recipe | Easy Curry Recipe Rick Stein Butter Chicken Recipe | Easy Curry Recipe

Add the chicken pieces to the marinade, then cover and transfer to the fridge to marinate for 1 hour. Sharing the dishes he most loves to cook for family and friends, Rick takes you inside their home kitchens unlike he’s done in any previous book. But for most of the recipes in this book I found that the standard brown onions work perfectly well.Add the shallots and curry leaves and fry for 10 minutes until the shallots are softened and golden. Or you can crush the garlic, either by chopping finely with a sharp knife or using a garlic crusher. Supermarket free-range chickens have a great deal more fat than Indian chickens, and they don’t come close to reproducing the flavour and texture of Indian chicken dishes. As he said at the time “nothing is more exhilarating than fresh fish simply cooked” – an ethos he has both lived and run his restaurants by.

Rick Stein’s India - The Happy Foodie 5 curry tips from Rick Stein’s India - The Happy Foodie

A mini food processor makes light work of turning garlic and ginger, with a splash of water, into pastes, which are used throughout the book. Afterwards, in conversation with him, I realized that they’d used his house as the ex-British Raj Club in the film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, where the character played by Celia Imrie went hunting for rich men.After hours spent observing and learning in kitchens across the country, he came away not only with a collection of faithfully recorded recipes, from a fragrant korma to a rich butter chicken, but an understanding of the essential components of India’s world-renowned curries. For eating raw, for example in a salad, I prefer to use red onions or shallots for their sweeter flavour and pleasing colour.