Curry Sauce

I LOVE curries, be it Indian, Sri Lankan or Thai bring on the spice and heat me up. Yum!!!

One of the first dishes I ever cooked was an Indian style vegetable curry, I love the blend of spices and chillies and have found the way to get the best flavour is to grind the seeds myself to make my own sauce. I cook up big batches of sauce at a time and freeze it in jars so its ready to use when I want...and its really simple to make too...

Ingredients
1 tbls vegetable oil
2 large onions, finely diced
6 cloves garlic - chopped
2cm root ginger, peeled and chopped
2-3 large red chilles, chopped - keep the seeds*
2 tsp turmeric
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp group cumin
Large tin (450g) of peeled plum tomatoes, chopped
Water
2 tbls tomato puree

Heat the oil in a pan, add the onions lower the heat and cover the pan to sweat the onions for 5 minutes. 
Add the garlic, ginger and chillies and saute for another 5 minutes or until soft.
Mix in the spices making sure they don;t stick to the pan
Add the tomatoes. Fill the empty can with water and add to the pan. Mix well then add the tomato puree and mix again.
Cover and simmer for 20 minutes until the sauce thickens.
Allow to cool then blend all the ingredients and store in jars.

I use this sauce for Channa Massala and Saag Gobi Massala - but its basic so can use with any meats or veggies. Once meat, pulses or veggies are almost cooked through I add a heaped teaspoon of my own garam massala blend (cardamon, cinnamon, cloves, fennel, fenugreek, nutmeg, black pepper). You can also use the blend as a dry rub for the meat prior to cooking to maximise the flavour.

*Much depends on the heat of the chillies, occasionally i add dried chilli flakes if I feel the sauce is not hot enough but be careful as the spice heat develops with the reheating.