Curry Sauce

Ingredients

• 25 g butter
• 1 onion
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 thumb ginger
• 2 tbsp curry powder
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1 tbsp malt vinegar
• 1 star anise
• 250 ml chicken stock
• 1 tbsp cornflour
• 2 tbsp water
• lemon juice

Method

Melt the butter over medium heat and add the onion, garlic, and ginger — diced finely so they cook to the same pace. The onion is your base; it needs to soften completely and turn translucent, which takes around 15 minutes. You're not building colour here — a pale, sweet base lets the spices dominate later. If the butter foams and the alliums catch brown at the edges, you've got the heat too high and you'll cook off the volatile aromatics before the aromatics have time to infuse the fat.

Once the onion yields to a spoon, add the curry powder, turmeric, and star anise. Fry for one minute — this step sauce-making|blooms the spices, waking their oils in the heat. You'll smell the shift; that's your cue. Pour in the malt vinegar immediately after; the acid will hit the hot spice and deglaze the pan, lifting the browned bits that add depth. Add the stock and bring to a gentle simmer. Don't boil hard — the extended heat will extract more flavour from the spices and allow the turmeric's earthiness to marry with the ginger, but vigorous bubbling will make the sauce taste thin and scattered.

Simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. The sauce will darken slightly and the flavours will round out as the turmeric compounds mellow and the star anise's aniseed notes soften into the background. Remove the star anise pod.

For the thickening, slake the cornflour — mix it with the water until there are no lumps — then stir it into the simmering sauce. Continue to simmer for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. The sauce will thicken noticeably as the cornflour hydrates and the heat gelatinises the starch. Stop the minute it coats the back of a spoon; oversimmering after thickening begins to break down the starch and the sauce can thin again.

Blend the sauce until smooth using an immersion blender, working in short bursts so you don't aerate it unnecessarily. Taste it. Add lemon juice in small amounts — quarter of a teaspoon at a time — until the acid lifts the curry's heaviness and sharpens the spice notes. You want brightness, not tartness. Serve with rice or meat.