Hello everyone, welcome to today’s edition of Yesterday’s Curry!
This week is a little bit of a different one, as I am going to start documenting the behind the scenes of running my food business. Those of you who have been following me or reading my newsletter for some time will be aware that I run a spice business called Yesterday’s Curry (which will be changing its name this year, but that’s for another newsletter). I want to take substack more seriously this year and so will be using this space to keep track of all my product development. If you aren’t already a subscriber and would like to receive these updates in your inbox, you can subscribe here:
I started my spice business “Yesterday’s Curry” in late 2021. On a bit of a whim towards the end of the pandemic and having spent the year prior really immersing myself in learning Goan cooking at home, I decided I wanted to develop a tangible product that could introduce home cooks in the UK to Goan cuisine. I chose 3 blends, fish curry masala, xacuti and vindalho(vindaloo). Three iterations later, starting with spice packets and ending with my current square tins, I finally had my end product which I personally designed taking inspiration from the colourful streets of Fontainhas in Panjim.
When I came back from Goa last year, I realised there was so much more I wanted to incorporate into my business than just spices. There were also so many wet masalas, sauces and baked goods that I knew people here would love. By this point my spice business became a bit of a sunk-cost fallacy. I had already fallen slightly out of love with just selling spice blends when an amazing opportunity came knocking at my door; Selfridges. When the biggest department store in the country is interested in your product, it must mean you’re on the right track, right? But I knew I wanted to pivot slightly and that spice blends weren’t necessarily the correct route to achieve my ultimate goal.
Taking a step back to clarify what my objective was, I wrote a mission statement; to introduce the UK to Goan food. Whether that is through products or dining experiences or hampers of Goan baked goods; I needed to come up with a way to make these flavours more readily accessible. A few months ago I conducted a tasting session at a shop in Waterloo that stocks my spice tins; standing at a stall and serving people my Goan curry, almost everyone who tried it bought a tin, but the ones who didn’t were put off by the amount of cooking involved by only having the spice. Accessibility and ease of use seemed to be the biggest obstacle here. It occured to me too that by bringing a brand new cuisine to market, people need to know what the food tastes like before they can really buy into the idea. If you don’t know what a Goan fish curry or a xacuti is meant to taste like what is the incentive going to be to cook it yourself?!
I’m sure some spice blends will find their place within this larger goal, but for now I knew I had to start over. My first product was a Goan fish curry masala, because for me that is the quintessential Goan dish. It is what the region is most known for and it’s what got me started on this whole journey in the first place; it’s Yesterday’s Curry. The greatest thing about this curry (or any curry really) is that the flavours develop after it’s been left to settle for a while, and often when people buy my spice in a tin, they’re making it and eating it straight away. They’re also losing out on the fresh coconut in the masala and also by having to season the dish themselves there isn’t always a guarantee of the best result. Spices had the lowest barrier to entry for someone who’d never started a food business before, but with all the experience I’ve gained from the past 3 years, I realised it was time to develop a sauce. I know this will come with its own challenges; the main one being things like shelf life. Spices just lose potency, they never really go off so it is a relatively risk free thing to start with. Delving into wet products is a whole different ball game. And that’s what I’m going to be using substack for largely now; documenting this ongoing process of developing a product which is completely new to me. It’s been a few weeks of research and trial and error and I’m going to share a bit of what’s gone into that.
The first thing I did once I’d made the decision to do this was to try a Goan curry sauce (from what I can tell, the only other one on the market) from a popular Indian restaurant. I won’t name them, but if you’re a keen foodie you’ll know. It looked amazing in the jar, very smooth and pourable due to there being no fresh coconut, only coconut milk, and the colour was spot on. However, it didn’t taste like a Goan curry to me and felt quite homogenous and flat after eating it for a while. I’ll admit, I was relieved by this and set out to create my own, knowing there was at least some demand for a product like this.
There are several different fish curries in Goan cuisine; the classic orange hue coconut based curry I’m making here, but also the likes of ambot tik (hot and sour) and caldine (which is milder and more yellow). There are also so many variations depending on region and from family to family so there isn’t only one right way to do this. In the coming weeks I am going to be testing out Goan fish curry recipes from some of my favourite Goan chefs and bloggers in order to further my research into developing this sauce.
For now, I made the sauce based on the Goan prawn curry I teach at Leiths School of Food & Wine, which is made up of onions and tomatoes cooked down with a wet masala of fresh coconut, garlic, ginger, tamarind and spices, and then adding a good quality coconut milk. I use the brand Aroy-D, but I will be trying other brands throughout the next few weeks so that I am using the tastiest coconut milk I can find.
Below is batch 1 after it has thickened for a while which still contains the onion and tomato pieces. In order to make a nice retail product however, I then blended this sauce in my thermomix.
Pictured below: roasting the spices first, before turning them into a wet masala with coconut, water, tamarind, garlic and ginger. Picture on the right is the finished sauce of batch 1 after blending. The colour is exactly how I want it, a lovely deep orange.
I waited a day before tasting the sauce from batch 1 and found it far too spicy. Despite having taken the seeds out of the chillies (which are normally on the milder side anyway) I found myself reaching for my water too much when eating it. I really need to find a good supplier of proper Kashmiri chillies. This is high priorirty on my to-do list! While Goan food is spicy I am looking for an end result which is more medium heat so it’s doesn’t alienate too many people.
With batch 2, I kept the spice quantity the same, but this time increased the amount of fresh coconut, water and coconut milk. This meant the sauce was milder but it also stretched further and I got 3 jars out of the end result compared to 2 jars in my first batch. In terms of taste, this one was much much better, a lovely gentle heat, and very creamy. However 3 weeks later when I tested it straight from the jar, I found that the sauce had solidified just a bit too much. Ideally I would still like to be able to call it a sauce rather than a paste, so next time I will take the coconut down a notch just so it isn’t completely solid. I also found that while the taste of this was nearly perfect, the mouthfeel was just a tad too creamy and coconutty, which while lovely is just not exactly what I’m looking for from this specific curry, and would be much more suitable for a caldine style sauce (if I bring that out one day!)
A summar of my findings from batches 1 and 2:
This has been a fun experiment so far, and I’m learning a lot as I go along. This week I’m going to make another batch and make some tweaks to slightly increased the spice but lower the coconut of batch 2.
I will also be testing using sterilized jars which I didn’t bother with for these first couple of tests, and testing both in and out of the fridge. This Wednesday I have a meeting with some product development experts so hopefully that will throw up some useful insights and advice!
I hope you found some of this product development intel useful and I would welcome anyone’s suggestions or advice as I continue testing in order to bring out the best Goan curry sauce possible!
Until next time,
Emma xoxo
Hi Emma. I bought one of your original xacutti mixes, which was fabulous (my favourite curry from anywhere). Fresh grated coconut is so difficult to find in the UK! I used to spend a lot of time in Goa and love Goan food, apart from one or two that are just too spicy for me (ambot tik). Goan dal is gorgeous and I've had amazing green curries. It's so diverse, I wish people knew more about Goan food.
HI Emma, I found this really interesting to read, and to realise how much work goes into the development and testing process. Happy to do some testing for you when you get to that point. All the best