O How do you make a Devil happy?
Why, you make him some Japanese curry!
You make it out of carrots and potatoes
Onions, chicken, anything goes
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You chop and you slice, you boil and you simmer
You salt and you spice, you laugh till you’re slimmer
You whip out a pack of Japanese curry roux
You break it up, add to this awesome stew
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Chocolate-coloured cubes crumble and cream
This wholesome brew begins to sweat and steam
And soon it thickens like treacle and it tastes so good
You serve it to the Devil* and put him in a most excellent mood!
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* Read also the Devil Wears Prada’s hilarious version of my stint at making Japanese curry, with the recipe!
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Copyright © 2011 Kenny Mah Ying Fye. Pictures by Devil CK & Kenny Mah.
Kenny Mah believes in the good in people. He has been blogging for over ten years. No, his hands aren't tired. Yet.
[...] http://lifeforbeginners.com/2011/03/how-to-make-japanese-curry/ [...]
Wow – this must be the easiest recipe ever! Lucky Devil he :)
Your post is like the rays of sunlight streaming onto my workstation thru the floor-to-ceiling glass panel here… so uplifting :D
@Pureglutton: Hehe, Devil’s lucky, isn’t he? All he had to do was wash all the dishes afterwards, hahaha…
Wah, I should cook more often if my posts can send rays of sunlight (or something liddat) through your day… *chuckles*
u make me want to eat some jap curry chicken rice today!
@lotsofcravings: Hehe. I’ve got a feeling you’re not the only one judging by the response on Twitter.
So when you going to make the unka happy? :P
@unkaleong: Oh I know of many ways to make the Unka happy… and not just with Japanese curry. Ahem.
1) Mmmmmm. Japanese curry. Yums! (Looks good!)
2) LOL LOL LOL. U n Unka r so funny.
@J the chocoholic: Ooh, numbering! Such fun! Hehe.
1. Totally yums. Tasted better than it looks, actually, haha.
2. Funny? I think Unka and me were going for sexy leh. Cis.
I see sales of Jap curry suddenly spiking today…. :D That looks fabulously delicious!!!!
@Camemberu: Haha, I wonder if HOUSE brand Japanese curry (the one I use) will ask me to be their poster boy for kari Jepun? *guffaws*
I like my Japanese curry with lots of potatoes!
@mimid3vils: Then you’d love mine – I used lots of potatoes! Hehe.
That’s such an easy and delicious dish to prepare!! I love Japanese curry too! Where to get those Curry cubes??! It definitely saves me the trouble of thinking what to cook for dinner! :P
@iamthewitch: I buy HOUSE brand Japanese curry paste/roux – I believe you can get this from most supermarket these days, but Isetan and Mercato are good bets. Probably Cold Storage too, but I’m not too sure about that.
i am seriously looking forward to eat malay/chinese/Japanese vegetarian food :)))
how r u Kenny…
@vimesh: I’m good, mate. Not heard from you in a while – studies going great, I hope?
And yes, all these foods are fab! Deli-yummy-licious!
I could never tire of Japanese curry! Never, ever!! Now, if only I wasn’t the designate cook in the household – I wouldn’t mind being where Devil is, watching on the sidelines, sniggering and waiting to eat!
@minchow: Haha, I bet you would! But don’t forget, Devil had the cleanup duties… *sniggers*
Can we see the Devil sweat and steam?
While I watch, crumble and cream?
Hahahaha :)
But the curry looks great! I gotta go make some!
@Paul: *guffaws*
I’m not sure what Devil’s gonna make of your suggestion, hehe.
But you can get the ultra-simple recipe from his blog and make some Japanese curry too! Hooray!
Imagine this: I make a huge pot of ABC soup, then take half out and add the kari cube to it, and voila! 1 soup and 1 vege+meat dish!! :D
My kids luuurve Jap curry with rice. With your curry rice and my chiffon, we’re pretty much set for a dinner date, yes? *beams*
@gfad: Pandai-nyer! That’s really very smart. I should do that the next time – that way instead of having the same dish the next night as leftovers, we get a completely new meal!
And uhm, does this dinner date come sans infants, children and adolescents? Hehe.
You make me crave for Japanese curry now!
@Baby Sumo: Hehe, just takes about half an hour of cooking time, go on, make some now and enjoy your well-deserved reward! Yummy…
Wonder how dessert went… ;)
@Vern: Dessert was half a honeydew melon shared between us. It was sweet and just hit the spot, post-dinner.
looks like a big, delicious bowl … got leftovers ar? you should send out a tweet alert the next time you’re cooking … you might just get a few unexpected knocks on your door from familiar faces before the curry is even ready! :D
what i’m currently craving (that nobody is blogging about today!) are sweet, cold, juicy rambutans and lychees. the sad reason for that is i had a bad reaction to past-its-prime meat this week, and currently am incapacitated with no appetite for anything savory. you know the feeling … put a plate of ad hog’s tastiest babi guling in front of me, and i’d probably decline sorrowfully…
in other ramblings of a deliriously nauseous mind, i watched ‘the adjustment bureau,’ and gotta recommend that you and devil catch it. the sci-fi premise and execution are wobbly (think second-rate ‘minority report’ and ‘inception’), but i think you might like the romance at the heart of the story. it all gets a bit hokey and ridiculous, but there are genuine moments that’ll be food for thought (ugh, food). watch with the one you love :D
@Sean: Haha, I believe so – if I were to tweet about leftovers, the entire Leftovers Brigade may well show up at our doorstep!
And poor you – hope you are feeling better already. Food poisoning’s the worst thing; it incapcitates us for… more food! The horrors!
I’d blog about rambutans and lychees for you except I haven’t even seen any around. Are they in season?
As for ‘The Adjustment Bureau’, that’s the one with Matt Damon, right? Reason enough to watch, hehe.
Aiyak, Devil’s recipe in Chinese one. But from yr pics, I think agak-agak can make la.
So cute la, both of u link each other on this post. <3
@Baby Sumo: Hehe, I think the recipe should hold up under a Google translation; it’s rather straightforward, after all.
And yeah, not only did we link to each other on this post, we each did our own set of Japanese curry pics and only compared the images after we had finished! Hehe.
hahaha funny la u :D
@Jun: I am to please. Hehe.
Hmmmm..
*wonders if Devil likes Curried Deviled Eggs*
@jemima: Hmm. I should leave that up to him to answer, perhaps? Hehe.
Hmm, I have never tried that before leh, maybe Jemima can make some for us to try try. :D
@Devil: Hahaha, good suggestion! So, Jemima, you’re making some for us to try, ja?
that’s easy peasy to make him happy instantly by using instant curry blocks!!
@lena: Not so instant lah, still have to prepare all the veges and meat beforehand, and the boiling, and scum-scooping, then simmering…
Hahaha, I’m trying so hard to make it sound harder than it really is… I’m not succeeding, am I? *chuckles*
Lychee and rambutans are seasonal? Oops, shows how much I know about fruits. Then again, the only lychees I’ve had were always straight out of a can :D
If you wanna do a Matt damon double-feature, you could watch ‘the adjustment bureau’ back to back with ‘true grit,’ also currently showing. Such different movies, such different roles! But ‘true grit’ is the one that moved me to tears :D
@Sean: Aren’t they? I think lychees are, at least. Though these days I bet they’ve genetically-engineered every fruit to keep bearing 365 days a year.
Haven’t watched ‘True Grit’ or any of the award season films yet. Wanna do a movie marathon of them some weekend soon. I oughta pinjam the DVDs from you since you’ve probably watched them all. Can ar? Hehe.
for some odd reason when ever I get home from work and smell the aroma of Japanese curry I feel slightly disappointed. god knows why because I actually like it and feel very satisfied afterwards.
maybe it has something to do with uni days when it was curry a few times a week.
oh, and if you don’t know this already, also whip up more curry than you need because it tastes way better the next day.
@mr sekimachihato: Ah, if one has to eat it all the time, I think it’d be terribly easy to develop an aversion to the stuff, hehe.
And yeah, the evening I wrote this post, we had our second round of leftover/reheated Japanese curry – it tasted even better! Yums!
That sounds like a conspiracy… :P
@jemima: No lah, not a conspiracy. Just a Very Good Idea. Hehe.
ya, no prob. i’ve given away some of the oscar movie dvds already though, so i only have a few more remaining with me (king’s speech, social network, winter’s bone, the town). i haven’t managed to find ‘biutiful,’ ‘blue valentine’ and ‘another year’ in stores yet, so i’m still on the lookout for them! :D
@Sean: Hooray! I haven’t seen any yet, so it’s all good. Strange, but of the lot, my most-wanna-watch would be Ben Affleck’s sophomore directorial effort. Did you like it?
it’s quite a good yarn. and admittedly, very suspenseful in parts (i almost felt like fast-forwarding the dvd at one point because i couldn’t bear the tension and NEEDED to know what was gonna happen next!).
yeah, when you watch it, make sure you have no other duties/responsibilities for two hours. otherwise, you’ll leave your curry burning in the pot because you won’t be able to tear yourself away from the screen! :D
i took a friend to watch ’127 hours’ on the big screen last week and he cursed me for it after that, because i hadn’t warned him that it was the most nerve-wracking experience you can have at the theater right now. heheh.
@Sean: Hmm. You’re making me really, really wanna watch it now, man. Okay, no curry-cooking duties during the film.
’127 Hours’ is in the theatres? But Devil will probably not wanna catch it on account of the gruesome, graphic scenes and all. Hehe.
rite, will pass it to you during our next delicious dinner (crossing fingers that it’ll be delicious, particularly after the salad incident the last time), as well as the katherine hepburn autobiography.
am currently reading laurence olivier’s biography, and am spotting a trend. actors and actresses are conceited creatures! heheh.
you could hold his hand when the arm-cutting begins. or help him to cover his eyes (and his ears actually, because the screams are quite harrowing too) :D
@Sean: Haha, I bet almost anything would be delicious after that FIVE-salad dinner… *chuckles*
I think the love of seeing themselves on-screen may have stemmed from a childhood of adoring their own reflections in their bedroom mirrors?
Oh gosh. Screaming. They oughta have retitled this ‘Scream 4′, haha.
murphy’s law could apply, and we might end up having a dinner of five different sandwiches. all of which might taste like sub-par subway knockoffs :D
actually hor, i think maybe a lot of actors and actresses choose this career because of childhood insecurities, and not narcissism? the craving for fame and adulation to fill a void that they’ve always felt…
‘scream 4′ will be coming out later this year! can’t wait! must dig up my ‘scream’ trilogy box set and rewatch the movies to refresh my memory. ahhh, courtney cox…
@Sean: Oh no! The horrors! You know we could avoid this simply by not going to a new, un-tried restaurant and hitting one of your sure-fire hits, instead.
The Queen and I used to have bad luck whenever we dined at new places too. It’s the Foodblogger’s Curse, I suspect!
I’ve considered your theory and I still believe it’s narcissism. Hehe.
‘Scream 4: Scream Some More’? What with the fad in subtitling sequels and all…
but i’ve been having excellent luck with new restaurants in the past month! even pavilion has become a pleasure, with the addition of two sparkling outlets – market hall (yummy paella) and ben’s (succulent ox tongue salad and luscious duck curry) – on the mall’s sixth floor recently. :D
but but but if it’s narcissism, errrm, how come you’re not currently starring in an ntv7 soap opera? hehe :P
i have no trouble remembering all the add-ons to the titles of sequels. pirates of the carribbean 4: on stranger tides. kung fu panda 2: the kaboom of doom. mission impossible 4: ghost protocol. transformers 3: dark of the moon :D
@Sean: Oh joy – can we go to those since you already tried them? Hahaha..
Soap operas? That is so bleah. I’m more of a Shakespearean master… if only I could memorize all those damn lines in a near-extinct language…
Oh gosh. You really are a cinephile. (Better than your cannibalistic ambitions, surely. Hehe.)
see how. if it pours that evening, then we may well be confined to the city limits (though it took me 90 minutes last month to get from my office to pavilion after a particularly ferocious rain storm) :P
eeks, but it’s been said that the actors who aspire to shakespeare are the ones with the wildest delusions of grandeur. :D
bizarrely though, i’m not a big fan of cannibal-themed movies. even ‘silence of the lambs’ was just ok for me. one would think that i could live vicariously through hannibal lecter :P
@Sean: Oh yeah, I’ve heard about those storms from Devil. I was in Sarawak so it didn’t affect me but everyone was griping about it on Twitter.
Wild? Deluded? Bloody grand? Oh, that’s me alright. Hee.
I felt Sir Anthony Hopkins was overacting some, but it was such charming, semi-campy fun though! Love Dr. Hannibal Lecter!
and you didn’t encounter any floods, mudslides or mosquito-borne diseases in borneo? you’re a fortunate explorer, you are! :D
yes, i can kinda envision you rehearsing lines from ‘romeo and juliet.’ though i won’t say which character you’d play :P
love lecter? but wouldn’t want to have him over for dinner, right? (you know that game where everyone says which famous figure they’d like to have dinner with? i think i’d choose jesus. just because i could bombard him with the most questions. heh) :D
@Sean: Floods? Nein. Mudslides. Non. Mosquito-borne diseases. Nyet. I guess I am a Fortune-Favoured Explorer, ja?
I think I’d probably be playing the happy apothecary who gives Romeo the sleeping potion…
Methinks I’d choose Buddha for dinner. No questions needed, just some sublime sense of serenity.
你好~~从fufu那边过来的.
日本咖喱 我也试煮过 不过煮到干干 LOL
@小雪: 您好！謝謝你來我的博客。 如果是太幹，就加一些熱水。然後讓它煮多一些。 Bon appetit!
aye. imagine if you had been born a century or so earlier. you could have founded KL, and we’d be reading about ‘kapitan cina kenny mah’ in our history books instead of yap ah loy :D
i wouldn’t mind playing the dashing titular character of hamlet and stunning my audience into silence with his famous soliloquy. *ahem* “to be or not to be…”
hmmm, dinner with buddha might not be all that tantalizing. you wouldn’t be able to serve pork, or any other meat. it could well be another five-salad dinner! :D
@Sean: Kapitan Cina Kenny Mah does have quite a ring to it, eh? I wonder if the ‘Back to the Future’ time-machine-car is still available…
Okay… “NEXT!!!”
I doubt Buddha would eat that much. We’d probably fast. Omm.
That’s a huge pot of curry!
I want some, please….
Tonight, I might consider having Japanese Curry for dinner. I was thinking of Nasi lemak earlier… hehe…
@keropokman: That entire pot was enough for both of us, for two nights. Very satisfying…
…so if I were you, I’d give the nasi lemak a miss tonight and head straight for the Japanese curry! どうぞめしあがれ