These two curry recipes will introduce you to most of the basic techniques. Of course, you don’t have to curry everything. Here are some ideas o adapting recipes.
Bolognese
Make your usual sauce but watch the fat. Use only lean beef and avoid fatty pork or bacon. The longer you cook a bolognese the richer it will be. This is due to the tinned tomatoes which get richer the longer they are cooked. Cook for three hours if you can, or one and a half hours and leave overnight.
I use a base of chopped vegetables, onion, carrots and celery and this is good when dehydrating. I also add white wine. You can make the sauce a little heavier by adding red wine — add mushrooms and you can call this chicken chasseur!
Chasseur/red wine sauces seem to end up a bit bland but you may like them.
Lamb Provencal
Lovely and easy. Prepare as for lamb curry but with just onions and garlic. Add cooked mince. Add tomatoes and some thyme or oregano and bay if you have it. Top up with chicken stock. Add some pitted olives and a little balsamic vinegar if you like. Cook for an hour and a half. Dehydrate. This may look simple but so long as it os cooked for a while it is delicious.
Fish Pie
Fish is notoriously dodgy to dehydrate — it’s the smell when you are cooking that cause the problems. Rose Cartwright produces great dehydrated fish pies and no doubt the recipe will be included in their forthcoming book. I’ve only made this once and it was OK. Here is a recipe with some ideas for improvements.
Poach fillets of white fish (cod, pollack, haddock) in milk flavoured with a bay leaf and some pepper.
Remove fish from liquor but reserve the liquor. Flake the fish into nice, small flakes.
Make a basic white sauce, using the milk liquor that you poached the fish in (get a cook book or use the web if not sure). WHen it is a reasonably creamy consistency add the flaked fish and then ad some ready cooked prawns. You could add some tarragon if you have it, lots of parsley otherwise.
When the prawns are cooked (only a minute or so) you are ready.
I’d experiment now with adding quite a bit of grated cheese. Stir until melted into sauce.
Lay on dehydrating trays and dry.
Re-hydrate with dried potato.
Because of the fish and the fat content I wouldn’t keep this too long. If you do keep it be sure to keep it in the freezer.
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