Curry and Naan

Yet another new Basics product from Sainsbury's spotted at my local this week. It seems though that the Sainsbury's Basics Naan has been around for a while, being first given attention in the MoneySavingExpert Sainsbury's Basics forum thread around July 2009. Whoever runs the Sainsbury's product development department probably realised that Indian food is very pervasive in life in the UK, and that introducing Naan in the Basics range would be a godsend to university students and everybody else looking to reduce the grocery budget, particularly during the more intense periods of the economic crisis. Not having had Indian food for a while, I thought this would be interesting for today's post.

I needed something to go along with the naan though, and I have already covered the Sainsbury's Basics Curry Sauce in a previous post. Wandering around the aisles, I remembered there were other curry products in the Basics range, and one of them came with no staple, and so fit the bill nicely.

Canned food is cheap, lasts long, and is often ready to eat by heating the contents, making them suitable for university students, who often have tight budgets, may have to cancel plans for dinner for last-minute outings, and could devote the time or energy usually used to prepare food to other things that make university life so fulfilling. Most of my friends from or at university though shun this because we all come from a country that places emphasis on good food. So the only reason why I'm venturing to try the Sainsbury's Basics Chicken Curry is to complement the naan.

Since I have the Sainsbury's Basics Italian Hard Cheese lying around, I could make a really nice cheese naan, which could double up as my fall back meal should the canned chicken curry prove to be horrible.

And horrible the chicken curry most certainly was. It turns out that 13% chicken content in a tin of chicken curry amounts to almost nothing, short of a few strands here and there. The curry was bland, and almost lacking in any spicy kick, suspiciously similar to the Basics curry sauce. You might as well buy a jar of the curry sauce and add in your own vegetables and meat, as illustrated in the Kiev Katsu Kurry Don I posted a while ago.

On the other hand, the naan managed to save the dinner by being soft and chewy with a pleasant flavour. The addition of Basics Italian Hard Cheese also added a nice touch. I ended up finishing the curry first before going the naan, saving the best for last.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Chicken Curry	£0.48	392g	+£0.60	Choice between mild and hot, triple the chicken content. Recommended.
Plain Naan	£0.59	2	+£0.30	Not known

Kiev Katsu Kurry Spaghetti with Cheese

A while ago my friend saw my Kiev Katsu Kurry Don post, and recommended that the next time I try something similar that I add cheese. Finding that a little odd, I asked her where she got the idea from, and it turns out that she actually had Katsu Curry Udon with Cheese at a Japanese restaurant back home. I also remembered that the last time I was back I came across a dozen or so Japanese pasta restaurants, which feature interesting things on spaghetti or penne like cod with teriyaki, prawn tempura with a tomato sauce, miso-based beef stew and even deep-fried calamari with curry sauce. These two findings sufficiently piqued my interest to want to try this at home.
I have already covered mild cheddar cheese however, and I'm not keen on buying another block of it, or even a block of a different type of cheese, like mature cheddar or double gloucester, since being rather similar in the sense that they are all proper cheese it would probably not make for a very interesting article. What I'm going to use instead though are these cheese singles. I've seen my former flatmate use this as a cheap alternative to cheese, but have never tried this myself. More commonly known as processed cheese, this is probably more familiar to people coming from my home country, having grown up with the likes of Kraft Singles and Chesdale.

This was probably the worst cheese single I have come across. The slices are thin, and the smell is a bit on the artificial side. It also does not help when the actual cheese content is at 11%, which probably explains why this is not labelled as cheese singles. When one considers that the next more expensive option - the Sainsbury's Reduced Fat Cheese singles, contains 500% more cheese (60% of total ingredient makeup) at a less than 50% increase in price, you wonder if these cheese slices are worth the hassle. The regular Cheese singles don't contain palm oil as well, so for 25p more you avoid a potential health hazard.

For such a strong smell that the cheese single has, its taste is very faint, and its texture is almost non-existent, dissolving rapidly as one presses tongue against single.

Anyway, on to the recipe. Preparation is similar to the Kiev Katsu Kurry Don, except that a cheese single and herb mix is added to the sauce during preparation.





The cheese had no effect on the curry sauce at all. Personally, having tried this, I feel that Katsu Kurry would probably be better served with rice, as at least the rice can absorb the sauce.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
(Cheese) Singles	£0.58	10	+£0.25	Higher cheese content, bigger singles. Recommended.

Kiev Katsu Kurry Don

Quite recently I caught an episode of Alex Riley's BBC programme on Britain's Really Disgusting Foods. It was on the meat products that we buy, and the various fillers that go into them. Chicken Kievs were covered in the programme, and it turns out that the EU and the FSA, for all their various regulations about food labelling, don't actually have any for Kievs.

This meant that there are no minimum requirements for the actual chicken content in a Chicken Kiev. The lowest they have found so far was the Tesco Value one at 30%. This piqued my curiosity, and given that both my former and current roommates are both fans of the breaded chicken dish, I thought that it would be a good idea to have a look at what the Sainsbury's Basics equivalent would consist of.

I'm glad to report that the chicken content is much higher than the Tesco Value one, at 50%. Unfortunately, the rest of it consists of textured wheat protein, chicken skin, and necessary items to bind it all together.



While the Kiev was baking in the oven, I was deliberating over what should go with it. I'm a big fan of Japanese Katsu Curry Don, which effectively is a breaded chicken or pork cutlet topped with Japanese curry sauce and served with rice. I realised that I have spent the last few blog posts covering mainly British items and there was now an opportunity to recreate items that my fellow countrymen may miss whilst studying or working here. In addition, I've been intrigued by the Basics curry sauce that people have been talking about on the MoneySavingExpert Sainsbury's Basics forum thread, and bought myself a bottle to try. Based on the above, I decided to create a variation of Katsu Curry, substituting a Chicken Kiev for the cutlet.

The Basics Curry Sauce's claim to fame was its initially ultra low price point of 4p. More recently however Sainsbury's has raised it to 9p, and then to 12p. This still makes it extremely cheap relative to the regular own brand curry sauces, which typically cost 86p.

This low price point does have its drawbacks. It is a very generic curry sauce, more akin to Japanese curry, and not even closely resembling one of the myriads of curries that are available, known and loved in this land. The sauce contains a few raisins, seemingly added there as an afterthought.

So while the Kiev is cooking, I cooked what was left of my Basics long grain rice and proceeded to prepare an improvised Japanese curry sauce. To four tablespoons of curry sauce, I added some Basics frozen mixed vegetables (yes I know, they have been featuring very heavily, I do want to get rid of it all), a tablespoon of water, and put it in the microwave on 800W for 2.5 minutes.

A couple of tips about cooking Basics rice. Firstly, rinse the rice with water. I'm aware that this is not usually common practice amongst the British, but it rids the rice of unnecessary starch. This should remedy some of the complaints that various people are having about the Basics rice coming out as one sticky glop. Secondly, use less water than usual. Common practice dictates that the water level should be one finger joint above the rice. For Basics rice however, you would want to have about four-fifths to three-quarters of a finger joint.

The Kiev leaked some garlic butter while it was cooking, which was disappointing, as I was hoping that it blending with the curry sauce would make for interesting results.

Place the Kiev on the rice, cut it open to inspect contents...

And then top with prepared curry sauce.

This adventure actually made for a very lovely lunch, and has given me an idea. The British supermarkets stock Chicken Kievs with a wide variety of fillings. Since the British love their curries, I would imagine that a curry-filled Chicken Kiev would be very popular. I'm aware that some people from Sainsbury's do read this blog, so it would be interesting to see if this follows through as a real product.

The Basics Chicken Kiev actually proved to be very pleasant to eat, if one forgets for a moment that it does not consist entirely of meat. Those of you who have trouble with that could try the regular ones (frozen or fresh), which typically contain 91%-100% chicken meat. The curry sauce was actually a good find as far as non-Indian curries are concerned. Given that Japanese curry sauce mixes are £2.50-£3 for 4-6 servings (working out to be about 40-75p per serving), the Basics curry sauce would actually make a pleasant and highly cost-effective substitute.

Finally, I would like to make another suggestion. The Sainsbury's that serves me also serves many students, some of whom are from my home country. Given that we are big fans of breaded chicken, I would imagine that stocking the Basics Chicken Kiev would prove to be very popular. It would also mean that I would not have to take the trouble to go to Finchley Road just to buy it.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Chicken Kiev	£0.83	2, 250g	+£0.40 - £2.46 for 4 at 568g	Higher chicken meat content. Recommended.
Curry Sauce	£0.12	440g	+£0.74 for 500g	More authentic sauce, greater variety. Recommended.

Thanks to ExNicotineQueen of the MoneySavingExpert Forums for locating the Chicken Kiev.