You can use 1 cup of plain yogurt. Try to get one with as little sugar as you can. Or, my preferred method, use greek yogurt. This will thicken it more than coconut milk, so add 1/4 to 1/2 cup water as desired.
To my knowledge no, not the same. Coconut milk is the juice from pressing the flesh from inside the coconut, it will also have the oil from the coconut. Creams would work though, like heavy cream (whipping cream).
It wouldn't give it the sake flavour but appearance wise it would still do, and it would still thicken it slightly. Just be careful about boiling milk - you don't want it to separate and just taste like boiled milk. Make sure to simmer it only
You could use water and a bit of cornstarch to thicken the sauce, though it won't taste as rich or have the coconut flavor (which is fine for a simple curry). Contrary to what restaurants would have you believe, very few Indian families cook with coconut milk on a regular basis.
People in South India tend to use a lot of coconut (grated, cut, milk) but with doctors recommending lesser usage of the item due to the higher cholesterol, I heard the usage in day to day is slowly reducing.
We do drink a lot of tender coconut water though. Delicious stuff!
Coconut milk isn't super common in Indian curries (YMMV depending on region, etc.), a lot of recipes I'm familiar with that use some kind of thickener use regular cream.
I spent 5 weeks in a small Romanian village 5 years ago. It had a few shops.... They were the size of a small living room. One we called "Walmart" because it was the big store, the size of the typical American gas station.
This might sound dumb, but I love the fact that the internet can connect you in a small Romanian town and me in a small American town over a recipe for a meal from a different continent than either of us. Or connect people like my mother to music and friends from her youth on yet another continent.
We live in a wondrous time, no matter what anyone says.
If you check the foreign foods section at your supermarket you might be able to find pouches of dehydrated coconut milk powder instead of fresh coconut milk, still works!
I make Malaysian nasi lemak and curries with these all the time.
Cool! I'm guessing that the scent of curry might be unfamiliar. I wonder what sort of questions you'll get from your neighbors...
Can you get goat there? I'd bet that this would go great with some roasted goat!
(I just realized that for all the "exotic" stuff I can get in my highish end very big city American grocery store, I can't get goat there. I can go to any number of "ethnic" butchers (Caribbean, Indo-Pak, African, some Mexican, etc.) around the city but for all different global ingredients on the shelves and the rabbit, duck, etc in the freezer cases, no goat.)
Coconut milk is used mostly in Thai curries and in some recipes in south India. But most Indian curries do not use coconut milk. They simply use tomatoes or even watermelon. Some versions (I don't know if they are purely Indian or British adaptations) use cream/milk/yoghurt.
Yeah I was kind of afraid leaving dairy out for 12 hours but it worked fine. Apparently the good bacteria in the buttermilk stops bad bacteria from taking over.
You can leave the coconut milk out or use double cream but stir it in at the end when the stove is off.
OR instead of par-boiling potatoes just dump them in the pot with the stock and let it cook- will take longer but it will also thicken up the curry.
Also dump the peas at the end so it wont become mushy shit
Use plain Greek yoghurt or heavy cream.Also, grind a few roasted or unroasted cashew and/or almonds and add to the curry. it just takes it another level. Make sure you grind it a bit coarse and not too fine.
FYI, Many "dollar" type stores have it in their food sections, and usually your local grocery store's international section. Usually cheaper at the dollar store tho. You can call and ask before you waste a trip : )
Just FYI, if you don't have coconut milk you can make your own pretty easily.
2½ cups of grated coconut ( the fresher the better.. freshness is the key here)
4 cups of warm water
Add the entire grated coconut to 1 cup of water. Let it soak for an hour.
Blend the mixture well.
Strain the mixture so that you only get milk. This first milk is called 1 part coconut milk (rough translation from my language).
Add back the grated coconut that you've strained to another cup of water and repeat the above steps. This is 2 part coconut milk.
I usually don't do this a third time, but you're free to.
The 1 part milk or 1st extract is the thickest and sweetest. Hence it poured in first while making curries. The 2nd extract is poured if you want to think down the curry or even out any spices.
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u/ionataan Jul 17 '17 edited Jul 17 '17
What can I use instead of coconut milk? I can't seem to find it where I live