Katsu curry

Method

1. Make the roux first, since it wants your full attention and can be done days ahead. Melt the butter in a small heavy saucepan over medium-low heat. Stir in the flour and keep stirring, more or less constantly, for 20 to 25 minutes. It will go from pale paste to sandy to the colour of peanut butter. That browning is where the savoury depth comes from, so do not stop at blond, but do not walk away either: it scorches in seconds at the end.
2. Off the direct heat, stir in the curry powder, garam masala, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, cardamom, and cayenne. Return it to low heat for 30 seconds, just until the spices smell toasted. Scrape it into a bowl and leave it to cool. It will firm up as it sits.
3. Heat the oil in a wide pot. Add the onions with a pinch of salt and cook them over medium heat for 15 to 20 minutes, until soft and browning at the edges. This is the second source of colour and sweetness in the sauce. Rushing it gives you a flat curry.
4. Add the garlic and ginger and cook for a minute. Add the potatoes and carrots and turn them in the pot for 2 minutes.
5. Pour in the stock, bring it to a boil, then drop to a simmer and cook uncovered for 12 to 15 minutes, until the carrots are nearly tender and the potatoes yield to a knife.
6. Ladle about 250 ml of the hot broth into a bowl with the roux and whisk it smooth. Adding the roux this way, slackened first, is the only reliable way to avoid lumps. Pour the mixture back into the pot, stirring as you go.
7. Simmer gently for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring often so the bottom does not catch. The sauce should thicken to about the consistency of béchamel and coat the back of a spoon. Loosen with water or stock if it goes past that.
8. Stir in the grated apple, honey, soy sauce, and ketchup. Now salt it properly. Homemade roux carries no salt at all, unlike the shop-bought blocks, so this is where an under-seasoned curry gets fixed. Add black pepper. Taste, adjust, and keep it warm on the lowest heat.
9. Fry the cutlets while the curry sits. Follow the chicken katsu recipe: pound to an even 1 cm, flour, egg, panko, 170°C oil, 3 to 4 minutes, drain on a rack. Time it so the katsu comes out of the pan last, because the crust is at its best in the first five minutes.
10. Slice each cutlet across into strips. Put a bed of rice on one side of a wide shallow bowl, lean the sliced katsu against it, and pour the curry over the rice and around the cutlet, not over the crust. Add fukujinzuke at the edge.

Notes

• The shortcut. A box of S&B Golden Curry or House Vermont roux does this in ten minutes: sauté, simmer, drop in half a box, done. Any Asia-Markt stocks them and they are genuinely good, which is why most Japanese households use them. Make the roux from scratch when you want control over the spice level and no MSG or palm oil, or when there is no Asia-Markt within reach of Schwäbisch Hall. The scratch version tastes cleaner and less sweet.
• Roux keeps. This makes more roux than one pot needs, deliberately. Press the cooled roux into a parchment-lined box, chill overnight, and cut it into cubes. It keeps a month in the fridge and four months frozen. Reckon on roughly 40 g of roux per 250 ml of liquid.
• Curry powder in Germany. Ordinary supermarket Currypulver works. S&B’s Japanese curry powder in the small red tin is worth buying if you see it, since it leans harder on fenugreek and turmeric. Garam masala is in most Rewe and Edeka spice racks and in every Turkish or Asian grocer.
• Fukujinzuke is the crunchy red pickle that comes with curry in Japan. Asia-Markt only. Any sharp pickle does the same job: German Mixed Pickles, drained and chopped, or pickled ginger.
• It is better the next day. Make the curry a day ahead and reheat it gently, adding a splash of water. Fry the cutlets fresh. The curry freezes well; the katsu does not.
• Failure modes. Lumps mean the roux went into the pot dry. Thin sauce means either too little roux or not enough simmering after it went in. A curry that tastes dull almost always needs salt, not more spice.
• Vegetarian. Swap the stock for a mushroom or kombu broth and put a thick slab of fried aubergine or a panko-crusted block of firm tofu on top instead of the chicken. Check that your Worcestershire-based sauces are anchovy-free if that matters.

Sources used

• Just One Cookbook: How to Make Curry Roux
• Just One Cookbook: Katsu Curry
• RecipeTin Japan: Katsu Curry
• Sudachi Recipes: Japanese Chicken Katsu Curry
• Went Here 8 This: How to Make Japanese Curry Roux