Spicy Sunday Dinner Ideas if Sunday Night is Curry Night. Indonesian Egg Curry Recipe. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Dinner Ideas if Sunday Night is Curry Night – Spicy Curries to Cook Tonight

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My spicy Sunday dinner ideas if Sunday night is curry night in your household include some of my favourite recipes for spicy curries to cook tonight, from a Cambodian coconut pineapple fish curry recipe for samlor ktis Koh Kong to a richly spiced Cape Malay chicken curry recipe from Cape Town, South Africa.

We’re spice lovers here – have you seen our 10 essential spices for everyday cooking? – so we thought we’d share our spicy Sunday dinner ideas if Sunday night means curry night for you. Curries are fantastic if you’re inviting family or friends over for a casual meal.

Just double, triple or quadruple the ingredients of your favourite curries and put the rice cooker on. Our curry recipes for a Sunday dinner in with friends include a classic Burmese chicken curry perfumed with turmeric, ginger and lemongrass, which is super easy, or a khao soi gai, a curry noodle chicken soup from Chiang Mai for a bit of a cooking project.

I’ve also included a Burmese Indian style chicken curry recipe made with a homemade spice blend (although you could use a shop-bought curry powder), typically eaten with coconut rice and refreshing salads, and a chickpea curry recipe for chole bhatura from Punjab, a region straddling Northern India and Pakistan.

If you don’t find a curry recipe that takes your fancy below, browse our 30 best curry recipes from Southeast Asia, South Africa and beyond, which features everything from a Cambodian Saraman chicken curry to its cousin the Thai Massaman beef curry, along with recipes for spice pastes and links to rice recipes.

If Sunday night isn’t curry night in your home and my spicy Sunday dinner ideas don’t appeal, do peruse our other compilations of Sunday dinner recipes, starting with the last edition of great Sunday dinner ideas, from my authentic beef Stroganoff recipe (more of my best Stroganoff recipes here if you don’t eat beef) to a super easy salmon pasta recipe that despite its simplicity feels special.

For your convenience, we’ve also got a collection of our compilations of best Sunday dinner recipes, from Sunday night dinner ideas for comfort food and Sunday dinner ideas starting with soup, bread and wine – food for the soul for challenging times – to Sunday dinner chicken recipes and easy Sunday dinner ideas if the state of the world has zapped your energy and enthusiasm, even for cooking.

But before I share my spicy Sunday dinner ideas, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-funded. If you’ve cooked our recipes and enjoyed them, please consider supporting Grantourismo by supporting our epic Cambodian cuisine history and cookbook on Patreon, which you can do for as little as the price of a coffee. Or you could buy us a coffee and we’ll use our coffee money to buy cooking ingredients for recipe testing.

Another option is to use links on our site to buy travel insurancerent a car, book accommodation, or book a tour on Get Your Guide. Or buy something on Amazon, such as these cookbooks for culinary travellersJames Beard award-winning cookbookscookbooks by Australian chefsclassic cookbooks for serious cooks, and gifts for Asian food lovers and picnic lovers. We may earn a small commission but you won’t pay any extra.

Lastly, you could browse our Grantourismo store for gifts for food lovers, including food themed reusable cloth face masks designed with Terence’s images. Now let me tell you all about my spicy Sunday dinner ideas if Sunday night is curry night in your household.

Spicy Sunday Dinner Ideas if Sunday Night is Curry Night

Here are my spicy Sunday dinner ideas if Sunday night is curry night in your household.

Cambodian Coconut Pineapple Fish Curry Recipe

This Cambodian coconut pineapple fish curry recipe tops the list of my spicy Sunday dinner ideas if Sunday night is curry night in your home. The recipe makes samlor ktis Koh Kong, a sweet gently spiced curry made with coconut cream, pineapple and baby eggplants from Koh Kong, an island and coastal province in Cambodia’s southwest.

A samlor is technically a stew or soup, but the spices make this a rich aromatic curry that tastes of a tropical island. It’s the kind of curry that you imagine tucking into on a beach holiday, sitting within splashing distance of the sea – with a bowl of fragrant jasmine rice, an icy cold beer to wash it down with, and your toes in squeaky white sand.

Samlor ktis Koh Kong is sweet from the coconut cream, fresh ripe pineapple and creamy palm sugar, and gently-spiced and fragrant from the herbaceous red kroeung – a Cambodian herb and spice paste pounded from fresh lemongrass stalks, galangal, kaffir lime zest, turmeric, garlic, shallots, and red chillies.

Creamy Cambodian Coconut Pineapple Fish Curry Recipe for Samlor Ktis Koh Kong

Burmese Indian Style Chicken Curry Recipe

This Burmese Indian style chicken curry recipe makes a rich curry fragrant with ginger, turmeric, garlic and chilli that has a homemade Burmese curry powder on its concise list of ingredients. It’s the perfect accompaniment to Burmese coconut rice and the refreshing salads of Myanmar that provide contrasting textures and flavours.

I adapted this recipe from my favourite Burmese cookbook, Mi Mi Khaing’s Cook and Entertain the Burmese Way, dating to 1978. Mi Mi Khaing, uses a homemade curry powder blend, as most Burmese women do, which includes cumin, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, coriander, peppercorns, bay leaf, and poppy seeds, but you could certainly use a store-bought curry powder.

Cooking the chicken pieces with the spices covered is crucial to keep the chicken moist and tender, but for the final stage you need to remove the lid so that the sauce can really reduce. Keep an eye on it.

Burmese Indian Style Chicken Curry Recipe for a Rich Curry Fragrant with Ginger, Turmeric and Garlic

Classic Burmese Chicken Curry Recipe

This classic Burmese chicken curry recipe makes a fragrant gently-spiced curry that is perfumed with turmeric, ginger, garlic, chilli, and lemongrass, and it’s another of my top spicy Sunday dinner ideas if Sunday night means curry night at your house.

A rich curry with a moreish tomato-based gravy and a layer of aromatic oil that’s quickly soaked up by coconut rice, it should be served with salads such as this Burmese potato salad, raw cabbage salad, and Shan tomato salad. This is another recipe I’ve adapted from Mi Mi Khaing’s delightful little cookbook dating to 1978.

Unlike a lot of old cookbooks, all of the recipes make dishes that taste absolutely delicious. I’ve only tweaked recipes when I’ve not been able to source ingredients and if I can’t find them here in Southeast Asia, I’m guessing our readers in Australasia, the Americas and Europe might also face challenges.

Classic Burmese Chicken Curry Recipe for an Aromatic Tomato Based Curry

Indonesian Egg Curry Recipe for Telur Petis from Java

This Indonesian egg curry recipe with fragrant lemongrass and funky shrimp paste for telur petis comes from the Indonesian island of Java although variations can be found right across the Indonesia’s archipelago.

We published this recipe in Weekend Eggs, our series on egg dishes from around the world, as it makes a gently-spiced egg curry that’s mainly eaten for breakfast and as a snack. But you can really eat it at any time of day, including dinner, which is why it’s another of my top spicy Sunday dinner ideas if Sunday night means curry night for you.

It’s a very moreish dish of boiled eggs in a creamy coconut milk-based curry made from a freshly pounded spice paste with lemongrass grass stalks adding fragrance and flavour to the spicy gravy. ‘Telur’ means ‘egg’ and ‘petis’ is the shrimp paste that adds a subtle funkiness to this spicy egg curry. Terence has excellent egg tips in this guide to cooking boiled eggs perfectly.

Indonesian Egg Curry Recipe with Fragrant Lemongrass and Funky Shrimp Paste for Telur Petis from Java

 

Chiang Mai Curry Noodle Chicken Soup Recipe

This khao soi gai recipe makes the delicious Chiang Mai curry noodle chicken soup that is as beloved by foreign visitors as much as locals in the Northern Thailand city and is another of our best curry recipes from the archive. Slurped at countless market stalls, simple eateries and fancy restaurants, khao soi gai quickly becomes addictive.

Khao soi gai is the most popular noodle soup in the old capital of the Lanna kingdom in Northern Thailand that’s as famous for its fantastic Northern Thai-style Lanna food as much as its gilded pagodas, gorgeous handicrafts and glorious mountains nearby.

Khao soi gai is a one-bowl meal of egg noodles, a rich, oily coconut cream-infused stock, and a leg or thigh of bone-in chicken (‘gai’ is Thai for chicken) topped with more crunchy noodles. Kao soi gai shares some DNA with Myanmar’s ohn no khao swe, an equally delicious Burmese chicken coconut noodle soup.

Khao Soi Gai Recipe – How to Make Chiang Mai Curry Noodle Chicken Soup 

Cape Malay Chicken Curry Recipe from Cape Town, South Africa

This Cape Malay chicken curry recipe makes a richly spiced curry from Cape Town, South Africa and it’s another of my best spicy Sunday dinner ideas if Sunday night is curry night for you. Eaten with aromatic Cape Malay yellow rice, buttery roti, and simple tomato, onion and cucumber sambals, it’s an incredibly delicious curry you’ll be sorry to finish.

Our advice: make double the amount, as it tastes even better as leftovers the next day. Our Cape Malay chicken curry recipe is inspired by the aromatic chicken curry we learnt to make many years ago in a Cape Malay cooking class in colourful Bo-Kaap, the heart of Cape Malay culture in Cape Town.

Gently spiced, the Cape Malay chicken curry is a cousin of the classic Cape Town lamb stew called tomato bredie. They’re dishes that locals here in Southeast Asia would describe as ‘same same but different’, sharing a lot of similar spices.

Cape Malay Chicken Curry Recipe for a Richly Spiced Curry from Cape Town, South Africa

Chickpea Curry Recipe for Punjabi Chole by Christine Manfield

This chickpea curry recipe makes a comforting Punjabi chole from the new cookbook Indian Cooking Class. by Australian chef Christine Manfield, whose love of spice, Indian food and India began soon after she started cooking. Chole is ‘chickpeas’ and this richly spiced chickpea stew is a beloved dish of Punjabi cuisine of Punjab, a region straddling Northern India and Pakistan.

“Chole bhatura is a Punjabi staple that makes use of humble pantry ingredients. Chole is a chickpea curry served with puffed bhatura bread, a dish that has been widely embraced in other regions of India,” Christine Manfield says in the introduction to her chole recipe. “The dal preparation can vary across districts, depending on its blend of spices. And this version was my favourite breakfast during my travels through Sikkim, staying in village houses.”

‘Bhatura’ is a puffy deep-fried bread typically served with the spicy chickpea stew or chickpea curry but t’s perfectly acceptable to eat chole with papadams and long grain basmati rice. While the origin of this chickpea curry lies in the cuisine of Northern India, this hearty dish is much-loved all over India.

Chickpea Curry Recipe for Punjabi Chole from Indian Cooking Class by Christine Manfield

 

Please do let us know if you make any of our spicy Sunday dinner ideas if Sunday night is curry night in the comments below as we love to hear how our recipes turned out for you.

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A travel and food writer who has experienced over 70 countries and written for The Guardian, Australian Gourmet Traveller, Feast, Delicious, National Geographic Traveller, Conde Nast Traveller, Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia, DestinAsian, TIME, CNN, The Independent, The Telegraph, Sunday Times Travel Magazine, AFAR, Wanderlust, International Traveller, Get Lost, Four Seasons Magazine, Fah Thai, Sawasdee, and more, as well as authored more than 40 guidebooks for Lonely Planet, DK, Footprint, Rough Guides, Fodors, Thomas Cook, and AA Guides.

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