Friday Night Take-away - Chicken Vindail

I got into cookery at university.  It was my first time away from home, fending for myself.  It was also the start of the Celebrity Chef boom of the mid 90's.  My parent's generation had had Floyd, The Galloping Gourmet and Food and Drink but we now had Oliver, Rhodes and Fearnley-Whittingstall.  Jamie and Hugh in particular got me excited about food and if it weren't for them I wouldn't be the person I am today.

It was the perfect storm.  New exciting chefs on shiny new programs at the same time as I was able to spend vast amounts of time watching the telly.  These days however I spend less time watching the box and when I do, the food programs all too often fail to make me want to cook anything.  The recent trend of cooking competitions with celebrity spin-offs do little but annoy me and certainly never get my culinary imagination fired up.

There has been one gem for me recently.  Amongst the Masterchef's and Come Dine with Me's shone Rick Stein's India.  I'm a big fan of Stein's.  I've liked, with few exceptions, everything that he has done.  I know that some people find his delivery to be condescending and vaguely annoying, like a broken toenail or Morrissey, but I like him.  More to the point I have really liked this latest series.  I make curries quite regularly but I've got into a rut, using the same spice mixes and sauces so discovering new combinations and methods has been inspiring.

I bought the cookbook which accompanies the series a couple of weeks ago.  I was going to wait until Christmas, but impatience got the better of me.  The fist thing I turned to was Saag Paneer.  I'm happy to tell you that Rick agrees with me on how this is cooked.  I then started to look for a recipe for tonight's meal.

My first choice was Chicken Vindail.  It comes from Chennai and is a quick cooked chicken curry similar to vindaloo in that the sauce is finished with vinegar.  Because the vindail was essentially chicken and sauce, I decided to cook a side dish too.  I flicked through the Vegetable chapter of the book and chose Poriyal, a dish of peas, carrots and beans finished with coconut.

The poriyal was so fresh and fast to cook that it may well become my standby side dish.  I replaced the peas that the recipe called for with some home grown broad beans just to make it even fresher.  The vindail was, without a shadow of a doubt one of the best curries I have ever cooked.  It was possibly one of the best I have ever eaten, at home or in a restaurant. 

The meal devoured, I went back to the book and started tagging recipes for future use.  Normally a good cook book will get three of four tags but Stein's Curry now has eighteen tagged recipes for future cooking, not including the two from tonight that we'll definitely cook again.  I can't remember the last time I was this inspired by a TV program or cookery book.  I feel a lot of curries* in the near future.

*curry being the adopted generic term used to cover all Indian cookery.  The closest translation for curry means gravy which neither of these dishes had.

Kedgeree at the end of Easter Weekend

Easter bank holiday weekend 2013 will go down as one of those bank holidays when little is achieved and you feel good about it.  Normally, a bank holiday is the perfect excuse for a food blow-out, plenty of shopping and cooking, but my one plan for the weekend got in the way.  Rather than mooching around markets and food fairs I went to Manchester for a stag do.

The details of the stag will remain the knowledge* of the attendees.  Suffice to say, by the time I got back to Leeds I was starving and probably still a little drunk.  A hot cross bun had been saved for my return but I had longer to wait for the meal of the day.  It's not a Celebration without a roast and we had bought a rolled pork shoulder joint to celebrate Easter.  If you want to read more about cooking pork please feel free to venture over to Everything But The Oink where I am eating every edible part of a pig over the course of the year.

Today I woke up relatively hangover-free and set about the order of the day.  Firstly, meal planning for the week ahead and writing a suitable shopping list, followed by a trip to Temple Newsam.  More specifically a trip to Home Farm to show R the lambs**.  The sun was shining when we set out but the clouds quickly gathered and cut off the little warmth that the sun was providing.

After a couple of cold and enjoyable hours at the farm we decamped back to Leeds for a warming pub lunch.  We found ourselves in The Adelphi.  We'd been to The Adelphi a couple of months ago for Sunday lunch and were so impressed with the food and the service that we were keen to go back.  By the time we arrived a brief twitter conversation had resulted in a reserved table.  It wasn't needed because we had the run of the place when we arrived, but within half an hour the pub was really filling up and we would have struggled to get in.

I ordered bangers and mash and Z chose chicken and leek pie.  We knew that the staff wouldn't bat an eyelid at us letting R share our food which makes life very easy indeed.  R isn't a fussy eater for a two year old, but occasionally he still picks at food that I know he loves.  Not ordering him his own food might seem a bit tight but I'd rather share than waste money.

While we waited for our food I had a pint of the wonderfully named Hoptimus Prime, Z had a hot chocolate and R had a glass of milk which was served in the cutest flip-top Kilner bottle.  When the food arrived R had more than his fair share of my bangers and mash and wasn't interested in Z's chicken pie.  He's a harsh critic as both meals were superb!  That said, I do have ongoing issues with pies that are actually a stew with a pastry lid.

With lunch out of the way we cracked on with the shopping and I re-thought our evening meal.  Originally we were going to have smoked mackerel fish cakes, using up a packet of cooked peppered mackerel that had been destined for Z's lunch last week.  After a hefty pub lunch I fancied something lighter but was determined to use the fish and not waste food.  That was when kedgeree struck me.  I have only eaten kedgeree a couple of times and I had never cooked it before, but how hard could it be? 

Cooked rice and smoked fish stirred into fried onions and curry spices.  I always have some home ground garam masala in the store cupboard so there was no need for curry powder.  The finished dish is garnished with a hard boiled egg.  It really is that simple.  I know that it is traditionally eaten at breakfast time, but in a society that worships the All Day Breakfast, why can't we eat what we want when we want it.  I'm hereby reclaiming kedgeree as a supper dish.

*drunken miss-rememberings
**he's currently obsessed with Timmy Time and Shawn the Sheep.

Carrot and Sweet Potato Curry

An unintentional and not all together unwelcome side effect of this year's food challenge, is that when I'm not thinking about pig I'm thinking a lot more about vegetables.  This is possibly down to the amount of time I am spending on Leeds Kirkgate market.  You can find me most Saturday mornings wandering around Butchers Row mulling over the porky possibilities.  Afterwards, meat in hand,  I like to fill my shopping bags with as much fruit and veg as I can carry home*.

I still find myself buying additional veg in the supermarket.  A couple of weeks ago I went green veg mad and bought pak choi, kale and spinach.  I must have been feeling run down and lacking in iron.  We managed to plough our way through the greens but that was at the expense of the carrots I had already bought on the market.

My initial thought, whenever I have any leftover vegetables, is soup.  However this wasn't a handful of carrots left over from a meal, this was a full bag of carrots whose potential had never been met.  I felt that it was only fitting to make them the star of a meal but I couldn't get soup out of my head.  It was the classic Carrot and Coriander that was haunting me.  I just couldn't shift the idea of the sweet earthy and fragrant dish from my mind.  I then realised that it wouldn't take much to convert the ingredients for a good soup into a great curry.

The base of the curry was onion, garlic and ginger, fried in ghee with mustard seeds, curry leaves, cumin, coriander, fresh chilies and turmeric.  Once the onion had softened and the spices were toasted I added the carrot, sweet potato and a little red pepper, along with just enough stock to cover the veg.  By the time the carrots were tender the sweet potatoes had broken down into the stock to thicken the sauce.  All that was left to do was to stir in some fresh coriander and serve with naan bread.  I doubt that this is in any way authentic, but the flavour combination is so good it shouldn't be reserved just for soup.

*I'm going to start cycling to the market so the limit to my spend will be the capacity of my rucksack!

Friday Night Take-Away - Tamatar Gosht

Eid Mubarak!  Now I'm not Muslim, I'm barely Christian, but that doesn't mean that I can't mark the passing of Eid with a good meal.  I had assumed that, like Christmas, there would be one meal that everybody sits down to with their whole family*.  I asked twitter and was told, in no uncertain terms, that my assumption was wrong.

It turns out that Eid al-Adha, the feast of the sacrifice (big Eid) honours the prophet Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his only son for God.  God stepped in at the last moment and switched Ishmail for a ram, happy that Abraham was willing to do his bidding**.  Because of this, meat is the order of day in Eid meals and everybody has their favourite.

One recuring dish from my twitter research was Chappal Kebabs.  A bit of googling later and a starter was born.  We wouldn't normally have a starter but as it's a special occasion we thought it would be rude not to.  Minced beef, onions, tomato and chillies were all mixed together with numerous spices, formed into patties and fried.  I served them with a fresh Pudina Chatni (mint chutney).

Sadly, I live in a house where lamb is off the menu.  Z isn't keen on eating baby sheep and having had beef in the chappal kebabs we couldn't have beef for our main course.  As this is a celebration meal chicken was also off the menu.  Luckily Z is more than happy to eat older sheep and as mutton is nearly always available on Kirkgate Market I started looking for recipes.

I didn't have to look far.  When I cooked for Pakistan in the Olympic Food Challenge I ended up using one of Sumayya from Pukka Paki's recipes.  I went straight back to her website and found exactly what I was looking for, Tamatar Gosht.  Taking Sumayya's advice I made the curry yesterday so that the flavours could develop.

All I had to do today was reheat the curry and temper it.  I don't have any onion seeds in the house but with mustard seeds on the list I don't think that we missed out too much.  I had planned to make an okra side dish but I'm glad I didn't.  My days of wolfing down pate after plate seem to be behind me.  Besides, tonight was all about sacrificing meat and what better way to do that than to cook it well.

Eid Mubarak to everybody that is celebrating over the next few days.

*dry turkey anybody?
**I remember this story from Sunday School, it still amazes me how close to each other the religions are.

Friday Night Take-away: Chana Saag

With the Olympic Food Challenge taking up all of our time over summer we have neglected some of our own food traditions.  The Friday Night Take-away started before I had even thought of writing Tonight's Menu so it's about time we started cooking our own take-away inspired food at home again.

To ease our journey back into our Friday night ritual I'm using leftovers from the Olympic Food Challenge. Qorma e Sabzi from Afghanistan to be precise.  Fried onions and a tin of chick peas were added to the mild spinach curry, along with some garam maslala and chilli powder to lift the dish.

Having transformed Qorma e Sabzi into chana saag it was only right that we had even more leftovers to mop up the curry.  I had made too many puris for Pakistan so I defrosted a couple of them, warmed them up and tucked in.  We can get spinach dishes from the local take-away but they are nowhere near as good as this.

Olympic Food Challenge: Papua New Guinea - Curried fish

So far for the Olympic Food Challenge we have; eaten Pigs Trotters, toyed with the idea of goats head soup, eaten breadfruit (an ingredient that I was assured was disgusting) and tucked into and enjoyed okra*.  Tonight we are venturing into the very belly of the beast and I'm cooking something that ticks all of my "do not eat this" boxes.

What can be so bad?  It's curried fish!  I love fish and I'm rather partial to a good curry.  What I really don't like is cooked pineapple in any form.  I do like pineapple, don't get me wrong.  I don't have a phobia for the fruit itself.  I just don't like it in a savoury setting.

Having braved pigs feet however, I feel that I needed to give this a try.  The fish curry recipe from Papua New Guinea is a simple enough recipe to follow** and also had the added fun factor of being quite vague.  Not only were the quantities a guide but there was also no specific fish specified.  We had cod cheeks in the freezer so that is what we used.  The finished dish was really good, even the pineapple worked, but I can't claim that it was a true Papuan classic.

*up until that point I had only found okra to be slimy and disgusting, I really enjoyed it home cooked so somebody must be cooking it wrong.
**even though it is written in white on a black page which is a pet peeve of mine.

Olympic Food Challenge: India - Paneer and Okra

I am not going to pretend.  I'm not to pull any punches.  When I drew India for the Olympic Food Challenge I was over the moon.  An other person may have taken this to be a day off, a banker, a chance to relax and just knock up the same old curry that they make week in week out.  I'm not that person.  I saw the chance to push myself and potentially pull off some kitchen wheelies at the same time.

Rather than one Indian dish, I decided to make a few and invite some friends over for a meal*.  First on the list was paneer.  Z and I both love paneer and we're lucky enough to be able to buy it locally, but where is the challenge in that.  I wanted to make my own.  Having looked it up, paneer is supposed to be the easiest cheese in the world to make.  All it takes is milk and acid (lemon juice or yogurt).  The acid is added to boiling milk which separates the curds from the whey and the cheese is rinsed under running water.  All that is left is to press the cheese so that you can cut it and cook with it later.

It was a huge success.  The cheese held its shape and was firm enough to cut into cubes before making Spiced Paneer, a recipe by Atul Kochar, one of my favourite chefs.  I had been looking for a simple recipe that wouldn't mask the freshness of my paneer and this combination of spices worked really well.

The second dish is another personal challenge, okra.  Having eaten okra a couple of times I am certain that I don't like it.  This is possibly due to the "ladies fingers" being poorly cooked, but slimy is never high on my list of properties food should have.  I was sure that cooked properly okra would be at least palatable and possibly really nice.  I found this recipe and bit the bullet. I had made the massala earlier in the day so that when it came to cooking all I had to do was fry the okra and add the spices.

The final part of the main meal, apart from a huge mound of pilau rice, was home made lemon pickle.  I had been talking about the Olympic Food Challenge at work** and a colleague told me about the amazing pickles and chutneys that his mum makes.  He rushed home to try to get her secret recipe for me but the translation of measures and ingredients from Hindi into English proved problematic.  Last Monday I was presented with a zip lock bag full of her pickle mix.  I could identify 99% of the spice mix but there was one seed that I couldn't put my finger on.  Ten lemons have been pickling on the kitchen windowsill for a week and tonight it provided a sharp point to a sweet and light meal.

Normally the meal would have ended there but Twitter intervened.  Back in April when I announced the Olympic Food Challenge, Mike from Indie Ices offered me some of his home made kulfi to celebrate India.  Of course I said yes and the months passed.  Yesterday, good to his word Mike delivered two pots of Mango and two pots of Almond & Pistachio kulfi.  I love kulfi but had never had any of Mike's award winning desserts.  They really are good, I had the mango but Z was in raptures about the almond.

Back to the challenges.  First, okra, my least favourite vegetable in the world.  It is definitely back on the menu.  It looks like the secret is cooking it fast and not letting it stew.  Second, paneer.  Wow, what can I say.  Paneer used to be a bit of a treat as it's quite an expensive ingredient but it is so easy and cheap to make at home I doubt I will ever buy it in a shop again.  Please try to make your own paneer, you wont regret it!

*if you're going to show off you may as well have an audience.
** I think about very little else at the moment.

Tandoori Mackerel with Spiced Potatoes

Last night we had planned on having Tandoori chicken as our Friday night Take-away but inspiration came along.  Instead we had oregano chicken from a book that Z bought me.  I was still in the mood for a tandoori so we switched it to tonight.  However, we try not to eat the same protein or carbohydrate on subsequent days, so chicken was off the menu.

Instead we got a couple of mackerel from Kirkgate Market, which the fishmonger insisted were small.  Have you ever noticed how things are bigger in the kitchen, than they were in the shop where you bought them?  Rather than two small fish, enough for one per person, we had what seamed to be a bottle nosed dolphin each.  Admittedly, by the time I had filleted them they were a bit more manageable.  I smothered the fillets in tandoori paste and popped them back in the fridge until we were ready for them.

The fish were roasted in the oven set to its highest temperature*.  While they were cooking I tossed some parboiled potatoes in some butter which had been flavoured with turmeric, coriander, cumin, fennel and mustard seeds.  Finally I fried some onions and peppers and added some leftover madras sauce that we had in the freezer.  The fish more than stood up to the strong flavours and the potatoes made a great change from rice.  With a few tweaks we'll be doing this again.

*I only wish my oven's highest temperature would be higher.  Tandoori and pizzas really need a scorching oven.

Aloo Gobi

We have returned to the freezer for tonight's meal.  Z has been fantastic over the last couple of months while I have been working late, but there are some days when you're just not in the mood to cook.  Plus life doesn't stand still and there are other, more important, things that still need doing*.

On the freezer blackboard on the kitchen door** Z found leftover aloo gobi from last month and a portion of tomato bhajis.  The defrosted curry reheated a treat, as did the bhajis.  Z cooked some basmati rice and warmed up a naan to have on the side.  Tomorrow I'm going to roll up my sleeves and get the meal prepared before leaving for work but more on that later.

*Booking a holiday is very high on that list!
**I have no idea how we would keep on top of the leftovers if it wasn't for the freezer blackboard.

Friday Night Take-away - Chicken Thai Green Curry

Whenever possible, which isn't often at the moment, we try to cook a take-away style meal on a Friday.  South Leeds is awash with take-aways that offer curry, pizza, pasta and any combination of kebabs.  Some of them even allow you to have your kebab on the pizza, which just sounds wrong to me.  A couple of the Chinese take-aways have started branching out and now feature a couple of Thai dishes at their bottom of the tri-fold glossy menus.  I haven't tried any of them, but it is nice to know they are there.

With Z's mum staying for the weekend we decided to push the boat out and have a couple of courses for our evening meals.  Tonight we went for a starter and mains.  The starter came courtesy of a vegetarian week sample from Z's workplace.  It was received in the same bag that contained the disappointing risotto from earlier in the week.

This was a Simon Rimmer branded Thai Potato-cake mix.  After the disaster that was the risotto I was dubious about serving these to a guest* but they weren't half bad.  The flavour and heat that they provided were spot on, fragrant and fiery.  My only complaint would be the texture, they were too soft and pulpy, but they are a great idea and I'll happily make something similar from scratch in the future.

Our main course was a standard Thai Green Curry.  The last time we cooked a green curry we used prawns as the protien, tonight we had chicken.  We made the same paste as that meal; ginger, garlic, lemon grass, lime zest, spring onions and coriander ground up in a food processor.  The chicken was fried in batches and set aside.  Onions, green peppers and broccoli were stir-fried with some of the paste, before a tin of coconut cream was added along with the cooked chicken.  The dish was finished by stirring through the rest of the paste so that the flavours were fresh and served with jasmine rice.

*even if it was the mother-in-law.

Vegetable and Chick Pea Curry with Dahl

The second Saturday of June.  It's a red letter.  It should be marked in all of your diaries.  If you make the effort to go to Leeds Carnival every year or wouldn't dream of missing Unity Day then let me introduce you to Beeston Festival.  Now in its 18th year, Beeston Festival takes over Cross Flatts Park for a day and puts on one of the best free shows in Leeds.

A dedicated committee of volunteers works throughout the year to put on the festival.  Four entertainment areas, children's and young people's activities, a bazaar with 80 stalls, a fun fair and a greenhouse made of recycled pop bottles don't just organise themselves you know.  As the Safety Officer for the festival, I was on site from 6:30 this morning and didn't leave until 7pm.  I can't take credit for the longest shift, that honour belongs to Jeremy Morton.

There is also great food on offer from your barbecue and jerk chicken to Indian and Caribbean curries.  I managed to inhale a burger whilst keeping an eye on all things Health and Safety, but by the end of the event I was knackered and ready for food.

I was met at home with the amazing smell of two curries bubbling away on the stove.  Z had found some leftover vegetable and chick pea curry in the freezer from earlier in the year.  She accompanied it with fresh dahl and ice cold beer.  The beer was generic lager, so nothing to write home about, but the daal was fantastic.  I think lentils are fast becoming my favourite part of any Indian meal.

With a full stomach and rested limbs I can now look back on the day.  We didn't have the glorious weather that normally accompanies Beeston Festival, but it wasn't a wash out either.  Every face I saw as I was moving around the park was clearly having a good time, and that's what matters.

Take-Away - Shabab, Swinegate

In January I took the family to Bristol to repay a gambling debt to Mr S.  The debt was a curry, and the reason behind the debt was football.  I'm a Leeds United fan, I don't get down to Elland Road all that often.  When I do we usually lose, so it's probably a good job that I don't go.  Mr S is a Reading fan and we have a standing arrangement that the fan of the losing side has to buy a curry for the winner.  Now that we both have families this has grown from a £5 wager to something closer to a £50 bet (depending on the curry house).

The curry in January was all due to a defeat at Elland Road.  The second match of the season between these two footballing giants* was in Reading in April.  United were down to ten men when Thompson was sent off after thirteen minutes and the writing was on the cards.  Surprisingly Leeds held on until the dying minutes of the game before Reading scored and Mr S sent me a text message asking when he could have his second curry of the season!

To his credit and with the extended Jubilee Bank Holiday weekend looming, Mr S brought his family to Leeds to claim his prise.  I had taken Mr S to Shabab on a previous visit and he had since declared the dish he'd eaten "the best curry ever" so I didn't have to think about where to buy my take-away.

We decided to skip starters, even though there is a really good selection at Shabab, and head straight for the main event.  Mr S went for his favourite, Lamb Nehari, while the rest of us chose chicken Afghani Karahi, lamb Achaar, and chicken Mirch with side dishes of Palak Paneer and Dall Makhni.  I knew the food would be good as I have never been disappointed with Shabab, either eating in or taking out.  I'm not sure it was worth losing for, but the defeat didn't spoil the meal.

Next season, as we are now in different leagues, the bet is on who finishes highest in their respective league.  I'm hoping that Warnock will be able to win Leeds the league and me a curry in the process!

*making both teams look normal sized.

Beef Rendang

While I like writing about food, I prefer to write about the inspirations behind what we cook.  Inspiration has been thin on the ground of late and Tonight's Menu has taken the full force of the blow.  The last two weeks' musings are littered with posts no longer than a demi baguette.  Over the next week I'm aiming to rediscover my muse, become inspired by food again and get back to cooking.

Inspiration comes from the strangest places.  You can't really force it.  You'll be sitting there, minding your own business and it will hit you.  That's what happened to me last night.  Every day, we get a sheet from R's nursery, telling us what he's been up to and what he's eaten.  Yesterday he'd had beef curry and naan bread.  I wanted beef curry and naan bread!  I didn't get beef curry and naan bread.  We were all out of naan bread and to add insult to injury, we had no beef.

So this morning I set about rectifying the situation.  I already had to go food shopping but I amended the shopping list and set off.  Having slept on my need for beef curry, I dropped the naan idea and changed country.  I skipped across the Bay of Bengal from India to Malaysia and started making a fragrant and punchy curry paste.  I've not cooked beef rendang before and I don't know why.  It's so easy, the flavours are superb and the meat is so succulent after a couple of hours cooking that it knocks spots off a lot of the curries we get in the UK.

The paste consisted of lemon grass, ginger, garlic and chillies.  This was fried off in a little oil until the fragrances started to fill the kitchen.  Then braising steak, red onions and turmeric were added.  Once the beef had taken a little colour a tin of coconut milk and a pint of beef stock are poured over the meat and allowed to simmer for one and a half to two hours.  I think it's fair to say that we have a new family favourite on our hands.  Thanks nursery!

Aloo Gobi

Another late night at work means another night of Z in charge of the pots and pans.  We're going away this weekend, so she has also been tasked with emptying the fridge and using any fresh vegetables that are in the house.

After rooting around the fridge Z came up with the wherewithal to cook a great Aloo Gobi.  I last cooked a cauliflower curry back in March and to be honest I overcooked the veg.  Z was clearly paying more attention, as tonight's curry was full of properly cooked vegetables and a lovely thick sauce.

Chana Saag Paneer

This was meant to be the meal that we cooked on Friday for our Friday Night Take-Away but as you will see from yesterday's post things got well and truly in the way.  I also have a new distraction, the Olympic Food Challenge.  I spent most of today creating a new blog for my one-off summer food adventure, so it fell to Z to make the evening meal.

We started with a couple of onion bhajis each before the main event.  Z fried onions and garlic with mustard seeds, cumin, coriander, chilli powder and cinnamon before adding the paneer.  Once the paneer had started to colour she added a tin of chick peas and a glass of water.  When the water had all but evaporated the pre cooked spinach went into the pan.

A couple of tablespoons of yoghurt were stirred through with a good handful of chopped coriander and the meal was ready to serve.  After waiting three days for this I had started to wonder if we were ever going to cook it.  I'm glad Z took the reins, it was delicious.

Friday Night Take-away - Turkey and Spinach Korma

We have Z's Mum staying with us this week.  She's helping with childcare/toddler wrangling while we pack up the entire ground floor of our house.  In return for all the help that she's giving us we're paying in food and drink.  Having a third person to cook for is no hardship, it's only a little bit more food.  It also means that you need to consider the other person's food preferences which is a good workout for the internal recipe book.

Z's Mum is not a big red meat eater, so white meat and vegetarian cooking is on the menu tonight and tomorrow.  Tonight, as it's Friday night, I cooked a curry but rather than using the ubiquitous chicken, I cooked turkey instead.

The curry was a nice quick one to make.  Onions and garlic were fried before the spices were added, with a splash of water to stop them from burning.  Then the turkey was added along with a tin of coconut milk.  After simmering for a few minutes add some pre-cooked spinach and a bunch of chopped coriander and serve.  We had chapatis and basmati rice.

Friday Night Take-away - Aloo Gobi

Tonight's Friday Night Take-away inspiration came, not from the raft of menus that clutter our welcome mat on a regular basis, but from the bottom of our fridge.  We'd bought and completely forgotten about a cauliflower at the weekend and it was screaming out to be used.  A curry seemed the obvious option.

I started the curry by frying mustard seeds in oil until they popped before adding onions and garlic.  Once they were starting to brown I added coriander, cumin, turmeric and chilli powder and a splash of water so that the spices didn't burn.  As soon as the onions were coated in the spice mix I added the potatoes, cauliflower and a little vegetable stock.  The curry was ready as soon as the potatoes were cooked.  For a change we had chapatis with the curry and a beer or two of course.

Vegetable Curry

For some reason, having had a foodie* weekend we find ourselves culinarily embarrassed this evening.  We simply forgot to think about what we were going to cook for tonight's meal.  Having got home and inspected the contents of the fridge and store cupboards we settled on a curry.

We cook quite a few curries these days.  Most of them have an air of authenticity about them.  Tonight was not one of those days.  This curry took me back to my student days, days when a curry was made of the contents of the fridge and a generous shake from the packet of supermarket-own-brand curry powder.

Some things have changed since graduation.  The fridge now has more contents.  This means that throwing together a coherent meal is easier.  The store cupboard is also much better stocked.  There is no packet of curry powder, in its place are a variety of spices which make every curry an adventure.

Having cooked the curry with cabbage, peppers, onions, celery, a tin each of tomatoes and chick peas, the only decision was bread or rice.  We went for bread but only because we had a naan in the freezer.

*I hate that term.

Thai Green Prawn Curry

I've been looking back over the Tonight's Menu archive.  Not to see what we haven't eaten recently but to check how often we eat certain food types.  In my head we eat Thai curries quite regularly.  The reality is far from the truth.

The last time we cooked Thai it was a red curry and I noted at the time that we normally cook green curries.  Two months later and this is the first time we've eaten green curry since Tonight's Menu began.  We used to buy ready made curry pastes but they were always disappointing, neither hot or sour enough.  These days we make our own from scratch.

We make a paste by grinding together garlic, ginger, chillies, lime juice and zest, spring onions, coriander and a little oil.  We then add this to fried onions and green peppers to cook out the raw ingredients.  After a couple of minutes we add a tin of coconut milk and let everything simmer together with some soy and fish sauce.  The final ingredient is the prawns, which take no time to cook. 

Vegetable Curry

There are occasions when you just need to use up all of those vegetables that are in the fridge.  I'm not advocating cooking without due care and attention.  I am advocating making the most of the food that is to hand.

After checking the store cupboards it was clear that a curry was the way forward.  I wouldn't call it an authentic curry but I did choose the spices with the vegetables in mind.  Most curries I cook start with mustard seeds but not tonight.  I felt that the flavour would have been to earthy and mask the sweetness of the veg.

The base of the sauce consisted of a finely chopped red onion, garlic, ginger, coriander, cumin, turmeric and chilli.  These were fried together with a tomato which added liquid and thickened the mixture.  The first of the vegetables, butternut squash, along with a tin of chick peas and some water was added and left to simmer until tender.

The curry was then finished with a tin of coconut milk some leftover roast sweet potato and two bunches of spinach.  If I had planned this curry and been out to buy the ingredients I probably would have omitted the squash and sweet potato.  I would have included paneer and fresh coriander and ended up with a completely different meal.  I'm glad I didn't because this curry was great.