I know everything should start with an onion, or so the saying goes. Most of my cooking does. But not always. Sometimes just garlic will do and occasionally not at all. When I made this dish I started with minced beef not sure of what I would add next. The final result was a tasty speedy supper that required little work or preparation. I call that a winner!  Continue reading

Jump straight to Lemon and Coconut Tadka Dal recipe

Dal is a favourite of mine, I have blogged about it more than once. Sometimes as a whole meal with egg (you know I love them), often with tadka (a perky mixture of spice and aromatics), always a cheerful sunshine yellow (although I am partial to a black spiced dal makhani too swirled with a little cream and I will share more on that soon). 

This dal is cheerful and elegant with lemon and coconut. It is one to make in a big pot for friends for a summer weekend lunch, or one to make and store in the fridge for comfort, or in the freezer for a later date. I must have had four bowls of this. I don’t bother soaking the dal, which means it takes longer to cook it, but it will still be done in 40 minutes. And it just cooks away, right? It needs little attention.  Continue reading

When is a pie not a pie? And why do people get so mad about it? Surely pastry meeting another gorgeous thing can only be celebrated, but no, people feel very strongly about this. Pie fascism is real. 

Which brings me on to pie rage. People aren’t happy with people not encasing a pie filling in pastry and calling it a PIE. But folks, it is, and even if you feel it isn’t, feel free to surround this gorgeous chicken curry filling with pastry. I made this pie two ways, entirely enclosed in shortcrust pastry top and bottom, and with a puff pastry top, no bottom. I prefer the puff pastry lid. Continue reading

I have an unusual and very tasty recipe for you today, ripe from the shores of Grenada. Grenada is known for high quality cocoa and spice, and they meet here in this lively Coconut & Chocolate Chicken Curry.

Do you consider chocolate a sweet or savoury ingredient? For me dark chocolate is intensely savoury, and a brilliant secret addition to many dishes, enhancing with a deep low rumble. It is perfect with chilli and spices, which of course Mexicans have known for a long time. Mole, a savoury Mexican dish rich with chocolate, is a superb example of this. 

Recently in Grenada, I had the pleasure of doing a cooking session with Esther and Omega at True Blue Bay. I cooked with them last time too. They are fun, and know exactly what to do with the vibrant ingredients available in Grenada. So many spices, and the chocolate which Grenada is rich with. 

This time we made a Coconut & Chocolate Curried Chicken. A small amount of chocolate enriches the spicy sauce, with the creamy coconut lightening it. It is surprising, and it is something that all chocaholics and savoury food fans will enjoy. I have adapted Esther & Omega’s recipe for you to make at home. It is a fun one and will for sure intrigue anyone that you make it for! Ask them to guess what the secret ingredient is.

Recipe: Coconut & Chocolate Curried Chicken

Serves 4 – 6

Ingredients

1.5kg chicken thigh meat, skin removed and chopped to approximately 2 inch segments
Chicken marinade: 2 spring onions, 2 tbsp chopped fresh chives, 2 tbsp fresh coriander, 4 cloves peeled garlic, one inch of peeled fresh ginger, 1 tbsp light oil like groundnut or sunflower)
250g ripe tomatoes or the equivalent in good tinned or passata
200ml coconut milk
1 large green pepper, core and seeds removed and diced into 1cm dice
2 tbsp curry powder
1 heaped tsp ground cumin
4 cardamom pods, coarsely crushed
2 chipotle chilles in adobo (or dried chipotle chilles, or a chilli of your choice if you can’t source either), chopped fine
juice of 1 lemon
2 bay leaves
50g good dark chocolate
1 nice apple, cored and diced (fine to leave the skin on)
light oil for frying, like groundnut or sunflower
sea salt & fresh cracked black pepper

Method

Blend all marinade ingredients and add to the chicken. Marinade in the fridge for as long as you can, at least a half hour, up to 4 hours.
Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil over a medium-high heat until sealed all over.
Add all of the dry ingredients, lemon juice and the green pepper and cook for a few minutes.
Add the coconut milk, chilli and tomatoes and cook for 30 minutes.
Add the chocolate and allow to melt through. Leave for a few minutes over a low heat.
Check for seasoning and adjust with sea salt and black pepper.
Ready to eat! Superb with rice, and take care not to eat the cardamom pods and the bay leaves, they are just for flavour.

I know how annoying it is when I say: please go out of your way to find this impossible ingredient, I promise it is worth it. But it is! In this journey we have taken together over seven and a half years of blogging, we are all now toasting and grinding our own spices, right? And doesn’t it make a big difference? Well, trust me when I tell you that getting your paws on some fresh turmeric makes a huge difference here too. It is also fairly straightforward. I always used to peel it, but the chef that I cooked with in Malaysia (at The Meritus Pelangi Hotel) made a paste with it unpeeled and it made no difference. I now consider myself educated. I was fussing unnecessarily, which is really not how I like to roll.

Fresh turmeric is having a bit of a hipster moment, but some of us (cough) have been using it for a long time. The hipsters are on to a good thing with their turmeric tea though. It is ridiculously good for you. It is a really potent anti inflammatory agent, is brilliant for easing burns (the powder mixed with double cream – thank you Maunika for that tip) and there is lots of research that indicates that it is helpful in cancer treatment. It is very tasty too.

I suspect many people store dried turmeric in their cupboard for ages and then think it is tasteless. Dried turmeric, like all spices, needs to be fresh and stored in an air tight container. Fresh turmeric is very different and is an aromatic delight. A rhizome like ginger, it has some similar properties, but is floral by comparison. A lot of supermarkets stock it in the UK these days. Indian food shops do too. Continue reading

Green curry is misunderstood in many places outside of Thailand. Often perceived as a mild curry that you would give most chilli phobics (certainly in the UK and Ireland), it is often bland and dull, full of green peppers and mushrooms and to my mind, unless you are somewhere very good, not very interesting.

In Thailand, green curry is hot. Very hot and aromatic. Packed with flavour (which is the signature for most Thai food in my experience), you can choose the heat level you want if you make it yourself, so when we made this at the cooking school at the Khlong Lat Mayom floating market, we went for a compromise medium heat which was just perfect and not medium for our palates at all. Hot, so fresh and really delicious.

Seafood Thai Green Curry ingredients

Several things make this recipe flavourful: fresh homemade coconut milk and cream, fresh pounded curry paste (you must – so much better than shop bought), the wonderful herbs and aromatics, the fish pounded to a paste with fish sauce (which Thais use instead of salt on the table) and lots of chilli.

It won’t be possible to replicate this entirely outside of Thailand but I will suggest where you can make substitutions as you go. As long as you make the paste from scratch – this is key – you will have a great dish. Everything else is a bonus.

Enjoy – it is a fantastic curry. I have adapted this recipe, but it comes from Siri, so thank you, Siri!

Note: if I don’t suggest an alternative, the ingredient is relatively easy to source via Asian supermarkets – some are online too.

Recipe: Siri’s Thai Seafood Green Curry  Continue reading

So, round about the time I started this blog, just under a year ago, I blogged one of my favourite dishes – Prawn Curry. We were eating it about once a week, it’s tasty, healthy and quick, and fit in perfectly on those evenings where you’ve had a long day in the office and all you want is something quick and tasty with a glass of wine. On some of these evenings, the wine may even be the most important part ;)

Now, when I like something, I tend to talk about it, and friends of mine were hearing alot about this prawn curry. Then they started to think that perhaps I was making it up! How can she be making a curry from scratch after work when she only leaves the office at 7pm? How?! So, to salvage my reputation I had to gather some of them together and cook it for them. Then they would see!

The recipe is based on a Goan recipe I found online some years ago. It requires using masses of fresh tomatoes and a fresh coconut. I urbanised it by using a tin of tomatoes and a tin of coconut milk, which makes it quick and convenient – almost a storecupboard dish. It really is super quick once you’ve ground the spices, I would estimate no more than half an hour, although try to buy peeled prawns to save your self time. I vary the amount of coconut milk depending on whether I want the fruity flavour of the tomatoes or the creaminess of the coconut milk to dominate. This time I went with the tomato so used one tin of tomatoes and half a tin of coconut milk. It works well 50/50 though if you prefer that.

The recipe serves 2 hungry people. Continue reading

Before I begin, I will stress that this isn’t truly tried and tested but it was nice so I will post it. It’s a curry sauce that I do already changed on a whim to fit a mutter paneer dish. I will change it next time I do it as I am not 100% happy with it – it’s a nice curry but it’s not truly a mutter paneer. The sauce is thicker than it should be and it’s quite tomato-y. I wanted to make it mainly with things that I already had and quite quickly as I want another quick after work curry to add to my quick dishes. I am over-analysing perhaps – I did enjoy it and I will make it again. I blame Sabras, I want all my curries to taste like theirs now and I don’t have any of their recipes.

Before I begin I should mention that the goats milk paneer is delicious! I thought it might be too strong but it was not dominant. The goat milk flavour was actually really nice and delicate (I don’t like drinking goats milk so was a little concerned). The texture was lovely and spongy too. It’s definitely worth making the effort to make. Continue reading