Curry Sunday

Tonight's post was going to be all about the chapati. I think I've finally cracked this most basic of the breads of the Indian sub-continent and I wanted to share my good luck around but it already requires me to be doing two things at once and adding a photographic element to the process was beyond my four hands. It'll have to wait until Mr. Stripey is here to call the shots.

So let's talk about the curries instead. In south London there is a restaurant called the Kastoori. It's been there for ever and we used to eat in it far more frequently than we do now but whenever we can we always order their tomato curry which appears so simple and yet is so elusively delightful you have to keep having one more spoonful just to try to work out what makes it taste so good.

I haven't quite achieved that marvellous flavour tonight but the texture was correct and the seasoning was good in its own right. The recipe makes enough for two as a side dish but don't blame me if you feel you have to steal your partner's portion, you've been warned.

550g ripe tomatoes (about 4 medium)
2 cloves garlic, crushed to a paste
a little fresh chilli to taste
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp cumin seed
1 tsp black mustard seed
1 tsp curry powder, yes, I know, I don't have any fenugreek and the powder does...
Some rape seed oil (that's Canola to New World)
Salt

Immerse your tomatoes briefly in boiling water and slip off their skins. Finely chop two and half of them and cut the remainder into 12 wedges.

Heat the oil in a heavy based pan. Add the spices and stir around for a few seconds, then add the garlic paste, finely chopped chilli and curry powder (or a pinch of ground fenugreek and turmeric if you have it!).

Before anything starts to burn add the chopped tomato, bring to a simmer and allow to cook gently to form a tomato sauce. Add this point it can be set aside until just before it's needed. Season with salt to taste.

Finally add the tomato wedges and allow to gently heat through without losing their shape. A little finely chopped green coriander would be good at this point.

Serve with chapati and another dish - I had a beetroot dal which was good but I'll save the recipe for another day.

Stir Fry

I'm going to have to improve my food presentation skills - it's just that after cooking the thing and having to photograph it before I can eat discourages me from making any further delaying efforts at pimping my plate.

Anyway, this is a pretty ordinary bowl of food, is it even right or proper to try to make it look otherwise?

The beans aren't quite as I wanted them, normally I drop them into a fierce heat to almost blacken before adding a good dollop of proprietary sweet chilli garlic sauce but I had no such sauce and the biggest gas ring on the cooker is inadequate for Chinese restaurant style cooking.

The celery, potato and almonds might make a dish worth recording though.

3 stalks of celery
1 medium waxy potato
2 cloves of garlic
2cm root ginger, finely chopped or grated
A pinch of sugar
Soy sauce
Pepper, ground white or black
A small handful of whole almonds (about 50g?)

Stir frying is all about the prep.

Peel your potato, it needs to be a salad or waxy variety or you'll be making stir fried mash. Make it into fine matchsticks or little slices like ready prepared bamboo shoots.

Top, tail and string, please string, your celery. I may be rubbish at food styling but even I draw the line at tooth flossing at the table. Then turn the sticks into similarly sized matchsticks to your potato.

In a wok or heavy frying pan dry fry your almonds until they are hot through and starting to pop. Remove from the pan and hold to one side until needed.

Heat some oil (peanut is good) in the pan until it's almost smoking. Then add your finely sliced garlic and grated ginger. After about 3 seconds of stirring about add the potato matchsticks and keep stirring until they are coated in the oil and flavourings. Cook for a further couple of minutes and then add the celery.

Stir again to combine, then add a couple of tablespoons of water, the pinch of sugar and a big splash of soy sauce. Add pepper at this point too if you like. Mix it up and allow the moisture to simmer away again. Check your potato is cooked through, it should be tender but still hold its shape, if not continue cooking until it is.

Add the almonds and serve.

The Good King

Good King Henry is an ancient herb apparently used by man since neolithic times. It's supposed to have been brought to northern Europe by the Romans as part of their essentials but similar plants like fat hen must have been present already and used as part of the general foraging of greens for man and beast.

And to first taste it's not terribly enticing. If you follow the link above you'll see my early attempts with it as a crop plant weren't overly successful. It lacks much in the way of distinctive flavour but makes up for it by being really rather bitter. However, over time I've come to love it, and I mean love it because there are moments when I crave nothing else...

One of of those moments came today. I picked a big bunch and went to work on Good King Henry with Bean and Tomatoes.

1 bunch of Good King Henry (or if you don't have any Callaloo (amaranth greens), mature spinach leaves or chard will make a good substitute).
1 medium onion, chopped
2 tomatoes, diced
a small handful of french bean pods, topped, tailed and chopped into short lengths
Rice miso to taste, dissolved in a little warm water to make mixing in easier.

Wash your greens, a lot of pollen will come off the flowers. Chop roughly into bite size pieces removing any really tough stems and blanch in boiling water for five minutes. Drain. If you're really worried about bitterness you can repeat this step or omit it altogether for sweeter options like spinach or chard.

Fry the onion until just beginning to brown. Add the blanched greens, the chopped beans and tomatoes with just enough water to come about half way up the panful. Simmer for 15 minutes until the beans are cooked through, then add the miso. Stir around, turn off the heat and leave for five minutes to combine the flavours. Add pepper if liked.

Serve with your favourite grain. I wanted plain bulgar but ended up with a quinoa mix because it was all there was but any simple grain like barley or brown rice would be fine.

If you find it too bitter salt and lemon will help a lot, but don't overdo it, learn to love the hardship.

The Dark Side

My guests have left. In the end catering went its usual uncontrolled way and I just cooked what I felt like when the mood took me. We had Jacket Potatoes, although with French Haricot Blancs in Sauce Tomate, a quiche, a spinach lasagne that I have yet to document here (I think!) although it's quite a family favourite, several bean stews; some with dumplings, burgers and oven chips, a curry with chapatis, the Volcano cottage pie mentioned previously, pizza and so on.

What we didn't have was any pasta or rice, well, so little rice as to make no difference, a little with the curry and I rebelled one day and made a risotto, just for me, because one of the visitor's preferences precluded it. He wasn't all that keen on pastry either although he didn't seem to mind the flat pasta hidden in the lasagne, it appears it's just the shapes that put him off.

So tonight I cleared out the fridge of various dodgy leftovers, half a cube of soft silken tofu, a few tablespoons of passata, a handful of almond stuffed olives and some tinned sweetcorn and made a pasta sauce to be served with the twisty macaronis shown above. And it was alright, in fact, the texture of the soft tofu scramble was rather good I thought and with a little more refinement in the flavourings has some potential for a more classy dish at a later time. A few more leftovers to shift and cooking will resume a more pure approach.

See you soon.

Un Volcan

It's been harder than I expected to have guests and keep up with the blogs. I feel strangely shy about making everyone wait for five, ten, fifteen minutes while I take the pictures - it sort of reminds me of making visitors say grace when they weren't expecting to.

Also, with hungry workers to feed and less time to cook I've been avoiding the innovative in favour of the tried and true so not a lot to report really.

Still, this was a small and easy success. A cottage pie made with courgettes, tomatoes and herbes de Provence topped off with potato and celeriac mash. Tasty and filling.

The Wider World

Although I'm ensconced here in Normandy, seeing no one and for the moment without even any transport to bring me to civilisation there was a general election in the UK yesterday. Food and politics don't really mix but I am disappointed that the results have turned out as they have - it was perhaps obvious that things would go as they did, particularly to anyone who has seen it all before as I have (yes, I'm that old) but I really hoped there would be a chance for real change.

Anyway, as part of my preparations for a week of living from stores I made a huge batch of Leek and Potato Soup and froze most of it to make my lunches over the week. Actually I haven't eaten that much of it but plan to use it up in curries and casseroles within the next month or so as with fingers crossed I'm anticipating the arrival of my car on Saturday.

To sustain me through the long night of election results watching I roasted a batch or pumpkin and cauliflower pieces, first served with a salad and then as company to home made sour dough rolls with yeast pate on them.

Comfort

Odd, isn't it, how often comfort food is associated with the sort of thing that is despised as junk food, empty calories, something to feel ashamed of.

A disturbed night and some emotional upheavals left me feeling in need of some easy consolation. Luckily in the house, a ready made soya burger and some potatoes.

It looks far worse than it is. The soya burger, from the Sojasun range, contains only 132 calories and 17g protein, the chips were oven cooked and had only a couple of teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil to sear their golden sides. The rather dubious sauce (which comes with the burgers) could easily have been left out and the tomato and gherkin garnish completely unobjectionable, healthy even.

I cooked some sourdough buns to go with the burger but they weren't ready in time, so they are saved for tea.

Better cooking tomorrow I hope.

For Starters

Yes, it's that time of year again. We have moved me to France, cats are installed on the bed, a few days of acclimatisation have passed and the Stripey male has taken the boat home. So naturally, on this rather cold and lonely first day by myself here comes the Savoury Rice.

It really is cold, I've been wearing a thick coat all day, indoors and out but the slow start to the growing season here means I can redeem this unwholesome and predictable initial meal for myself by some foraging for a handful of hop shoots to enliven the mix. Still to come on the forager's calendar nettles, hog weed and sorrel, but they are for another day.

Must get on and do that meal plan for next week.