The perfect tonic – chana keema, naan bread & pomegranate raita

Pomegranate raita

Chana keema and naan bread

It’s rare for me to be up past midnight nowadays (how embarassing), but we went to a 30th birthday party on Saturday night and didn’t roll home till 4am. A hearty feed was required.  Mr Curryclub and I combined forces to make not one, but three new recipes: chana keema (lamb mince stir-fried with chickpeas) from Food of the Grand Trunk Road, by Anirudh Arora and Hardeep Singh Kohli, and pomegranate riata and naan bread from the Cinnamon Kitchen’s cookbook.

The naan breads were concrete hard, but the other dishes were fab. A recipe from the Punjab section of the book – an area in the far northwest of India bordering on Jammu and Kashmir –the chana keema was totally moreish. Flavoured with smoky black cardamon, bay leaves, green and powdered chill, garlic and ginger paste (jars of which I’ve just discovered in my local deli), ground coriander and cumin, this was the perfect warming dish for staving off the winter chill and the hangover gremlins. The recipe was seasoned with a teaspoon of garam masala and livened up with lemon guice, ginger julienne and a sprinkling of fresh coriander. The raita was similarly likeable – simultaneously tart and sweet, it was definitely worth the effort of picking the seeds out one by one like a chimp.

Belly full, I realized that I haven’t bought any takeaway curries at all this year – progress indeed.

Marks: 8/10 for the whole meal (excepting the naan breads – the leftovers were much tastier with pilau rice)

Madhur Jaffrey’s “Moghlai Lamb with Spinach (Palaag Gosht)

Delicious aromas not included

Dinner in progress

Washing up “lite”

A perfect end to a lovely sunny weekend catching up with friends and celebrating milestones, exploring the New Forest and rubber-necking to see the giraffes at London Zoo. I can’t think why I’ve never made this recipe before – it’s very very easy to cook, doesn’t require too many ingredients or spices, and  doesn’t produce gargantuan amounts of washing up. A rich and scrumptious treat.

Marks: 9/10

Recipe adapted from the Ultimate Curry Bible

Marinate 600g of boneless lamb shoulder/neck meat with 4tsp grated ginger, 7 crushed garlic cloves and 2tbsp ground corainder for 30 minutes.

Slice 1 large onion into slim half-rings and fry until golden in 4tbsp olive/vegetable oil. Remove and leave on kitchen paper. Add meat to remaining oil in pan with 1/2tsp tumeric powder, 1tsp cayenne pepper and 1 tsp salt, and cook for 10 minutes on a medium heat with the lid on.

Gradually add 4tbsp of natural yoghurt, waiting until each spoonful is absorbed, then add chopped, fried onions and 450g thinly sliced raw spinach. Cook on a low heat for 50 minutes, or until the lamb is tender.

Moolis and the British Museum

Pork “mooli” and mango lassi

African gallery at the British Museum

Curry and culture

A smashing afternoon off today – 2 for 1 wraps at Moolis in Soho, a free tour of the Egypt gallery at the British Museum and plenty of relaxation. Moolis is moving next Friday (new location to be confirmed) so it’s worth popping in soon to try their fantastic “mooli” wraps –  rotis jam-packed with delicious Indian street food goodies. I had a Goan pork mooli for lunch with jewel-like pomegranate salsa, and a mildly spicy chicken wrap for dinner, with lentils and pickled turnips.

Marks: 8/10

Cinnamon Kitchen’s “Old Delhi-style butter chicken”

Smell the butter

Not bad for a day’s work

Dinner on Sunday night was the Cinnamon Kitchen’s “Old Delhi-style butter chicken” to warm the heart and keep out the cold rain. The dish featured not one, but three dairy products – butter, cream and natural yoghurt – and was quite fiddly to make with various sieving and blending operations to perform. The end result was pretty tasty but a bit lacking in depth of flavour for me (despite the lashings of chilli) and produced vast quantities of washing-up too. I think the flavour will have improved in a few day’s time once the spices have got acquainted with each other better. Next time I would grill rather than oven-cook the chicken to give it a nice crisp, punchy flavour.

Marks: 7/10 (will re-mark once I’ve tried the leftovers)

Death and a Cinnamon Club field trip

Sister, lamb, lentils, you do the math

Hake curry

This weekend I was mostly eating curry, turning up for surprise parties in the nick of time and reading Wolf Hall. Oh, and learning about Death at the brilliant Wellcome Collection (www.wellcomecollection.org). The exhibition was heaving with visitors for such a rainy Sunday, and the subject matter was fascinating and sensitively handled; the mood was lightened by a little girl who launched herself into the first room fizzing with energy and declared loudly to her  mum, “I like that skull!”. “Death: a self-portrait’ is only on until the 24^th Feb, so catch it while you can.

For dinner on Saturday we surprised my mum with a 60^th birthday meal at the Cinnamon Club in Westminster (www.cinnamonclub.com). Once she’d got over the shock we enjoyed a five-course menu featuring an eyeball-rollingly  delicious paneer starter, a simple, but equally delicious chicken in fenugreek sauce main course, followed by blood orange parfait with fig sauce on a base of pistachio fudge. A hearty feed indeed and very reasonably priced. The only downside of the evening for me was the rather staid decor and atmosphere, but perhaps that’s to be expected in a Westminster ex-library. It certainly wasn’t putting off the punters, though, as the restaurant was packed. I’m keen to try out their sister restaurants in Soho and the East End now too. Late Valentine’s meal perhaps…?

Marks: 9/10

To be continued…

A busy weekend here at Curryclub – dinner at the Cinnamon Club on Saturday and home-made Cinnamon Kitchen’s “Old Delhi-style butter chicken” tonight. Write-ups to follow…

Spicy February triple-header

Banana tartin

February’s Curryclub started on a high with not one, but three memorable new recipes…

This Saturday evening we planned to go and see Django Unchained but MrCurryclub decided to make the “spice-braised shoulder of lamb” from Vivek Singh’s Cinnamon Kitchen cookbook. Unctious and melt-in-the-mouth after  3 hours in the oven we missed the cinema and ended up staying in to watch The Dictator” instead… The film wasn’t up to much but this was a grand old dish and would be great to try again when we have guests.

Dinner is served

Look at the leg on that

Spicy goodness up-close

Tonight I re-used the leftover lamb (approximately 350g) to make a delicious lamb pilaf from the Ginger Pig’s Ginger Pig Meat Book. Lightly spiced, this was a nice easy dish to make with basmati rice, onion, tomato, and big bunches of fresh parsley and coriander. Deceptively rich, colourful and moreish, this was even more satisfying because it used up our leftovers so well.

Fiesta time

A hive of activity

One fine lookin’ pilaf

For dessert I made Cinnamon Kitchen’s “spiced banana tartin”. Melting the caramel from scratch was fun– I had no idea how quickly it would cool though, so it was quite hard to handle. The recipe’s slight nod to Indian cooking was the addition of crushed pink peppercorns; I’ve been trying to find a use for them for a while, and despite my initial reservations they were a perfect counterpart to the cloying sweetness of the bananas and caramel. Delicious.

Caramel-geddon

Pink peppercorns…say wha?

Marks:

Cinnamon Kitchen’s “spice-braised shoulder of lamb” 8/10

The Ginger Pig’s “spiced lamb pilaf” 9/10

Cinnamon Kitchen’s “spiced banana tarte tartin” 7/10