Chicken karhai with mint • Blueberry muffins

New member

Curryclub  gained a new member this past week: a dapper chap called Alan. We picked him up last weekend from the excellent North London Cats Protection League (sadly not the furry football team I imagine; http://www.northlondon.cats.org.uk). The little man only has one eye but that’s not holding him back; a couple of days ago he stole a sausage from an unattended toad-in-the-hole and was still clutching onto it when I removed him from the scene of the crime…

Martin Creed, “What’s the point of it”

I visited Martin Creed’s new exhibition “What’s the point of it” at the Hayward Gallery on Friday. The highlights were the giant sythe-like neon sign spinning round at the start of the exhibition and the balloon-filled room mid-way round, which made me feel a bit like an atom. All in all an enjoyable evening, but there were a few crummy items along the way. Special thanks to the kind attendant who went out of his way to point my mother and I out onto one of the balconies in the rain so that we didn’t miss the giant close-up 12 x 12ft projection of a penis…

Tonight’s recipes

Tonight’s dinner was a speedy Curry Easy chicken karhai recipe from Madhur Jaffrey. Essentiallly it’s just marinated chicken quickly stir-fried, and with chopped mint added right at the end. It was pretty tasty but nothing particularly nuanced or memorable. I imagine that it would be quite nice in a pitta or wrap with some raita and greenery, though.

Pudding was blueberry muffins a la Mary Berry (or Mezza Bezza as I like to call her). They were okay, but pretty small and a bit lacking in sugar for my tastes – definitely not the big pillowy objects of my muffin-y dreams.

Marks: 6/10

Madhur Jaffrey’s baked beef curry • Wagamama’s chargrilled pineapple slices

Can you guess who it is yet?

Family feasting time

Is there a better way to spend a grey and dreary weekend than at home  tucking into a mama-made curry and snuggling on the sofa watching IT Crowd boxsets? I think not.

The apple mango hasn’t fallen far from the tree in our case – my mum is also a first-class curry fiend. I bought her a copy of Curry Easy for Christmas as I’ve been really impressed by its simplicity and the depth of flavour in the recipes. This Saturday we sat down to an aromatic dinner of home-made “baked beef” and “okra with shallots”– both were very rich and tasty. Mum also made some fresh naan breads using dough from her bread maker – superior skills.

The undoubted highlight of the meal, however, was pudding. A little ray on sunshine on a wet, grey February day, this tasted like caramelized piña colada on a plate – moreishly sweet and exotic – and I liked it a lot. I think it’s time to dust off my Wagamama’s cookbook… Here’s the gist of things if you’d like to give it a try:

Wagamama’s chargrilled pineapple & coconut broth

(serves 2-4)

• Put a can of coconut milk in a pan with 50g white sugar, the zest of half a lime and juice of a whole one. Add 5cm of lemongrass (outer leaves removed) finely sliced.

• Simmer ingredients on a  medium heat for 5 minutes then set aside to cool.

• Heat a griddle pan till almost smoking. Sprinkle 25g sugar over 6 pineapple rings (fresh or tinned) and cook for 1 minute on each side.

• Strain and reheat the sauce and pour over the pineapple to serve.

Marks: 9/10 all-round

Aubergine and yoghurt raita • Indian-style bread and butter pudding

Curryclub’s latest members

Chilled aubergine and yoghurt raita

Indian-style bread and butter pudding

Despite the weather being cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey we had a brilliant Easter weekend: oodles of chocolate; Scrabble by a log-fire; and a visit to the new David Bowie exhibition at the V&A (http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/david-bowie-is/). The audio-visuals are fantastic, and your clever personal MP3 player changes the soundtrack as you explore the show, depending on your position.

We rounded off with an Indian feast fit for a king (well, my parents, anyway, who are much more important). Here’s the menu, all cooked to a soundtrack of the Thin White Duke:

• Michael Hathorne’s lamb curry – complete with fenugreek leaves this time. Still delicious, despite a slight burning incident (damn Le Creuset pan).  I’m wondering if the 40g of dried fenugreek leaves is an error, as my version was very strongly flavoured with only half the amount.
• Mango and chilli salad – fast becoming a regular dish for us. Seasoned with red chillis and lime juice this time around, it was seriously refreshing
• Madhur Jaffrey’s chilled aubergine and yoghurt raita – pretty oily, but oh so delicious. I’ll be sure to make this again.
• Saag – some tasty, token greenery to counteract the Simnel cake and Easter eggs.
• Indian-style bread and butter pudding – adapted from a Delia Smith recipe this was the star of the show. MrCurryclub added a pinch of saffron, orange zest, several cardamom pods and a dash of rosewater to the mix, along with some lovely yellow-yolked home-laid eggs from his parents’ chickens in Kent. The end result was a great, waist-line increasing success!

Marks: 9/10 for whole shebbang

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