Spicy lamb chops • Baby aubergines with picking spices (achari baigan) • Okra with carom seeds (ajwaini bhindi)

Hi curry peeps,

Hope you’re all well. It’s been a funny old weekend here. We had another family funeral to go to on Friday – a beautiful woodland burial near Norwich. (We had a lovely eggs Benedict at the cosy Talc cafe in town beforehand – http://www.talcinnorwich.co.uk – which I’d highly recommended). We were feeling rather drained when we got back so we got a heartwarming takeaway from our old friend the Bengal Lancer. I even spotted our upstairs neighbours having a romantic date there when I went to collect the food (incidentally, this entitles you to a 20% discount).

After a mammoth lie-in we came up fighting again on Saturday and had a lovely lunch at Phonecia in Kentish Town (amazing as ever) before exploring a couple of properties with Open House London (www.londonopenhouse.org) – a great opportunity to find the hidden gems in your local area. My favourite was Philip Hughes’ studio – an incredible space with a multitude of mirrors and a spa space hidden in a cosy white ceramic bubble. We also popped in to see the Thomas Hardy tree near St Pancras (pictured above) – a curious nub of history among all the new building around King’s Cross.

With the help of Mr CC and my lovely sister-in-law (cook extraordinaire) we rustled up a delicious spicy dinner using the Food of the Grand Trunk Road cookbook. I’ve also just invested in a copy of Rick Stein’s new India book on her recommendation so watch this space. I’m interested in trying out the Pondicherry-style prawn curry with preserved lemons and fresh herbs. Has anyone tried it out?

We’ve got a busy few weekends coming up – Mr M’s bday, our wedding anniversary and an impromptu trip to Paree, but I’ll do my best to keep in touch.

Marks: 8/10 (please excuse the lack of actual curry content in this post).

Simple supper – beef keema pitta breads

Tonight’s dinner was beef keema in wholemeal pitta breads; very quick and super tasty – I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s leftovers. I also booked a table for dinner at Cinnamon Soho in early June – can’t wait!

Marks: 7/10

Tangdi (marinated chicken legs) • Amchoorwaley Karela (stuffed bitter gourd)

Peeled bitter gourds

Ripe red seeds

Stuffed bitter gourd

Bitter gourd ingredients aplenty

Karela seed and potato curry

Earlier this week I picked up some bitter gourds on Drummond Street and I’ve been looking forward to experimenting with them. As the name suggests they are incredibly bitter (no s**t, Sherlock), and a bit of an acquired taste, but I’ve been looking forward to cooking them as they remind me of my time teaching near Darjeeling  in 2006, with the charity Mondochallenge (www.mondochallenge.co.uk).  I plumped for the exciting-sounding Amchoorwaley Karela recipe from Food of the Grand Trunk Road, and also their Tangdi (marinated chicken legs) for the meat component.

The preparation for both of these recipes was a bit of a slog – especially skinning all the chicken legs and marinating them for 5 hours, and peeling all the bitter gourds – but it was fun to use my newly acquired dried mango powder, which tasted much more sour than expected. My lack of tandoor also meant a very slow cooking time for the chicken (1.5 hours at gas mark 4, then some time under the grill to crisp up). One of the bitter gourds was much riper than the others and it was incredible to see the contrast between the white unripe seeds and the blood-red ripened-up ones.

The end result was great – less bitter than I remember. The gourds tasted like slightly sharp aubergines, and the potato, karela seed and peanut stuffing was citrusy, sour and nutty all in one mouthful. The chicken legs were lovely and tender, and the marinade was very more-ish and not too hot.

Joyti, who I lived with near Darjeeling, has very kindly sent me her recipe for momos (Nepalese dumplings), and  I’m looking forward to giving them a try next Sunday. Just need to buy a steamer and find a decent chilli sauce recipe first (suggestions welcome!)…

Marks: 8/10

Kathi chicken rolls

What a fab weekend…a happy, sunny Bristol wedding, an evening in with steak and chips, Mr Ben and Mr Jerry, pancakes for breakfast, a walk along the Thames from Richmond to Kew, curry for dinner and a long chat with an old friend. I was still feeling bit tired this evening after all the merriment of the wedding, so I made a nice easy chicken dish from Food of the Grand Trunk Road. The recipe included home-made parathas, but I made a shortcut and substitued them for wholemeal pitta breads. We ate the whole lot before I remembered to take any pictures –sorry. All in all a whole-hearted success.

Miracle paste

Here’s the recipe if you’d like to give it a try, with a few adaptations:

• Fry 1tsp cumin seeds with 1.5 chopped onions and cook until brown.
• Add 1tbsp garlic and ginger paste and cook for 2minutes.
• Add 1tsp chilli powder, 1/4 tsp tumeric powder and 1tsp ground coriander and cook for another minute.
• Add 500g boned chicken thighs, cut into 2cm cubes. Sear on all sides.
• Add 2 chopped tomatoes and cook until soft.
• Add 1/4 mug of water and cook until evaporated and the chicken is tender.
• Serve inside parathas or wholemeal pitta breads with fresh coriander, ginger julienne, natural yoghurt and a pickle/chutney of your choice (or chilli sauce).

Mark: 9/10. Easy and delicious

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

Chicken liver masala with pao bread (kaleji pao)

New table cloth from Calcutta courtesy of my lovely sister-in-law (she also made the butter dish)

I’ve got  tigers on the brain this week… My sister-in-law has just got back from a great trip to Bandhavgarh National Park and I spent last night watching this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01nhwyz/Natural_World_20122013_Queen_of_Tigers_Natural_World_Special. I’ve been desperate to go on safari in India  ever since seeing tigers in the wild at Jim Corbett National Park in 2007.

For now I’m making do with tonight’s Curryclub effort, though: chicken liver masala with pao bread (or kaleji pao)  from Food of the Grand Trunk Road. I was stuggling to find a good recipe for a saag side-dish online, so I  improvised my own using this recipe from the blog Santosh’s Kitchen: http://santoshbangar.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/sarso-ka-sag-makki-ki-roti.html.

First I fried up a tablespoon of garlic and ginger paste with 2 tbsp vegetable oil, one chopped onion and one chopped tomato. I also added one chopped green chilli and a generous amount (approximately 2 tbsp) of dried fenugreek leaves. When it had all softened up and come together I added a whole large bag of supermarked spinach and stirred on a medium heat until cooked, adding dashes of water as necessary. I then pureed the whole lot with my hand blender – yum.

Curryclub is going on tour to Italy this week, so I’ll be taking a weekend off from cooking next Sunday; normal sevice will be resumed the week after.

Marks: 8/10 for saag and pao bread, 7/10 for the liver (I’m usually a big liver fan, but the spicing in this dish didn’t have enough bite for me)

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)