Mr Singh’s slow-cooked lamb curry

Mr Singh’s slow-cooked lamb curry

Happy New Year Curry Clubers! Here’s hoping your 2015 is full of belly-warming chillis, vibrant turmeric and comforting cinnamon. This site originally started up as my New Year’s resolution a couple of years ago and I feel like I’ve only just scratched the spicy surface.

Yours truly and dad

I would encourage anyone who likes curries to try cooking their own from scratch. It is much, much easier then you think. Hell, even I can do it!

Here are 5 easy steps to get you started:

1. Find a good ethnic food store—the spice is cheap and plentiful, and they stock all sorts of interesting ingredients in bulk.
2. Buy an inspiring cookbook from a chef you trust. If you have a special interest (vegetarian food, seafood, quick recipes) then buy one that suits.
3. Buy a spice grinder. Plug-in ones are cheap and good for grinding coffee too, or you can just use a basic pestle and mortar. Mini-choppers are great for dicing onions and whizzing up a ginger and garlic paste too (the base of most curries) and don’t take up much space either.
4. Build up a basic spice library. Chilli, coriander, turmeric, cumin, and fresh ginger will go far.
5. Find a good way to store your spices for ease of access. I use handy spinning racks.

Photos are from our first curry of 2015 — Mr Singh’s slow-cooked lamb curry with cloves and cardamom by Rick Stein — a family lunch with my parents and in-laws. 9/10. Nice!

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

Dishoom • Covent Garden

Diwali sweets from Mrs Parmar

Hugh F-W in full flow

I don’t think I’ve ever eaten in the same restaurant twice in one week (with the exception of this Parisian pattiserie – http://www.gerard-mulot.com – although I’m not sure that pastries count), but I did just that this fine November. Seeking refuge from impending middle age, “soft search” mortage quotes and impending recolation south of the Thames I went to Dishoom (www.dishoom.com) in Covent Garden twice in seven days, seeking refuge in an orgy of sleek design, spicy cocktails and creamy chai. By gum it ain’t half good.

Sadly they don’t take bookings for parties of less than 6 people, but the length of the queue on both bitter evenings was testament to the restaurant’s quality and smily young servers distributed cups of chai to queue-ees to chivy them along. Inside, the staff are mic’d up like pilots and the interior is slick, with very little in the way of naff faux-Indian decor: think polished chrome, an Escher-esque tiled floor and comfy leather booths. The food is perfect for sharing and the accompanying chutneys are incredibly fresh. Standout dishes were vada pau (a potato patty in a light-as-air bun), rich black daal, a substantial paneer tikka and chocolate masala chai  – all brilliantly spiced and refreshingly lacking in grease so that we didn’t have to waddle out afterwards.

Pictured above are delicious Diwali sweet courtesy of my friend Emma’s mother-in-law and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall making sweet and sour pork at this week’s “nose to tail” Pig Idea event (thepigidea.org) in Trafalgar Square (not an EDL rally, as my photography skills seem to suggest). The free pork pibil tacos from Wahacas were superb and worth the short wait.

I’m excited about the possibility of moving soon, but after six years in Kentish Town I’ll be sad to leave my old curry haunts behind  – please send recommendations for great South London curry restaurants. So far I’ve heard good things about Ganapati in Peckham and there’s always Tooting’s South Indian delights…merci buckets.

Marks: an unprecedented 10/10!

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…

Gratuitous snow picture

Camden on mute

It’s snowed heavily all day today – big, thick, dandruffy clumps of the stuff. I love the snow. It forces everyone to slow down – a collective exhalation for the city (with the exception of frazzled commuters). My road, which is usually a cacophany of screaming kids, cars, drunks and lorries, is so quiet that you could hear a mouse fart. Bliss.