Kerala–style fish curry • South Indian-style green beans

A first for Curryclub this week in the shape of a fishy supper… My two best friends from school came over for dinner and a catch-up this Saturday (and to watch Romeo and Juliet – no shame there). These lovely ladies gave me a big bag of spices and other curry delights for my birthday this year so I wanted to treat them to a nice dinner without spending too much time in the kitchen.

Madhur Jaffrey’s Kerala-style fish curry recipe was ideal – you can make it with almost any fish (from hake to salmon or mackerel) and it doesn’t need too much fussing over. I struck lucky at our local fishmonger, Harry’s (http://tinyurl.com/p5bhv25), where I managed to barter down a substantial monkfish tail to only £8 – plenty to feed three people. The green bean accompaniment was great too, despite my initial reservations about them tasting a bit bland, and the recipe was very quick to make.

Here’s the fish curry recipe in brief, with my suggested alterations. Serves 2–4 people:

• Buy 550g  fish (with skin) cut into 7cm segments. Spread pieces out and sprinkle with salt.
• Fry 65g sliced shallots in olive oil till brown.
• Add 1 tsp grated ginger and 2 crushed garlic cloves and fry for 1 minute.
• Add 250ml water, 1/2tsp tumeric, 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (or add as you’d prefer – I foud 1/2tsp too hot), 1/2tsp paprika, lots of black pepper, the juice of a lemon and lots of black pepper.
• Simmer for 5 minutes, then add half a can of coconut milk and simmer again.
• Add fish pieces back into the pan and simmer for 5–10 minutes, or until cooked.

Ariane also fried up some poppadom’s in vegetable oil for us to try– super tasty. Kids, make sure you do this using proper tongs rather than a fork as I’m sporting a bit of a nasty burn on my finger this week after my attempt. Apparently it’s possible to cook them in a microwave too but I’ve not been able to test drive this idea yet as I can’t fit one in my teensy kitchen.

Marks: 7/10. Quick, tasty and easy, but rather lacking in depth. I’d reduce the amount of cayenne pepper next time as it was a bit spicy, even for me. Romeo and Juliet: 10/10; we felt sad that the equivalent for twelve-year-olds today is Twilight…

(PS The last image – above – is Steeve, the fox who lives in the garden of the flat below mine. He clearly got wind of our curry as he’s been getting much braver recently and has been coming quite close to the flat),

Review of Cinnamon Soho coming soon…

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

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)

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)

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

Madhur Jaffrey’s “Best ever aubergines”

“Best ever aubergines” in all their glory

I walked several (actually quite enjoyable) miles in the snow to assemble the ingredients for this week’s dish so expectations were high. There was a hankering for a veggie curry at Curryclub towers this weekend as Mr Curryclub made an oxtail stew last night and we were feeling a bit flesh-ed out. To say I had high expectations is an undersatement – I would live ona diet of pure aubergine given the change.

When it came to the crunch, the aubergines were creamy and delicious but greasier than Berlusconi’s hair (implants)… The tangy chickpea and tomato sauce (seasoned with dry Mexican chillis from my friend, Erin) and tart cumin yoghurt  provided nice counterpoints of texture and flavour, and I substitued the fiddly-sounding tamarind chutney for shop-bought brinjal (aubergine) pickle for a lip-smacking sweet finish.

We’re going to Whitstable for my birthday next Sunday (weather permitting) so I’m reschudling curry club next week – watch this space.

Marks: 7/10. Very tasty but we don’t think these are quite as special as the name suggests.

Madhur Jaffrey’s “Chicken with Spinach” (Saag Murgh)

Crispy fried onions

Apologies for the tardy write-up this week – the snow has made me quite soporific! We finally made something from Madhur Jaffrey’s Ultimate Curry Bible last weekend. The recipe was a great success. I pureed the spinach so it went a little brown during cooking but still tasted fresh and healthy. The crispy onions added an extra dimension of richness and the dish was far nicer than a takeaway chicken tikka masala – much less cloying. The final 300ml of water made things a bit sloppy though – I’d halve the amount next time. It would be good to find a way to reduce the quantities of cooking oil (I used vegetable oil instead of corn/peanut, for ease) too.

I’m enjoying my education in spice – I used to pour vats of cumin and coriander into my self-invented dishes but see now that it’s all about delicate combinations, not vast quantities. I didn’t realize until this week that cayenne pepper is different to chilli powder – in fact it’s just one of the many components in a good chilli powder! I’m enjoying working our way through the Madagascan cinnamon sticks we bought on honeymoon last October too – they’re delicious! Our flat it definitely taking on the odour of spice…

I also bought some half price asafoetida this week. Wikipedia tells me that it comes from a type of gum produced by a giant member of the fennel family, and “has a pungent, unpleasant smell when raw, but in cooked dishes, it delivers a smooth flavor, reminiscent of leeks”. Could be interesting.

Marks: 7/10. A tasty, easily-made classic. Will retain some crispy onions to sprinkle on top next time. Mr Curryclub also thinks the spinach should be added a little later on in the cooking process.