This all began with a curry. A curry that was neither heavily spiced nor very hot. A curry that didn’t come from India or Thailand and that contained neither huge amounts of cumin nor coriander nor curry leaves. This curry made me look at it and say out loud, “What the hell makes this a curry?”

Goon, who as usual wasn’t interested in probing the definitions of various food types, looked at me suspiciously and said “Well, you make curry at least once a fortnight. You should know!”

But in spite of being brought up on curry, I didn’t know. This bothered me. After a short spree of looking through various dictionary definions, the vast majority of which were about grooming horses, I found the origins of the word curry. It is the Dravidian (that’s classical Tamil) word for ‘vegetable in sauce’. 

I think of all the curries I’ve made, possibly only a quarter involve vegetables in sauce. Have I been a terrible curry cook all this time?

I like to think not. I imagine what happened was that European settlers in India, who probably weren’t too keen on the whole veggie lifestyle, took the word they thought meant ‘generic vegetable stew’, turned it into the word that meant ‘generic stew with anything’ and expanded it  to mean ‘generic anything with spice that has an origins in Asia’**.

It’s an exceptionally wide definition and as I looked through the list of curries I’ve made in my short cooking life, I can see that even they are remarkably varied. There’s everything from the hot and pungent vindaloo to the delicate monkfish curry I made last night.

This dish was so delicate that it needed an accompaniment with kick so I made a sambal to go with it. A sambal is another thing that is hard to define. In short it is a side dish made with chilli or a hot pepper. In Sri Lanka the most popular ones seemed to be seeni sambal, (sweet onions with chilli) or pol sambal which is a bright orange dish made with dessicated coconut and chilli. The sambal I opted for was of Malaysian origin (to match the fish dish) and was made of pineapple and thinly sliced cucumber in a dressing of lime, shrimp paste and pounded red chilli. 

Malaysian Fish Curry with Sambal Nanas (for two generous portions)

• 400g monkfish fillet (or other firm white fish), cut into bite sized pieces
• 1 small onion, peeled and roughly chopped 
• 2 inch piece of ginger, roughly chopped
• 3 fat garlic cloves, roughly chopped
• 2 red and two green chillies, deseeded and chopped
• A level tablespoon of flaked almonds, roughly crushed
• 2 lemongras staks, outer leaves removed, trimmed
• 3 heaped tablespooons dessicated coconut
• a pinch of turmeric
• 400g can coconut milk
• 100ml unherbed fish stock
• salt and pepper to taste
• chives or spring onion to garnish
• Plain boiled basmati rice to serve

For the Sambal

• 4 pineapple rings, chopped into small pieces.
• 1 quarter cucumber, sliced into short thin strips
• 1  teaspoon shrimp paste
• 20g dried shrimp
• 1 large red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
• brown sugar to taste

To make the sambal, use a food processor to blitz the dried shrimp, chilli, lime juice and shrimp paste. to pound the chilli and dried shrimp. REmove the mixture from the processor and mix well with the pineapple and cucumber slices. Add sugar and more lime juice to taste. Set aside while you prepare the curry.

1. Brush a medium saucepan with vegetable oil. Stir fry the dessicated coconut gently until it is a uniform golden brown. Scrape into a food processor and process to a smooth oily paste. I needed a touch of the coconut milk to help it alon.
2. Scrape the processed coconut into a bowl and rinse out the food processer.
3. Chop the lower halves of the lemon grass stalks roughly. Place the chopped lemongrass in the food processor with the onion, garlic, ginger, almond and three quarters of the chilli. Blitz to a smooth paste.
4. Brown the monkfish pieces briefly, remove from the saucepan .
5. Add the garlic paste to the pan and cook for afew minutes. Don’t let it brown. Then add the turmeric, coconut milk, remaining lemongrass and stock. Allow to reduce by half but don’t turn the heat up too high because coconut milk may curdle.
6. Return the fish to the pan with the dessicated coconut paste. Stir well and allow the fish to cook through (this should take about 5 minutes over a low/medium heat).
7. Taste, adjust seasoning and transfer to a serving bowl. Garnish with the remaining chillies and the chives. Serve with plain boiled rice.

*The corruption of words reminds me of ‘fish bisteck’. This is a Sri Lankan recipe my Dad used to try to impress me with when I was a teenager. The story goes that this was inspired by beef steak made by European settlers. Meat went off quickly in the hot weather, so beef steak was heavily spiced to disguise any gamey flavours. The locals picked up the idea and used the heavy spicing as a coating for fish  (Buddhists aren’t big on eating beef). Beef steak –> bisteck–> fish bisteck 

From the one or two encounters I had with fish bisteck I can promise that it was grim.  

(otherwise known as squid in a tomato and clove sauce, Indonesian style.)

West London really is the place to be at the moment. This morning I discovered that what appears to be the world’s biggest Waitrose has opened by Shepherd’s Bush Green along with 40 or so restaurants as part of the Westfield development.

This shopping centre is ludicrously large. I intended to ‘pop in’ today on my way into school to see what the fuss was about. Not only do you need a map for the development itself, individual shops are big enough to merit having their own complex floorplans. At one point I found myself looking diagonally across the centre so most of it was in my sight. It was so enormous, I had a slight attack of vertigo, felt a bit sick and had to leave. Then it took me 15 minutes to get to the exit.

Yes it is THAT big. So big that, if it wasn’t for Wholefoods, it would render Kensington High Street totally redundant. So here I am, nestled in between cheap restaurants, the best butcher in London and a gargantuan shopping centre. This is my smug face.

Goon has become a bit disconcerted at my sudden good mood. I suppose that from his point of view, his girlfriend has undergone a complete personality transformation, from grumbling and snarling to generally quite happy. If it wasn’t for BT, I would only have one other complaint: the seemingly endless stream of colds.

Colds are an occupational hazard for teachers, particularly when they’re new to a school. I can’t remember a day this term when we (the maths department, that is) were all sniffle free. Germs like children and children like giving their germs to teachers. Fortunately I know the best thing to treat a cold: a big bowl of curry.

I have more than made up for last year’s lack of curry making and have been trying to expand my repetoire. The dish below originates in Indonesia and is lightly spiced and not at all hot. It’s perfect if you want something pleasantly invigorating but aren’t in the mood for a chilli based assault on the senses. It’s so mild that you might not class it as a curry, but it hit the spot for me, especially after the burningly hot Thai curry I made the previous night. It’s quick to make too, so a perfect schoolnight dinner.

Cumi Cumi Smoor (for 2 big portions)

• 400g of squid, cleaned, hoods cut into strips, 
• the juice of a lime 
• 1 onion, peeled and finely diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 plum tomatoes, peeled and chopped  
• 8 whole cloves
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 150ml unherbed fish or vegetable stock or water
• plain boiled rice or saffron rice to serve
• chopped coriander/ sliced spring onion to garmish

1. Get a large frying pan hot and stir fry the squid until it just curls up. Remove it from the pan, place it in a bowl, toss in the lime juice, cover and keep warm.
2. Turn the heat down to low, add a little more oil, then add the onion and garlic to the pan and cook gently until soft.
3. Add the tomato, stock, cloves and nutmeg. Stir well, ten allow to bubble gently until almost dry. Taste and season.
4. Stir in the squid and warm through.
5. Serve with saffron rice or plain boiled rice, garnished with chopped coriander and/or spring onion.

******

This post is really testing my memory. I was just going through my food photos from this year and foud a picture of a curry that I really wanted to post but never had time.

A whole 18 weeks ago, just before the end of the Easter holidays, I was contemplating what my final term at Highgate would bring. Late nights I suspected and bad moods at arriving home hungry and exhausted at 9:30pm. I had been ill prepared for these in the previous two terms. People kept telling me it would get easier and I’d cope better as I went along. It was true to some extent, but if I was to keep preparing a full worksheet for every lesson, leaving school before 7:30 wouldn’t be an option.

We decided that, in order to fend off the near psychotic rages that had ensued when Goon had promised to cook dinner but forgotten, it would be a good idea to stock up the freezer with home made ready meals. Goon exercised his training from the previous year and made a vat of bolognese which divided into 10 portions. I went down to Sainsbury’s and discovered that they had free range pork and stewing beef on offer. The beef became 6 frozen portions of beef in Guinness. The pork became the slightly psychadelic curry pictured above.

This is a Cambodian Style pork and butternut squash curry. The intense yellow flavour comes from the use of turmeric and a herbal paste called Kroeung, which is made from blending lemongrass, turmeric, ginger or galangal, onion, lime leaf and garlic.

The paste here is a lot wetter than normal, because I only have a crappy stick blender and so needed a bit of water to process the spices.

Kroeung is a classic flavouring in Khmer cooking and quite distinctive, being earthy and yet fresh and citrusy at the same time. It provides the principal flavouring to many curries, soups, stir fries and marinades. It certainly dominated this curry, providing a nice balance to the creaminess of the coconut milk.

I’m afraid I can’t remember exact quantities for this curry but the method went something like this…

Cambodian Pork and Butternut Curry (Adapted from The Complete Vietnamese Cookbook by Ghillie Basan)

Approximate method for making 8-10 Portions

For the Kroeung Paste, process

• 3 chopped lemon grass stalks, trimmed with the tough outer leaves removed
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 8 garlic cloves, minced
• 4 fresh kaffir lime leaves
• a large piece of ginger (25g)
• 25g fresh turmeric (I had to substitute around 4 teaspoons ground)

with a little water if necessary to bind. This paste will keep for up to a week in the fridge.

Now for the curry…

The recipe suggests using pork loin but we had a 1.6kg boneless leg. This was cut into bite size pices and browned in batches over a high heat.

Stir fry a large knob (4-5 inches) of finely chopped ginger, 8 chopped green chillies and 2-3 very finely diced onions in some vegetable oil until the onion is soft. Add 6 tablespoons of the kroeung paste and stir fry for a couple of minutes. Throw in a 3 or 4 teaspoons of ground turmeric and a couple of teaspoons each of fenugreek and sugar and stir fry for a minute or so. Now add the pork loin and stir to coat. Add a couple of tablespoons of fish sauce, two tins (approx 1 litre) of coconut milk and bring to a gentle bubble. After 5 minutes or so add the diced flesh of 2 small butternut squash and 5 or 6 lime leaves. Allow to bubble until the squash is almost cooked. Adjust spicing at this stage if necessary. Continue to cook until the pork and squash are cooked through.

The portions we ate that night were garnished liberally with chopped coriander and mint and served on plain boiled rice. The other six portions went in the freezer and were almost equally good when reheated, although the squash disintegrated a bit.

********************

This was the first time I’d encountered this herbal paste, so it seems like a good idea to enter this post to Kalyn’s long standing event, Weekend Herb Blogging.  It must have been a year since I last took part but hopefully I can make more entries soon.  The host this week is Kelly from Sounding my Barbaric Gulp. Visit her site on Monday for a round up of educational and entertaining posts.

Apparently the paste I used is just one of a several different types of Kroeung. Variations include adding red chilli pulp, making the paste red or rhizome, making it a light green. Most pastes include lemongrass, galangal and turmeric or kaffir lime leaves, giving Khmer cooking its distinctive flavour.  

More detail is here at the Wikipedia page on Kroeung.

This holiday it struck me how many bargain cookery books I have. There are more than two shelves full of those £3 Borders reduced paperbacks which specialise in cuisine from a certain country or continent. They look cheap, they feel cheap, heck, they ARE cheap, but I find these little books very useful.

I’d love to be able to go out and spend £25 each time I fancied trying out something new but sadly, if I did that, I probaby couldn’t afford the ingredients I needed to make good use of the books I bought.  Still, a book entitled “The Best Ever Curry Cookbook” isn’t likely to fill you with confidence about its contents but, rather suprisingly, it turned out to be quite informative and inspiring. Most of the book focuses on cuisine from the Indian subcontinent but around a third of it is devoted to curries from Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, the Phillipines and Indonesia. There are several very unusual recipes in this section of the book which I’m determined to try. The first on my list was the prawn and quail egg curry.

This was a really delicious meal. The flavour of the curry is delicate but earthy, dominated by garlic, ginger and turmeric with subtle heat (which could be increased if desired) and the lemongrass coming through right at the end. The sauce is thin, almost like a broth, which made it a nuisance to carry to the table but was wonderful mixed up with the rice. It pays to go easy on the fish sauce as its pungent flavour could easily overpower the other ingredients.

A note on the use of stock here: As far as I’m aware most ‘wet’ curries don’t traditionally call for stock and instead get their flavour from the meat being braised slowly. For this reason I assume the use of chicken stock in this meal is not authentic. However, I find the right stock can be really useful in making ‘quick cook’ curries like this one. I’d use a light fresh stock that isn’t flavoured with herbs. I always make stocks like these from the carcasses from my roast dinners because they are so wonderfully versatile. 

I have come around to the idea of egg in curry. As a child, there was nothing more I hated than finding half an egg in an overpoweringly hot and salty Sri Lankan dish but the quail eggs suit the delicacy of flavours here. This is definitely a meal I will make again, especially since it is quick enough for a schoolnight dinner!

Indonesian Style Prawn and Quail Egg Curry

(Adapted from “The Best Ever Curry Cookbook” by Mridula Baljekar, published by Hermes House)

Ingredients (for two people with big appetites) 

• 400-450g shelled  and cleaned king prawns
• 9 quail eggs, hard boiled, peeled and halved
• 1 small onion, finely diced
• 3 fat cloves garlic, crushed
• 3 cubic inches of ginger, chopped finely and crushed
• 2 red chillies, finely chopped
• half a level tablespoon ground turmeric
• 1 teaspoon sugar (I assume palm sugar is authentic- I had to use demerera)
• one half inch cube of shrimp paste or up to 1 tablespoon fish sauce  
• 1 small stalk lemongrass, tough outer layer removed, trimmed and shredded.
• 300ml thin coconut milk (pass 350ml normal coconut milk through a sieve)
• 200ml unherbed chicken stock
• 110g pak choi, or similar leaf, roughly shredded
• shredded spring onion green part only) to garnish
• plain boiled basmati rice to serve

Method

1. Sweat the onions, garlic and ginger together gently until the onions are soft but not coloured.
2. Add the chilies, shrimp paste/fish sauce and lemongrass. Fry for a minute so they release their favours.
3. Add the strained coconut milk, stock and sugar and stir well. Bring the mixture to a gentle bubble. Let the mixture reduce by about 40%.
4. Stir in the prawns and leaves and turn the heat down so the curry is at a simmer. 
5. Stir gently until the prawns have just turned pink all the way through. This should ony take a few minutes and the leaves should also wilt in this time.
6. Taste the sauce and adjust seasoning
7. Stir in the quail eggs. Turn the curry out into a serving bowl and sprinkle over the shredded spring onion.
8. Serve immediately with plain boiled basmati rice. 

Not long ago,  I suddenly realised that one part of my cooking that had disappeared completely during the first weeks of my job was the home made curry. It’s not because they take too long to cook. I can pull together a decent Goan fish curry in about half an hour. Instead it’s the attention to detail that is the problem.

When making a curry I find I need to be really on the ball. The spice quantities in recipe books or on the web aren’t ever quite right and I find I need to be there tasting and adjusting constantly if I want it to be good. However, it has now got to the stage where Goon seems to have given up cooking completely so, it’s in the door at 9pm for me and straight into the kitchen.  Even after just a week of that it got to the stage where I managed to cook, serve up and then fall asleep on the sofa before I managed to eat.

I was woken up half an hour later by Goon who had managed to scoff most of my portion as well as his and was trying to shoo me away so he could get to his favourite programming spot in front of the television. Let this be a warning to you:never share a flat with a geek,especially one who doesn’t like cooking.

There’s no way I could manage to make something that requires concentration whilst I am in that state of exhaustion so home made curries might have to become a holiday treat. This half term, I wasn’t going to let the opportunity pass me by so, during a Friday visit to Borough, I picked up my favourite currying meat, came home and made this.

Saag Gosht with Red Peppers  

Ingredients 

• 450g mutton, lamb neck or other red casseroling meat, cut into bite sized pieces
• vegetable oil or ghee for frying
• 1 medium/large onion, thickly sliced into rings
• 3 medium cloves garlic, minced,
• 2 teaspoons grated ginger
• 2 birds eye green chillis, chopped
• 300ml (or just enough to cover the meat in step 2 below) home made lamb or beef bone stock (nothing herby). Water will do as the mutton has a rich flavour of its own, but I much prefer using a simple bone stock. 
• 1 tsp ground fenugreek
• 3 teaspoons ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons ground coriander
• 1 red pepper, cored deseeded and cut into small pieces
• 200g fresh spinach, washed and thoroughly drained
• a handful of chopped coriander leaves plus extra to garnish

Method

1. Brown the mutton pieces on all sides over a high heat in the oil/ghee. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.
2. Turn the heat down and add the onions to the saucepan. Fry gently until they start to soften.
3. Add the spices, garlic and ginger.
4. Once the onion is cooked, return the mutton to the pan, barely cover with the stock, place the lid on the saucepan and simmer for around 2 hours. Keep an eye on the curry and, if it starts to become too dry, add a little more stock.
5. In a seperate pan, fry the pepper until soft, then add this to the curry with the chillies. Stir the curry well and continue to let it simmer for another five minutes so it takes on the flavour of the peppers.
6. Taste and adjust spice balance if necessary.
7. Wilt in the spinach. Taste, adjust seasoning and serve over pilau rice, perhaps with a lentil side dish.

***

As far as curries go, this one has a relatively short ingredients list. it includes the staples of coriander and cumin, but contains few other spices. The distinctive flavour of this curry comes instead from the red peppers.  An excellent accompanient to this dish would have been a naan bread flavoured with garlic and cumin, but my baking skills still aren’t up to much, so I went with spiced pilau rice and some garlic dahl instead.

After a long seven weeks of no home made curries, this was a breath of fresh air. A take-away hasn’t got the freshness and vibrancy of  home made Indian food so I’d urge anyone to try making their own at least once, even if time constraints mean it can’t be a regular occurence. Start with a decent recipe, but always be prepared to adjust the spice levels to suit your own taste.

It looks like it will be another five weeks at least until I get another chance to do curry, but, given its game season that is probably for the best. It is now the season for rabbit pie and roasted pheasant, so I’d better get myself to Borough soon. 

I’m beginning to worry that I’m more like my parents than I previously thought. When I was little, I spent hours, bored, in Tesco as Dad did a very detailed weekly shop. It was completely beyond me how anyone could take such pleasure in grocery shopping*. Now the shoe is very much on the other foot. I’m the one making the weekly pilgimage to Borough and I can spend just as long as Dad did eyeing up the vegetables.

Another way in which I have taken after my father is my love of food bargains. I’m not quite as bad as he was- at least I eventually eat every food bargain I get- but I love finding good quality food for low prices.

Recently, Whole Foods has been a great place to get bargains as their pricing system has been on the fritz.  I’ve managed to get a few items for free as, if something isn’t on the computer system, they don’t charge you for it. This happened for some oyster mushrooms and  several exotic fruits, but I got the best bargain of all last week.

I’d popped into the store to get a whole chicken to roast but had started checking out the prices on the individual joints. Something didn’t add up. I noticed two packs of corn fed chicken supremes (exactly the same product) next to each other. One weighed 350g and cost £2.30 and the other weighed 600g and cost £7.85. Closer inspection did indeed reveal that the larger pack cost twice as much per kilo as the smaller pack.

In fact, every pack weighing under 500g had the very reasonable stamp of £6.69 per kilo on them. Curious to find out what was going on, I went to the meat counter and asked one of the assistants.

“Ah, ” he said sagely, “the packs are different prices because they have different weights.”

Clearly this guy thought I was an idiot. I tried to explain further. ”But the 350g pack costs £2.30 and the 600g pack costs £7.85.”  

He looked at me with a sympathetic expression and, in tone of voice I reserve only for the most ’special**’ of my students said, ”Yes, the smaller packs cost less. It’s only fair. There’s less chicken in them.”

I’m not used to being treated like I’m stupid***. For some reason, the impending maths PhD makes people think I know what I’m talking about, even if I am spouting utter garbage so I had no idea how to deal with this treatment. Luckily for him,  he stopped patronizing me when I explained the price per kilo was different on each pack and came over to look. After staring  at the two groups of chicken for a minute, he ran off to find his boss and came back with a pricing gun.

“Someone’s mispriced the chicken,” he said.  ”It should all be £13.39 per kilo. It’s lucky you told us that. this stuff would go through the tills without any problem and then I’d be in trouble!”

I smiled, nodded, grabbed as many packs of the bargain chicken as I could and then sprinted towards the checkouts before the guy could stop me. Well, how could I resist good quality meat for that price?!

A couple of days after I bought the chicken, I really fancied some crispy roast potatoes. I also really wanted a curry , so I invented a meal that would satisfy both of my cravings.

My bargain chicken supremes became tandoori chicken and were served with roast potatoes flavoured with cumin, coriander, turmeric and mustard seed, some okra roasted with fennel seed and a black lentil sauce. This was a great meal for colour, with the vibrant red of the chicken, green of the okra, yellow potatoes and purple-black sauce.  

The flavours in this were just what I needed. It cured my curry bug whilst still allowing me to have my crispy crumbly, fatty potatoes. The tandoori chicken was tasty but very easy to make. The chicken is first marinated in lemon and garlic for half an hour, then a second marinade of cumin, coriander, paprika, ground cardamom seeds, chilli powder and ginger mixed with yoghurt goes on. After a few hours of marinading, the chicken is roasted until it is cooked through.

The inspiration for the black lentil sauce came from this Atul Kochhar recipe. Mine wasn’t quite the same. For a start I had to omit the fenugreek leaf and decided to substitute coconut milk for cream, but it was very much along the same lines.

One day I think I’ll make this meal with a whole chicken. Now that would look dramatic!