Indian

Saag Aloo

saag aloo madhur jaffrey

This is an important dish for me. Its one of the first curries I learnt to make, from an old and battered Madhur Jaffrey book. I used to make it in my mum’s kitchen, and we’d eat it outside on the old wooden table, the one with the benches, in the sun, by the hedge [...]

Food & drink

Sindhi Gosht

Sindhi Gosht, Madhur Jaffrey

Sometimes, I like simple. Those meals that are just thrown together with little effort and less thought, the ones that somehow transcend their parts and become something quite wonderful because of either the sheer quality of their ingredients or the application of a transformative cooking process. This is one such dish – a deep, rich [...]

Food & drink

Mountain Berries and Desert Spice, by Sumayya Usmani

Mountain Berries and Desert Spice, by Sumayya Usmani

One of my favourite cook books from last year was Sumayya Usmani’s brilliant Summers Under the Tamarind Tree, an intoxicating collection of Pakistani food. I’ve cooked from it ever since, and my copy is stuffed with bookmarks to remind me what to do next. Usmani’s new book, Mountain Berries and Desert Spice is its equal, [...]

Books

Bombay Lunchbox , by Carolyn Caldicott

Bombay Lunchbox

In real life, I work for a big financial services organisation (we’re not a bank, just let me make that clear before anybody clicks away in disgust. We try to look after people). In common with lots of other organisations, we use Indian resource to help us do cool stuff in IT quickly, and that [...]

Books

Bundobust, Leeds

Bundobust, Indian beer cafe, Mill Hill, Leeds

One word review, please Astonishing. Well, that’s decisive, at least … care to expand? Well, there are few things in life more certain than being disappointed by an over-hyped, over-played and over-done restaurant. It happens all the time – a new place opens, everybody gets all excited about it, but it turns out to be [...]

Eating out