On the way home on Saturday, I stopped off at an Asian supermarket close to where we live. It’s a ramshackle, haphazard kind of place, piled high with a huge range of things. There are sacks of rice piled high, fruit and vegetables – big bunches of coriander, five for a quid, coconuts, curry leaves, [...]
You can never have enough proper biscuit recipes. Once you’ve mastered the basics – shortbread, gingerbread, peanut butter, etc – it’s time to seek out something a bit different. We made these thin and crispy biscuits on clearing out the kitchen cupboards and discovering the last dregs of a can of forgotten treacle. “Time to [...]
Most meat-based curries from the sub-continent use lamb, mutton or goat as their core ingredient. Beef isn’t used widely, mainly for religious reasons…the Hindu sacred cow is never destined for the pot. Traveling around India, you quickly become used to the sight of cows wandering around the streets, unflustered by the traffic mayhem around them, [...]
A shoulder of lamb is a hefty cut, but it’s cheap and it goes a long way. This method leaves the lamb falling apart, tender from the best part of a day in the oven. It’s very satisfying and relaxing to know that something great is happening in your oven at home whilst you’re out [...]
My curry of choice is always the rogan josh. It’s solid and dependable, the backbone of Indian cookery, unpretentious, hot but not overpowering, deeply flavoured and intense. It’s a proper curry. I’ve made variations on the rogan josh with chicken, lamb, mutton and the decidedly unauthentic and borderline sacrilegious beef. Each produces a different result, [...]