Showing posts with label Indian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indian. Show all posts

Saturday 21 November 2020

Chicken saag

So how am I going to start this entry off, given that the recipe is a spinach curry, and many of my blog entry intros have focused on childhood TV memories? If only there was a connection between spinach and some children's TV character...

Hello sailor!
Source: https://popeye.fandom.com/wiki/Popeye

So, I mentioned Captain Haddock from Tintin in a recent recipe as being the ultimate in matelot cliche, but really, in terms of sailor-based cartoon characters, there can be only one: Popeye. He is a dying breed, the salty seadog with his one good eye, his over-developed forearms and his very idiosyncratic way of talking (is it an accent or is it a speech impediment? I need to know!). Don't get me wrong, someone who can achieve what he achieves as a disabled man is an inspiration, but those forearms are a bit odd. I mean, you only get muscles that big if you're training them. To get to that unnatural size, you need some serious external stimulus, like steroids or lots of exercise, or a combination of the two. It's obvious he's been doing lots of work on his grip strength. Now, if you're familiar with this blog, you'll have some idea where you think I'm going with this, but you'd be wrong. I'm obviously talking about weight training, where he's clearly working on this aspect of his musculature. Saying that, and looking at his physique, it's clear he regularly skips leg day, probably because he's too occupied with the monumental amount of wanking he was doing to continue to develop his forearms to that extent on the days it's not arm-day. OK, I did go there, but at least I didn't do a pun on the word "seamen".

He's not the only character that appears in his adventures, though. Olive Oyl, his on/off girlfriend was actually created first (in 1919, so she's looking pretty good for a centenarian) and managed 10 years before Popeye popped onto the scene and promptly took over her strip to make it his own. Fuck the patriarchy. The poor girl looks like she needs a good meal inside her, which is ironic for someone who's name is a form of cooking fat. Then there's his arch nemesis, Bluto. Bluto is clearly a troubled man. Troubled mainly by morbid obesity and 'roid rage it seems. I'm sure he's the role model for many blokes, as he is the epitome of toxic masculinity. However, you just know that behind closed doors he bawls his eyes out whilst furiously masturbating because his Mum didn't hug him enough, rendering him unable to share his feelings. There's probably also some closet homosexuality in there somewhere, given his bear-like characteristics.

Beauty and the Beast
Olive Oyl and Bluto
Sources of images: https://heroes-and-villians.fandom.com/wiki/Olive_Oyl and https://comicvine.gamespot.com/bluto/4005-12754/

Obviously, as anyone knows, Popeye himself doesn't indulge in steroids. No, he follows a more natural, holistic approach to performance enhancing substances.You know what I'm talking about. He's addicted to the "superfood", spinach, long before some hipster twat with a beard and an ironic pair of plus-fours invented the term . I mean, it has a reputation for being a superfood in modern parlance, because of its trace nutrients, particularly iron. There is some mythology behind this. Modern folklore states that there was an error in reporting the iron content in spinach when the German chemist responsible, Emil von Wolff, purportedly put a decimal place in the wrong place, suggesting spinach contained 10x more iron than it actually had. More recently this myth has itself been debunked, and, rather than a transcription error related to the decimal point, the amount of iron was over-estimated because of poor science and contamination from the experimental aparatus used. This widely-held belief in the erroneously high iron content at the time was supposedly the reason spinach was favoured by our hero, though a little thumbnail calculation would have suggested this to be bollocks. To put it another way, the amount of iron reported to be present in a 100g portion of spinach was 35mg when the actual amount is 3.5mg/100g. 35mg of iron amounts to about about 1% of the total amount in an adult human or 3.5mm of a standard paperclip.

picture of paperclip
A paperclip
Tastes better than a tin of spinach. Eat this and you too could be Iron Man
Source: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/paperclip

From a personal point of view, and because of the apparent potency of spinach in Popeye cartoons, as a child I mithered my parents to buy a tin of spinach for years. Finally they relented and we had it. It was disgusting. The paperclip is actually a more appetisng prospect.

Anyway, coming back to the recipe in hand, saag is yet another one of the standard curries you get from your local Indian takeaway. Because of my early traumatic exposure to spinach mentioned above, I was hesitant about trying it. However, the fresh leaves work really well in a curry, the vague bitterness enhancing the spiciness of the dish. It's a fairly easy to make dish and makes a satisfying, quick midweek dinner.

TIMING
Preparation: 15 minutes
Cooking: 45 minutes

INGREDIENTS
300g chicken fillet cut into bite-sized pieces
2tsp tandoori spice
3tbsp vegetable oil
1 onion, sliced
4 garlic cloves, crushed
A piece of ginger, finely grated (about the size of your thumb)
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
½tsp fenugreek seeds
½tsp fennel seeds
½tsp ground black pepper
½tsp ground turmeric
½tsp salt
3 cloves
2 whole green cardamom
4cm piece of cinnamon
1 bayleaf
2 green chillies, finely chopped
250g fresh tomatoes, blended to a puree
125g bag of fresh spinach

The main ingredients
Clockwise from bottom left: spinach, tomatoes, onion, garlic, ginger, chilli

I do love a nice spice picture
Clockwise from 9 o;clock: fennel seeds, fenugreek seeds, coriander, cumin, turmeric, salt, black pepper then i nthe centre from 6 o'clock: bay leaf, cinnamon, cardamom. cloves

RECIPE
Pour 1 tbsp of the oil into a pan and heat.

Add the tandoori powder and allow to sizzle for a few seconds before adding the chicken. 

Stir-fry the chicken in the spice until cooked through (about 10 minutes).

Remove the chicken with a slotted spoon then add the remaining oil to the pan before adding the ginger and garlic

Fry these for a minute or two before adding the onion.

Turn down the heat slightly and slowly cook the onion until soft, about 15 minutes.

Pour in the pureed tomatoes plus 150 ml water and the chillies.

Bring to the boil and simmer for five minutes.

Return the cooked chicken to the pan then add the spinach and stir in.

Allow the spinach to wilt into the sauce over about 10 minutes

In the pan

Serve up with rice and/or naan bread

NOTES
As with most recipes I've done for curries, you could use lamb instead of chicken, or substitute potatoes to give a filling, satisfying vegan dinner

I recently dabbled with using standard curry powder (actually a Madras blend) to streamline the cooking of dish and make it that much quicker to knock up. It won't make a huge time difference, but selecting the various spices and measuring them out can take a bit of effort. It turned out OK, though without the depth of flavour you get with individual spices. It's also less faff and expense than getting the various individual spices.

You could alter the dish, replace spinach with, for example tomato, to give a rogan josh (technically, as rogan josh is lamb with tomato, it would really be a rogan murgh).

I used fresh baby spinach leaves in this recipe, but frozen or tinned would also work. Frozen spinach is a useful stand-by to have at a pinch.

Even if the amount of iron in spinach was as high as initially thought, it would have been rendered useless as it would most likely combine with the relatively large amount of oxalic acid in the leaves to make insoluble ferric oxalate and be lost next time you went for a poo. Because of this, spinach is actually, quite literally, a crap source of iron.

Spinach is, however, a very good source of vitamin A and other carotenes, so Popeye wasn't too far from the mark as a fan and he could see really well in the dark from his one good eye.

Back in the olden days, when colour TV was something of a luxury item, and a lot of people had black and white sets (because they used to be called "television sets"), I remember getting our first colour telly (rental, because many people didn't buy a TV, but rented one by the month). I came home from school for lunch and walked into the living room where the new telly was and there, in glorious technicolour, was a Popeye cartoon.

Speaking of iron...

As much as a Marvel fan as I am, there's only one true Iron Man
Iron Man by Black Sabbath
Ozzy, Tony, Geezer and Bill in their pomp


Sunday 11 October 2020

Keralan prawn curry

It's got coconut in
Annie I'm Not Your Daddy by Kid Creole and the Coconuts

Imagine you're Dr Who and you've jumped in the TARDIS and you're going back... back... back.... It's the 1970s. You step out of the TARDIS and head off for a posh dinner. You end up packed into a heaving working men's club for your meal, before a bitter, racist comedian in a frilly shirt starts making jokes with an oh, so funny cod-Jamaican accent (see example below). You know your main course can be only one thing. You know it's going to be chicken... in a basket! Yes, it's a roast or fried chicken portion with chips and possibly peas, but you know it's posh because it's not on a plate. It's only in a basket! I mean, it's a piece of bland, factory-farmed, sub-KFC hen (though KFC wasn't about much in the 70s, even in it's original incarnation of Kentucky Fried Chicken, at least not where I lived), it's a frozen chicken portion with frozen chips and frozen peas, but it's OK, because it's IN A FUCKING BASKET! Still, I suppose it could be worse. It could be cooked in hay, for fuck's sake. Yes, hay. Some well known, expensive, Michelin-starred chefs serve up food that's cooked in dry grass, because, like, it's really rustic. Why stop there? Stick in a bit of cowshit to give it that just made in the field flavour? Maybe serve it with a side of freshly culled, organic badger chips and a drizzle of incest jus for true authenticity.

Top club comic from back in the day, Bobby Chariot
(or alter-ego of Alexei Sayle)

Obviously, that's your main course. Your dessert will have to be Black Forest Gateau. It's like the worst dilemma for your average Europhobic gammon. I mean, it's a cake that originated in Germany, has a French name, and yet, it's the nostalgia crack cocaine that was the "classy" dessert of their youth, even if it's basically just a chocolate cake with cherry jam and whipped cream.

So we've covered main course and dessert, what's the starter going to be? Well, there can be only one. It's got to be prawn cocktail. A handful of tiny prawns embedded in a turd of cloying, pink seafood sauce shat upon a few scabby lettuce leaves, half a forced tomato (with all the flavour of a raw potato), and a couple of slices of cucumber. This was most people's only exposure to the prawn or shrimp when I grew up. I mean, you could get prawn balls at your local Chinese takeaway, but that was foreign muck again. Besides, who wants to eat them weird pink cockroachy things from the sea?

The Three Horsemen of the 70s Food Apocalypse
(All that's missing is Famine, though after looking at this lot, Famine is probably not sounding too bad)

Sources: https://www.retrowow.co.uk/retro_britain/classic_recipes/prawn_cocktail.html
https://violetbakes.wordpress.com/category/chicken-in-a-basket-recipe/
https://www.thedailymeal.com/eat/if-you-grew-70s-you-ll-definitely-remember-these-foods-slideshow/slide-2

We're much more urbane now, though. You can even buy raw, frozen prawns from Farmfoods, which is a retailer only one step up from a shop selling secondhand food. Indeed, it was raw, frozen prawns I used for this dish, allowing them to defrost before cooking them then giving them a rinse under the tap. Because it's from the southern part of the Sub-Continent, this curry is quite different to the other Indian dishes I've posted before as it's missing most of the spice you'd normally associate with curry (particularly cumin and coriander), but the fenugreek gives it a proper curry flavour, as do the curry leaves. I muse on what does and doesn't make a curry here. This version of a curry is very much Indian, but with a tropical twist from the coconut, gaining something from Malaysian or Thai cuisine in character.

In researching this recipe I discovered that there are two main types of eating prawns: large, warm water prawns (or king prawns) and cold water prawns. Cold water, Atlantic prawns are caught by trawling and are cooked on landing which means they can't usually be bought raw. They taste quite good, but their flavour is quite strong (and they hold a lot of water) which means that they don't really work in a lot of recipes where you have to cook the prawns . This is the type of prawn usually used in prawn cocktail. On the other hand, warm water prawns are farmed, mainly in tropical Asia, and can be bought raw so are much better for cooking with. They taste good too, and don't get too mushy from added water, so tend to be plump, firm and juicy when cooked.There are arguments about the impact of prawn farming on the environment but if managed properly this can be minimised.

TIMING
Preparation: 20 minutes
Cooking: 30 minutes

 INGREDIENTS
2 shallots, roughly chopped
2 green chillies, roughly chopped
1 piece of ginger (approximately thumb-sized)
2 fat cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
Small piece of fresh turmeric, roughly chopped (around 2 cm in length)
Juice of a lime
1 tsp black mustard seeds
½ tsp fenugreek seeds
2 cloves
2 green cardamom pods
½ star anise
½ tsp ground black pepper
½tsp salt
Handful of curry leaves (around 20)
200ml coconut milk (half a 400ml can)
100g green beans, topped, tailed and cut into 4cm pieces
120g fresh tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1tsp sugar
250g raw peeled prawns

L
Spices
clockwise from top: salt, turmeric, black pepper, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, anise, mustrad seeds, fenugreek seeds with curry leaves in teh centre

RECIPE
Put the shallots, chillies, ginger, garlic, turmeric and lime juice into a hand blender and make into a paste.

Heat the vegetable oil to a heavy based pan and add the spices, including the curry leaves and fry for a minute or so. The seeds and leaves should start to pop.

Spoon in the paste and cook through, stirring constantly so it doesn't catch on the base of the pan (about 10-15 minutes, when the paste starts to take on some colour).

Pour in the coconut milk and add the tomatoes and sugar, bring to the boil, cover and simmer until the beans are tender.

Add the prawns and allow them to braise in the coconut sauce until cooked (they will change colour from grey to reddish when cooked and shouldn't take much more than a couple of minutes)

In the pot
Serve up with rice and maybe a vegetable curry on the side.

Served up with plain boiled rice and a squash curry

NOTES
It's rare I can cook a dish with coconut as part of the base because Mrs Sweary is not a fan of coconutty sauces. This example, however, has a relatively small amount of coconut milk, so the flavour is not overwhelming. Mrs Sweary actually liked this.

When I was cooking the sauce, I tasted it and couldn't help thinking something was missing. I added the prawns and it turned out that they actually were the missing ingredient. 

Fresh turmeric (haldi) looks like ginger, but is a vivid yellow colour when you cut into it. You can find it in Asian grocers, but if you can't get it, use a teaspoon of dried turmeric.

Curry leaves are quite unique and you can't really substitute their distinctive flavour. If you can't find them, add a bay leaf and more fenugreek seeds.

That sickly prawn cocktail was the only exposure to prawns that the majority of the British public had in those dim and distant times, when they can be a lovely ingredient, is a tragedy. Plump, juicy and sweet and they work really well in spicy dishes, like some Chinese or curries like this one, or Mediterranean cuisine like Spanish gambas pil pil or paella.

There aren't many references to prawns in popular culture. The only one I could think about was Scampi the Prawn in the 79s kids' programme, Fingerbobs. I didn't mention it because, well, I've done way too many references to 50 year old TV shows of late, so I'll keep that one for another time I do a prawn recipe. Do remember, however, if you are going to Fingerbobs, get their consent first.

Whilst prawn reference are pretty thin on the geround, I could get a few references to coconut, such as Kide Creole's at the top of the page and this little gem from the Avalanches. This boy certainly needs therapy.

More Coconut references, but a better song
Frontier Psychiatrist by the Avalanches


Saturday 26 September 2020

Murgh Methi (chicken curry with fenugreek leaf)

Paddington: One Bear to rule them all
You're a bear! Lay off the marmalade sandwich and just eat the fucking chicken!
Source: https://www.britishclassiccomedy.co.uk/paddington

Thanks to one of my Aunties who bought me a box-set of his books, Paddington Bear was a prominent figure in my earlier life. Let's face it, out of all the celebrity bears of the time, Paddington was the king. I mean, there weren't THAT many in the public eye, to be fair. Teddy Edward was OK, but pretty dull. Issi Noho was a panda, so only scrapes in on a technicality, and was shite anyway. Rupert the Bear was the worst though. Not only was he the most boring, self-righteous cunt ever portrayed on children's telly, but he was originally from a cartoon in the Daily Express, for fuck's sake, which is basically the Sun with delusions of fucking grandeur. I mean his programmes were so fucking long, and he has a history of casual racism (it's the Express, so he's hardly going to be feel out of place there). So, yes, Paddington was the man... bear (not to be confused with ManBearPig, see notes), despite being (or possibly because he was) an illegal immigrant. 

Don't have nightmares
Bears of my TV childhood (Teddy Edward, Issi Noho and Rupert. The stupid twat can't even do the actions to YMCA properly)

Sources: https://nostalgiacentral.com/television/tv-by-decade/tv-shows-1970s/teddy-edward
https://nostalgiacentral.com/television/tv-by-decade/tv-shows-1970s/issi-noho/
http://www.jedisparadise.com/3/Rupert_Bear.htm

As great as Paddington was, however, he was crap from a culinary point of view. All he ate were marmalade sandwiches. I tried marmalade sandwiches when I was under the thrall of the Peruvian ursinoid, and they were fucking awful, so it's a definite no-no. So, what has Paddington got to do with this recipe?

Parsley the Lion
 Source: https://alchetron.com/Parsley-the-Lion
The author of Paddington, Michael Bond, I discovered, also wrote the kids' programme that was the first exposure children of a certain generation got to any sort of cooking reference, The Herbs. The Herbs was a puppet show whose characters were the personification of actual herbs. There was Parsley the Lion (a lion with a green mane, who looks like the outcome of the Jolly Green Giant fucking a cat, see picture above), Dill the Dog (who looked like Su Pollard) and others who are a bit more foggy in my middle-aged mind. I remember some older lady character called Rosemary and something about a character called Bayleaf. So, in this age of instant access to pretty much all the accumulated knowledge of the human race (and yet people are still thick as pig shit. Go figure), I looked it up on Wikipedia, and this confirmed that there was indeed an aristocratic Lady Rosemary, along with her husband, Sir Basil, and Bayleaf was their gardener. There's nothing like reinforcing the British class system to kids at the earliest possible age so they know their place in society. They also had an Indian character who appeared once or twice, so you might wonder which herb they were named after. Well, it transpires that he was called pashana bedhi which, apparently, is another name for coleus amboinicus. This cooking blog has approaching 60 recipes, many of which being some sort of curry, but I've not heard of this particular herb (not that the name exactly rolls off the tongue). It's apparently some sort of fragrant plant otherwise known as Mexican mint, Indian mint and Cuban oregano. It's certainly not a common ingredient in anything I've come across, though I'm quite limited in exposure to exotic herbs, being a resident of grim and grey Northern England. So, why wasn't he called coriander, for example? That's the herb we usually find scattered on Indian food in the UK. Now, I love the flavour coriander it adds to Indian (and other cuisine, like Mexican for example), but it's an unusual ingredient in that it contains a certain substance that is tasteless to most people but tastes bad to a small minority. Mrs Sweary is one of those people, so I can't use it in dinner I cook for both of us. There's some really interesting science behind this and I could go off on another biochemical tangent on the physiology and genetics of taste, but don't worry, I'll leave that for another post.

Dill the Dog                              Su Pollard
How can you tell them apart?

Sources: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/fame-fortune/su-pollard-last-hi-de-hi-royalty-cheque-1120/
https://parody.fandom.com/wiki/Dill_the_Dog

The other major herb you might find in British High Street Indian cuisine is fenugreek, otherwise known as methi. Like coriander, it's the leafy part of the same plant as the spice seed of the same name used in curries. It's got an earthy flavour, not that dissimilar to its seeds (which in my opinion are THE component of curry spice that makes it taste of "curry"), but fresher and works so well in this recipe. Also, there's enough of the herb used that it almost becomes a vegetable in its own right. Not quite as much as, say, the spinach in a saag, but certainly a significant amount. It's a great, slightly different twist on the usual suspects from British Indian restaurants, though it is on the menu of a lot of curry houses.

TIMING
Preparation: 20 minutes plus marination
Cooking: 1 hour

INGREDIENTS
Marinade paste:
3-4 garlic cloves (medium), coarsely chopped
1 thumb-sized chunk of ginger, roughly chopped
1 shallot, roughly chopped
½ tsp salt
2 green chillies, roughly chopped

400g chicken meat (breast fillet or boneless thighs), cut into bite-sized chunks
2tbsp vegetable oil (a neutrally flavoured oil, like rapeseed)
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp fenugreek seeds
½ tsp ground turmeric
3 whole green cardamom pods
3 whole cloves
small piece of cinnamon bark (about 5cm)
½ tsp salt
½ tsp ground black pepper
2 small onions, 1 sliced and the other roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 small piece of ginger (about 2cm cubed)
2 medium to large fresh tomatoes (about 200g in total weight). peeled and roughly chopped
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 green pepper, cored and cut into 2cm pieces
50g bunch fresh methi leaf, coarsely chopped

The ingredients
Clockwise from top left: methi leaf, ginger, garlic, spices, green pepper, tomatoes, onions, topped by one of my favourite knives

RECIPE
Pound the marinade ingredients into a paste using a pestle and mortar, or using a food processor.

Put into a dish with the chicken and mix well so that the chicken is well covered.

Cover the dish and put in the fridge to marinate for a couple of hours or so.

Heat 1tbsp oil in a pan and fry the spices for about a minute.

Add the ginger, the chopped onion and garlic, and fry until the onion is soft (add a splash of water if the spices start to catch on the pan, just enough to keep the mixture moist).

Add the tomatoes and the tomato puree plus 100ml water.

Bring to the boil, turn down the heat, cover, and simmer for about 20 minutes, until the tomatoes breakdown.

Allow this to cool and blend up into a smooth sauce.

In a clean pan, heat another tablespoon of oil and fry the chicken until cooked, adding any excess marinade. This should take about 15 minutes.

Remove the cooked chicken with a slotted spoon.

To the oil add the sliced onion and fry until soft.

Add the green pepper and continue to fry for another 10 minutes.

Throw in the methi leaves and allow them to wilt for about a minute.

Return the chicken to the pan, add the sauce and gently warm up.

Allow to the chicken to heat through and serve with rice and/or naan bread. Feeds two easily.

In the pan

Served up with plain rice and an aloo gobi

NOTES
Fresh methi or fenugreek leaf should be available from Asian grocers in big bunches. It freezes quite well, so use as much as you need for this then wrap the excess in foil (ideally in portions ready weighed out for recipes like this) and put in a freezer bag for use at later date.

This is another recipe where you marinate chicken in a paste made of onion, garlic and ginger (like this one). It does impart a deep, rich flavour to the dish, You could cut down the time in making this by coating the chicken with the marinade and cooking straight away.

Green pepper is a great addition to most curries as it's not too sweet and the taste is perfect for spicy food. Red pepper might work OK too, as would potato or something like aubergine or squash.

ManBearPig made a few appearances in South Park as a monster pursued by former Vice President Al Gore

I'm totally cereal
ManBearPig in action

Again, I think I've broken yet more new ground as the first cooking blog to drop the "c" bomb in the context of a well-loved childhood character. Now I've beaten that path, I look forward to hearing regular guest star, Rick Stein, calling Scooby Doo "a twat", Tom Kerridge naming Big Bird "a tosser" or Nadiya Hussain of accusing Peter Pan of being "a massive fucking nonce".

Monday 20 July 2020

Slow cooker lamb dhansak

 Bart Simpson
The bard of farting

Beans, beans, the musical fruit. You've got to love your legumes. I've already done a few dishes containing beans and they really make a hearty dish all the more hearty. Of course, the undigestible complex carbohydrates they contain make a good food source for the bugs that live up your arse. And when they get fed, they celebrate by making methane and hydrogen. This is when the brass section gets cued into the performance and Le Petomaine makes an appearance.

 French professional farter, Le Petomaine from the late 1800s

So we have beans, peas and other pulses which make up a substantial source of protein for a huge part of the human population. The soya bean alone feeds vast swathes of the far eastern portion of the Asian continent, especially as bean curd, not to mention being a fundamental component of the cuisine of literally billions of people when fermented in various ways in the shape of soy sauce, black bean sauce or the myriad of coloured pastes in Chinese, Japanese and Korean dishes (yellow bean, red bean, black bean, gochujang etc). Further west, the legume of choice becomes the lentil. Given the number of devout Hindus in India, they consume huge amounts of lentils as a good source of protein. So much so that there are numerous forms of these titchy little pea things available. This page lists 12 types of the flatulent little fuckers.

Lentils were something of a joke when I was growing up, being the relatively affluent, privileged Western European with a diet containing meat that I am (certainly compared to your average Indian of the time, anyway). Lentils were the staple of weirdo vegetarians, we didn't eat that sort of thing. Well, apart from when money got a bit tight (as I say, relatively affluent, compared to truly impoverished people in the Sub-Continent), so there was a trip to the butchers to get a batch of bacon bones and a thick, hearty broth was made up with these, with scraps of meat on them, and yellow split peas, a form of lentil. It lasted for days, and it was my first actual exposure to the lentil.

Anyway, back to the recipe in hand. Dhansak, though a popular dish in UK curry houses, is actually a recipe brought to India by Parsis, an ethnic group originating in Persia. It's a very tasty take on a curry, with the lentils bulking up the whole thing, and giving a nutty taste and adding richness to a sweet and tangy flavoured sauce.

TIMING
Preparation: 20 minutes
Cooking: 20-30 minutes on the pre-ccoking hob, 5 hours in the slow cooker
(You could do this on the hob or in the oven, though cooking time would be shorter.  See notes for more details)

INGREDIENTS
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 large onion, sliced
4 cloves of garlic
chunk of fresh ginger, finely chopped (aboout the size of a thumb, about 3cm by 2cm)
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
½ tsp ground turmeric
½ tsp ground fenugreek seeds
½ tsp ground black pepper
piece of cinnamon bark (about 5cm)
1 bayleaf
1 star anise
3 green cardamom pods
3 whole cloves
A pinch of onion seeds
1.2 tsp salt
1-2 fresh green chillies, finely chopped (depends on heat)
200g diced lamb
150g tomatoes blended up, or peeled and chopped
Juice of half a lemon
2 tsp sugar
Half a butternut squash, peeled, cored and chopped into bite-sized chunks
75g dried chana dhal

The all important spices
(from the top and clockwise: ground corander, star anise, cardamom pods, cloves, cround cumin, ground turmeric, salt, fenugreek seeds, onion seeds, bay leaf, cinnamon stick)

 
Ginger, garlic and onion

RECIPE
Heat the oil in a heavy-based pan and add the onions, garlic and ginger.

Fry for about 5 minutes until the onions are soft, then add the spices and salt.

Continue stirring so it doesn't stick, adding a splash of water if it looks a bit dry.

Add the lamb and keep sauteing for about 5 more minutes, until the meat is browned.

Throw in the tomatoes, lemon juice, sugar, chana dhal and squash and stir wel.

Add 300ml water and bring to a gentle boil.

Pour the lot into your slow cooker, set it to medium, cover, and leave it for a few hours (at least 5 in a slow cooker, but see notes for alernative methods).

Allow the amazing aroma permeate your house, then serve with pilau rice,and naan bread or add a vegetable side dish if you're hungry.

Served up, ready to eat


NOTES
This is made with lamb, but I've also made it with chicken (bone-in thighs, skinless), though you could cook it for less time, or would also work with beef.

I used chana dhal, which is a fairly large lentil, almost as big as a chickpea, which holds its shape well, becoming tender but still quite firm after a long, slow cook. Regular red lentils have a tendency to disintegrate, which would also work, though will add a different texture to the dish

Other vegetables would work in this, but sturdy root vegetables stand up to long cooking. Mushrooms would also work, espeicaly if you did this with beef instead of lamb. Pumpkins, like squashes, work so well in a curry, however.

You could  make this on the hob or even in a casserole dish in the oven. You could probably get away with a couple of hours on the stove, and maybe three in the oven. The joy of the slow cooker is the fact that the dish is you can stick it on, forget about it until you're ready to eat it

This blog entry sees me return to a subject I've touched on before in this blog, the act of farting. Farting is, and always will be, hilariously funny. Don't take my word for it, ask my son (9 years old at the time of writing). He'll agree.

Why were lentils regarded as something of a joke food when I was growing up? This is part of the reason why:
The Young Ones and the wonder of lentils, as long as they're not South African


Monday 24 July 2017

Aromatic courgette curry

So it's another recipe for meat-free days. I went into some of the environmental arguments for going vegetarian in my last blog entry but one real advantage for eating vegie is that it's just much cheaper than meat. It's not that I'm pleading poverty, and I've no intention of giving up meat any time soon, but there is something great about knocking up something like this which costs next to fuck all and takes little more than an hour.

I've twatted on about courgetttes and how great they are in a previous post, but what I was unaware of is that this humble vegetable is another import from the Americas. So, along with peppers, chillies and tomatoes, which were also brought over from the New World, European and Asian cuisine would have been so fucking dull before the Conquistadors made it to America. They also brought back syphilis, so, I guess that's a case of swings and roundabouts. And let's not forget that chocolate also came from the New World, so, on balance, it's a win for white Europeans, in addition to the devastation they wreaked on the native civilisations and the population as a whole on the other side of the Atlantic. We got a whole new pantry full of ingredients, they got genocide.

Conquistadors
OK, we'll swap you horses, the wheel and Catholicism for the contents of your gardens

TIMING
Preparation: 10 minutes
Cooking: 50 minutes

INGREDIENTS
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp ground tumeric
1 whole star anise
1 tsp ground coriander
3 cloves
4 whole green cardamom pods
1 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp whole fennel seeds
1 bay leaf
1 10cm piece cinnamon stick
pinch ground black pepper
pinch  dried chilli flakes
1 small onion, roughly chopped
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 large courgette, topped, tailed and sliced
2 medium tomatoes, peeled and chopped
100ml water
1 tbsp tomato puree
Salt
More spices
(clockwise from 12 o'clock: ground cumin, bay leaf, tumeric, cinnamon stick, ground coriander, star anise, cloves, chilli flakes, black pepper, cardamom pods with fennel seeds in the middle)

RECIPE
Heat the oil in a pan and add the spices for 2 minutes.

Throw in the onion, ginger and garlic, and fry gently for 10 minutes.

Add the courgette and stir-fry for another 5 minutes.

Add the tomatoes and water, stir then add salt to taste.

Bring to a boil, turn down the heat and simmer for 30 minutes

Serve with rice


Ready to eat 
(on right of plate with aloo gobi on left on a bed of plain, boiled basmati rice)

NOTES
 This is a great dish to serve with aloo gobi that I posted a recipe for recently. This uses more earthy flavoured spices which contrast well with the richly fragrant nature of this courgette curry.

Courgettes are members of the pumpkin/squash family, the cucurbit. It's not all about versatile vegetables, mind. This family also contains the penis gourd which has made an appearance in this blog in a previous post.I'm not sure who dreamed up the idea, but they must have had a pretty eccentric outlook.
"That's a funny looking vegetable. Does it taste nice?"
"Not really. Not sure what to do with it"
"Well, if you dry it out it would make a great cover for your cock"

A decorative penis gourd from Papua New Guinea

Monday 17 July 2017

Aloo gobi (potato and cauliflower curry)

I have mentioned vegetarianism in previous posts, how I even tried being a vegetarian as a pretentious student. What I didn't mention then was that the reason for this was, in part, to get on the good side of a girl who was in the same student hall as me that I quite fancied. It's a scientifically proven fact* that most guys who perform a coup de theatre in terms of lifestyle in their late teens, like turning away from meat for instance, are generally doing it to get into the pants of someone they like. Anyway, at the time, my justification was the poor yield of protein per hectare from raising livestock for food compared to arable farming which was morally wrong when people were starving in the world. Using this justification I could then allow eating lamb doner kebabs as sheep were raised on scrubby hills that had no use in growing vegetables, and fish, since this was mainly gotten from out of water.The spell of vegetarianism lasted for a few weeks before I lapsed back into eating meat properly. A legacy of this time is the fact that I have absolutely no qualms about eating vegetarian food on a regular basis.

More recently, it has become well publicised that meat production leaves a far larger carbon footprint than growing vegetables alone. While it's true that most people in the west have larger carbon footprints than a sasquatch in snow shoes that are five sizes too big, and any change in diet would have a pretty minute effect on this, it still gives a chance to prevent the liberation of a tiny amount of additional carbon into the atmosphere. There are other ways to reduce your carbon footprint, like not flying, having children, having pets or driving a car, but who wants to stop doing any of that?

One of the main causes of the increased carbon emission through raising livestock is the effect of intestinal gas from cattle. Cow farts are making the world a warmer place as they release methane which is 23 times worse at causing atmospheric warming than carbon dioxide. One possibility to offset this might be to stop the cows farting in the first place and one way of doing this is using charcoal. Perhaps giving Ermintrude a load of charcoal tablets might help alleviate this source of pollution. It may even have the added bonus of the cows shitting ready-formed BBQ briquettes, so everyone's a winner. Well, apart from the cows, who would be producing the fuel by which they would be cooked of a nice summer evening.

Charcoal tablets
A possible solution to global warming

So where am I going with this? Well, it's another vegetarian recipe as I am planning a regular meat free dinner every week. India has more vegetarians than the population of most countries, so it's not surprising that some of the very best vegetarian cuisine comes from the subcontinent.

I have done a recipe for another potato curry previously, but this is a take on an aloo gobi, where the spud is partnered with cauliflower in one of the tastiest vegetable curries found on the menu of an Indian takeaway. As I mentioned before, potatoes have enough substance to them to make a decent main course in their own right, plus the lentils add extra protein and make for an even more substantial meal.

*It probably isn't scientifically proven, but I've not looked at the literature so it might be.

TIMING
Preparation: 15 minutes
Cooking: 70 minutes

INGREDIENTS
150g dried red lentils
200g cauliflower florets broken into bite-sized pieces
450g potatoes, peeled and cut into 2-3cm cubes
1 medium onion, sliced
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin seeds
½ tsp whole fenugreek seeds
½ tsp ground black pepper
½ tsp black mustard seeds
½ tsp onion seeds
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp ground tumeric
pinch of chilli flakes
Salt


It's another spice picture
(from 10 o'clock: coriander, black pepper, mustard seeds, chilli flakes, cumin seeds, fenugreek seeds, onion seeds with paprika in the middle)

RECIPE
Boil the lentils for 20 minutes, strain and set aside.

Heat the oil in a good, heavy pan and add the spices, onion and garlic and gently fry for 10 minutes.

Add the potatoes and continue to fry for another 10 minutes.

Throw in the cauliflower and keep stirring for another 5 minutes.

Add the lentils to the pan and add 200ml water and salt according to taste.

Bring to the boil, cover, lower the heat and simmer for 30 minutes (until the potatoes become tender).

Serve with rice and/or naan bread, on its own or with another curry or two
.
 Aloo gobi 
(on the left, with a courgette curry on a bed of plain boiled rice)

NOTES
In contrast to most of my previous curry recipes, this dish uses lots of earthy rather than the more aromatic spice flavours and doesn't have a tomato base. It is a good contrast to these if you are serving more than one dish

I used floury old potatoes in this recipe as the texture works better than new potatoes.

A cow farts aren't the only trump that cause a stink and fucks up the world.

Traditionally, cauliflower has been a fairly unassuming vegetable, being boiled on its own or perhaps upping the ante a little with cauliflower cheese, the vegetarian staple of the 70s. However, cauliflower is currently having a bit of a surge in popularity as a "low carb" food and is finding uses as a substitute for rice, pizza base or even steak. Why stop there? How about cauliflower chocolate brownies, cauliflower yoghurt, cauliflower flavoured condoms? It's fucking cauliflower for Christ's sake. It's a lovely vegetable in its own right and doesn't need to be given superpowers. However, if you are using it in some other dish, I would say that aloo gobi is as good as it gets.

There aren't a huge number of songs that mention curries in general, let alone aloo gobi in particular. One that does, however, is this spoof of Kula Shaker's Govinda, by former Radio 1 DJs Mark and Lard performing as their band the Shire Horses.


Friday 27 January 2017

Leftover symphonies 4: Goose Goan Vindaloo (which also works with chicken)

A bucket of vindaloo
Somehow it seem appropriate to include this shouty football song

Misappropriation was one of the buzzwords of 2016. It usually referred to things like white people wearing dreadlocks, white people wearing a bindi or white people doing yoga, apparently. I agree to a certain degree. Why do you need to wear a bindi? It's a mark of religious significance in the Hindu faith. You wear one as a fashion statement, you're a twat. Yoga is a great way to improve flexibility and can lead to a generally improved sense of well-being, but if you subscribe to the pseudo-mystical bullshit that accompanies it, you're a twat and you can stick your chakra up your kundalini . If you have ginger hair and wear dreadlocks, not only do you look like a twat, you probably act like a twat (go on, off you fuck. Those gaudily coloured fucking balls won't juggle themselves, you fucking waster) and almost certainly smell like an unhygienic twat.

The question, though, is when does the sharing and enjoying of other cultures become misappropriation? I've mentioned the fusion and adaption (or bastardisation if you prefer) of certain cuisines in previous posts (notably this one) and if it tastes good, do it. I mean it's not like you're taking something of deep cultural significance and shitting on it. You're not dropping off the kids at the pool in a font for example, it's only food. Besides, a lot of the time you can't make a truly authentic meal according to the recipe because the ingredients have never been seen within 100 miles of your town. You know, like that Yottam Ottolenghi recipe for veal that he insists only tastes authentic if you use the pickled foreskins of virgin aardvarks in the sauce. Thing is, whilst using lime juice instead of tamarind paste might not give the same authentic flavour you get from a street vendor in Kuala Lumpur, it will still taste great, so do it!, Fuck authenticity, it's dinner. Even more importantly, where would the cuisines of the old world be without integrating the things brought over from the newly discovered Americas - things like chilli, tomato, potato - 500 years ago?

This dish is more of a double-reverse cultural assimilation/misappropriation though. In the UK, vindaloo curries are generally renowned as the hottest of the dishes in your regular curry house (apart from the notoriously legendary phaal). There is a potato element (the "aloo") in a lot of versions. In my experience, however, they tend to have sacrificed all the delicate flavour you expect in a curry to produce something that is merely "hot", mainly so that pissed dickheads can show their mates how tough they are at 4am after a skinful. A UK curry house vindaloo is not usually a great option for a curry. But, is this a culturally accurate version of vindaloo? Is it bollocks! It shares its name with the original vindaloo, but little else. This is the second occasion of cultural (mis)appropriation for the vindaloo.

Your typical UK restaurant vindaloo
 (apparently, anyway. These curries all look the same)
Image taken from http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/vindaloo.htm

The dish in this entry is a more authentic version of vindaloo, a curry originating from Goa during the time it was under Portuguese control. Its name does not come from the Hindi or Urdu word for potato, "aloo", but from the Portuguese for wine and garlic, carne de vinha d'alhos (literally "meat in garlic and wine") as this was a way of helping preserve meat, mainly pork, for long trips at sea. This Portuguese dish evolved further in the colony to use locally produced vinegar and spices to make this dish and the name became "vindaloo". So here's the first cultural appropriation of vindaloo and it's an example of a western idea being assimilated into eastern cuisine.

Anyway, onto the recipe in hand. Christmas has been and gone. In the sweary household we alternate year-on-year between turkey and goose for Christmas dinner. This year it was goose, but what the fuck to do with the leftovers? It had to be yet another curry.The problem with reheating roast meat still exists, but this is overcome by using vinegar to cut through the vaguely wet doggy smell and the inherent fattiness of the meat.

As I noted in the title, this also works for other birds, so is a great way to use leftover roast chicken

TIMING
Preparation: 30 minutes
Cooking: 1 hour 15 minutes

INGREDIENTS
2 tbsp vegetable oil (eg rapeseed)
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, finely chopped
6 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
½ tsp mustard seeds
½ tsp ground tumeric
½ tsp fennel seeds
1 bay leaf
2 cloves
3 green cardamom
1 tsp fenugreek seeds
1 tsp chilli flakes
½ tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp salt
4 medium tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
4-500g cold roast goose (or chicken!) meat, no skin, chopped into 2cm chunks
200 ml white wine vinegar
400 ml water
1 tbsp tomato puree
2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp garam masala

 More spices than you can shake a stick at!
(From top left, 11 o'clock: fennel seeds, cloves, paprika, cardmom, onion seeds, tumeric, fenugreek seeds, mustard seeds, cumin, chilli flakes, coriander, salt, pepper and a bay leaf in the middle)

RECIPE
Heat the oil in a heavy pan, add the onion and fry gently for a good 10 minutes.

Add the garlic and ginger and fry for another 5 minutes

Throw in the spices (except the garam masala) and fry gently for another 5 minutes to allow the flavour to develop.

Add the green pepper and tomatoes, mix and allow to stew for 10 minutes to soften the peppers.

Throw in the goose meat, gently stir then pour in the tomato puree, vinegar and water.

Stir well and leave to stew for 30 minutes, stirring in the garam masala at around the 25 minute mark.

A panful of joy


Fill yer boots!
I don't actually know why you'd want to fill your boots with anything other than your feet, so it's a ridiculous phrase

Serve with rice or an Indian-style bread like naan.

NOTES
Only pretentious foodie wankers like me end up with leftover roast goose. This is why I need to stress that this dish works just as well with chicken but you could also use roast duck if you have any, as unlikely as that may be. I think I have also tried something similar to this with leftover roast pork so that would also work

I have tried a phaal curry on a couple of occasions. Once was an attempt at a prank, the other time was as a bet. The prank failed as I ate the curry without any problem and I also won the bet because I ate the curry without any problem. I did find, however, that on at least one of theses times I did need to spend most of the next day within close reach of a flushing toilet.

The use of vinegar means it's kind of a pickled curry. This is not the same as pickling your knees, and you're using vinegar rather than cheese. What the fuck am I on about? I refer you to the wonderful song below from the late Ivor Cutler on the subject:


This has some similarities to the recipe I posted for Hyderbadi chicken, which also uses vinegar.

Wednesday 11 January 2017

Fish Head Curry

As any regular readers may have realised, I have a tendency to hark back to the 70s and 80s of UK TV, and this is yet another occasion. It might be hard to believe in this post-Brexit, "No Nanny State tells me what the fuck to do!" world, but back in the day, they used to show adverts made by the government. Public information films were made to advise people that doing certain things were a generally a stupid fucking idea to have thought about doing in the first place. They had ads about making sure you didn't leave your TV plugged in overnight because it could cause a fire. They had ads saying you should be able to swim. Then there was a different class of ads for kids. Many of them were about how to cross the road safely. We had the Tufty Club, which isn't a euphemism for a lady's private parts (well, not originally, at least); there was a pre-Darth Vader Dave Prowse as the Green Cross Man.

It wasn't all about crossing the road, though. By far the most memorable public information films for kids were the "Charley says...." adverts. For readers that don't know these, they were shit cartoons and featured a poorly drawn small boy (not to be confused with Badly Drawn Boy or the Viz character he took his name from) and his pet cat, Charley, about to do some stupid shit, until the cat meowed his apparently incomprehensible advice that was then interpreted by the small boy. The Charley ads included warnings to kids not to play with matches; not to bugger off without telling mummy where you're going; and even not to pull on table cloths in case you pull hot tea all over yourself. When the boy did the right thing, as prompted by the cat, the mother rewarded the boy and Charley. The boy received an apple (thanks a lot Mum, This is the 70s, they do sell chocolate, you know, you tight-fisted, joy-sucking bitch) and Charley got given a whole fish, which he proceeded to eat very noisily, as you can see from the video



So, what the fuck does this have to do with your recipe, you might be asking. Well, the point is, Charley eats the fish but leaves the skeleton, including the tail and, most relevant, the head untouched. This is a load of bollocks, since any self-respecting cat would relish the head of the fish as one of the best parts. The head might usually be only regarded as fit to make fish stock in the West, but go East and they are far more food-savvy and a lot less food-squeamish.

This is a dish that originates in the culinary melting pot of Singapore. Now, I know I have a tendency to take the piss out of Rick Stein for twatting on about when he first ate yak meat risotto in a Mongolian yurt, or how the best aubergine he ever tasted was this one time in Paris after it had been fermenting up a poodle's arse for a fortnight, but I'm going to do the same thing. No, not stick an aubergine up my arse (well, not right now, anyway, as it's more of a butternut squash kind of day), but reminisce about the time I ate fish head curry in a hawker centre in Singapore. I mean, yes, the curry was amazing, as food in Singapore generally is, but eating a fish head was an adventure in itself. Picking away at the meat around the neck and the cheeks, and the joy of discovering another little morsel here and there as you dissect it. Besides this, it's not every day you eat something that is looking back at you.

Recently I had bought a whole salmon which I cut into steaks and froze, including the head. I decided to reproduce the culinary experience of a fish head curry in the comfort of my own home. Now, as you may have gathered, Mrs Sweary is not actually that adventurous when it comes to food, bless her. She'd not touch a fish head with a pair of barge poles being used as chopsticks (she can't use chopsticks, anyway). Therefore I included some salmon steaks in the curry as well for her. In fact you could make this with just fish steaks, and do away with the head. You'd still have a great fish curry, but then you'd be missing out on the visual effect of eating something with eyes and a mouth gaping at you, and the fun and satisfaction of dissecting the tasty meat out from the rest of the head.

TIMING
Preparation:  20 minutes
Cooking: 60 minutes

INGREDIENTS
Curry paste
5 small shallots, roughly chopped
4 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
3 red chillies (eg birds eye), topped and chopped
a thumb-sized piece of ginger, roughly chopped
1 small piece of fresh tumeric (around the size the tip of you little finger), roughly chopped
half a stalk of lemon grass, sliced

Spice paste ingredients
Clockwise from top: shallots, garlic, ginger, tumeric, lemon grass, red chilli

Dry spices

3 tsp ground coriander
3 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp fenugreek
sick of cinnamon (around 5cm)
1 whole star anise
3 cloves
3 whole green cardamom
1 tsp ground black pepper
½ tsp salt

Other ingredients
2 tsp oil
200g okra, trimmed and cut into 2cm pieces
200g small (or 1 medium) aubergines sliced into 2cm pieces
200g cherry tomatoes, whole, washed and stems removed
20 curry leaves
400ml water
200ml coconut milk
1 tbsp tamarind paste, diluted in a couple of tbsp water and sieved to remove seeds
1 salmon head, plus two or three other salmon fillets

It's a salmon jigsaw!

Vegetables

RECIPE

Combine all the spice paste ingredients in a food processor and blend until they are a fairly smooth paste.

Add the oil to a heavy-based pan then add the dry spices.

Fry them for a minute then add the curry leaves for 2 minutes before adding the spice paste.

Fry for five minutes, stirring to prevent the mixture catching on the pan bottom.

Add the coconut milk, tamarind paste and water

Gently bring to the boil and add the vegetables.

Simmer gently for 5 minutes then place the fish into the liquid.

Allow to gently simmer for 20-30 minutes

Serve with plain boiled rice

Keep an eye on my dinner would you?

NOTES
Salmon is probably about the only fish you can easily get hold of in my locale that has a big enough head to make a meal of, compared to something like a kingfish or a large snapper that are more common in the far east. See the notes to get some alternatives.

On the other hand, while I enjoyed this dish, salmon didn't work as well as a more neutrally flavoured fish probably would. You could do away with the idea of the fish head and do the same recipe with a whole seabass or red snapper. It may also work with a more traditional cold water fish like cod, but I haven't tried it.

I used fresh tumeric and curry leaves which may be a little difficult to get hold of. Use a teaspoon of ground tumeric and perhaps a bay leaf as an alternative. Likewise, for tamarind paste, replace it with the juice of half a lime to give a similar sour flavour. You could also use red onion instead of shallots.

An interesting fact about the "Charley says..." adverts, which I only discovered in writing up this recipe, is that the cat was voiced by the late, great Kenny Everett

It would be remiss of me if, having mentioned the "Charley says.." adverts, I didn't post this:

The Prodigy
Putting the "E" in Charley

The range of UK public information films produced by the UK government is actually quite staggering and an archive of them, from 1946 to 2006, can be found here