Having made the decision, my next choice was to choose a recipe. I have a few curry books. The excellent Ultimate Curry Bible by Madhur Jaffrey, which combines a bit of curry history with recipes from all over the world. Did you know that curry is just a term used to describe something served with a gravy? I also have the refined Cinnamon Club Cookbook, which represents the Michelin Star aspirational approach to Indian food. Incidentally, this book has a great recipe for murgh makhani or “butter chicken”, famous the world over and almost identical to one of my most memorable curries, enjoyed at the Mena House Hotel, Cairo, whilst looking over the Pyramids. ( sorry had to get that in somewhere). Checkout the website Click here . On this occasion though, I was craving takeaway style and this meant I turned to a little book I picked up a few years ago called “The Shish Mahal Cookbook”. Written by the owner of the aforementioned city’s first Pakistani restaurant, the recipes are definitely “curry house” and no less delicious for it. Not sure if the restaurant is still open ? Glasgow seems to be the place to go though and does not seem to be lacking in decent options, if you want to try one of these restaurants yourself.

Having settled on a Lamb Madras, I set off to get hold of some nice meat to go with it. I recently discovered the excellent Thomas Johnston’s butchers in Brightons near Falkirk. It’s only a short drive from me and the personal service you get is excellent. According to Ali Aslam of The Shish Mahal, leg of lamb is the best for making curry, followed by neck or shoulder. Neck and shoulder is cheaper but takes a lot longer to cook to tenderness. As I was buying quite a bit and am a typical Scot, yep you’ve guessed it, I opted for the shoulder of lamb.

Okay, enough of the tease.

Here is the mouth-watering recipe:

Onion 250g sliced
Tomatoes 125g sliced
Garlic 3 cloves, finely chopped
Fresh Ginger 30g, finely chopped
Black Cardamon 4 Pods
Cinnamon Stick 2 inch piece
Cloves 5
Ghee or butter 125g
Salt 1 1/2 teaspoons
Turmeric 1/2 teaspoon
Ground Cumin 3tsp
Ground Coriander 3tsp
Red Chilli Powder 3tsp
Water 300ml
Garam Masala 2tbsp
Lemon juice 2tbsp
Fresh Green Chillies 2 or more (to taste)

Melt the ghee or butter in a large heatproof casserole or frying pan. Fry the onions, tomatoes, garlic and ginger over a moderate heat until the onion is golden brown.

Add the remaining spices except for the garam masala and green chillies and fry gently for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.

Add the meat, and continue to cook over a gentle heat, stirring, until the meat is well coated in the spice mixture.

If you are not using leg of lamb, patience at this stage will pay dividends. The more slowly you cook the meat, the more spices will permeate it, breaking down the fibres gradually, giving you tender, yet juicy pieces of meat.

Add enough water to form a thin gravy, cover and leave to simmer for 30 – 40 minutes if using the leg or 1 1/2 to 2 hrs if using shoulder. Sprinkle the garam masala and lemon juice over, stir in the chopped green chillies and cook for a further 10-15 minutes.

The curry is dark and fragrant with the choice to make it as hot as you like. Beef would also work well here. I like my curry served with either chapatis’ or Naan bread and these are needed here to soak up the delicious gravy. Tastes even better if you leave for a day after cooking.

Hope you have enjoyed this post. If I have set your taste buds tingling, try to fight them for a little while and instead of rushing out to your local Indian, give this a go and remember, get those freezer bags ready.

Thanks for reading,

Craig

It’s been two years now since I picked up a copy of The River Cottage Preserves handbook. As this pretty much coincided with me moving out of Edinburgh to the semi-rural town of Linlithgow, a lot of the ideas within the book became more interesting to me as I had the chance to stumble across some of the ingredients on my local walks. I therefore invested in a Lakeland preserving pan and bought some jars, funnels and a jam thermometer.

A visit to my local fruit farm, Craigies, was in order for some of their wonderful pick your own. Returning home with some Strawberries and raspberries, I set to work. Both my first attempts were pretty good, even if I say so myself. The raspberry jam was perhaps the best as it seemed pretty easy to get the setting point. Strawberries have lower pectin levels so instead of normal granulated sugar, I used Jam Sugar to help the set. This summer past, I returned to the farm to pick up some Blackcurrant’s which made equally delicious jam and some Gooseberries, to which I added some home made Elderflower cordial. The flavour combination was good but I didn’t quite get the set right, making a runnier jam than I would have liked.

Since these earlier attempts, I have moved onto to try some more adventurous preserves. Plum jam (from local wild plums), Onion Marmalade, Piccalilli, Chilli Jam and my favourite of all, Seville Marmalade. All have been rather nice and only the Chilli jam has given me any problems, again with the setting point.

Next up is some more marmalade this month. Look out for the Seville Oranges over the next few weeks as the season is very short in January.

For a small initial outlay on equipment, I now feel that with a little effort, it is not too difficult to build up your own little larder of delicious preserves. Just waiting for you when you need something extra.

Six month’s have now passed since I embarked on a mission to bake some of my own bread. The results so far have been decent with a few notable successes and failures along the way. This has not put me off however, and I will be attempting to bake a bit more in 2010.

My desire to bake my own bread was awakened whilst reading a copy of Pim Techamaunvivit’s “The Foodie handbook”. Talk about sourdough starters handed down through generations and the “recipe” to give birth to your very own, was enough encouragement I needed. Pim’s excellent book, looks at the no-knead approach to bread baking and my first couple of loaves were made by baking in my Le Creuset casserole with the lid on. Whilst these attempts were tasty, I felt that I needed a bit more knowledge. Time to find something a bit more detailed.

I turned to the River Cottage handbook series. Having previously purchased the RC mushroom book and tentatively eaten my first “St. George’s”, followed by some excellent results from the RC preserves handbook, I was drawn to the newly released River Cottage bread book.

Now that I actually had my own White Sourdough starter, I skipped the basic bread recipe and headed straight to the wild yeasted ones. I soon realised that the extra effort of kneading and subsequent knocking back added a lot of hours to the process but the pride I got from doing everything by hand and the added understanding you get of the whole process made it worthwhile. I was baking White, Rye and Wholemeal batches with relative success. Pure Rye sourdough was a little too dense for my liking, although a 50% mix with white flour is one of my favourites. Further experiments of adding Paradox Whisky Stout from Brewdog was also very nice. I have now started a Rye starter and made some lovely Focaccia too.

I won’t pretend it has always been easy. Still very much a learning process for me. Each loaf has been different. Most have been edible though. By keeping the starter in the fridge between feeding sessions this part has been easy. Anyone can give it a go. Along the way I have broken my Magimix and had to spend over £35 on spare parts, caused numerous power cuts by cranking up the oven to the max, much to my wife’s annoyance and had a few too early mornings as well. Overall though I would urge anyone who hasn’t tried baking their own bread to give it a go as the end results will almost always be better than your average Hovis and sometimes can be outstanding.

Okay, that’s my first post finished. I hope someone out there has enjoyed reading this. Critical comment would be most welcome. Hopefully more posts to follow.

All the best for 2010.

Craig