Aloo Gobi as Bend It Like Beckham

Looking for a great Aloo Gobi recipe and Gurinder Chadha has nailed it !!

Easy to follow and makes a great vegi curry dish ..

There's a Scouse in the kitchen curry sauce

This recipe make about 7 pints of curry sauce that you can use as the base for lots of curries.
Freeze in half pint containers and use when you need them.

You need  a dozen cloves of garlic
8 oz of ghee, butter works too or vegetable oil
3' piece of fresh ginger
5 onions chopped roughly
bunch of cilantro
8 oz can of carrots
2lb of canned tomatoes
14oz can of tomato soup
1 jar of patak's curry paste

You need a blender too !

Put the garlic in the blender with some water, whizz to a fine puree

get the biggest pot you can find and heat the ghee stir fry the garlic for a few minutes
(don't burn it there is no worse taste, except perhaps anchovies)

place the ginger in the blender with some water, puree and add to the garlic

puree the onions and cilantro, pitch it in to the pan, should be smelling good by now

cover it and let it cook gently  for about half an hour, stir it occasionally

puree carrots , tomatoes and juices, add them to the mixture

pitch the soup in too

add the jar of curry paste , some salt, water if necessary.

Simmer for half an hour, let it cool and divide up into half pint containers.

freeze, it will be good for about 1 million years.

A Wordle

Awordle is a design made from a  word cloud processor at Wordle.com you should try it..

There's a Scouse in the Kitchen ...Chicken Tikka Masala

There’s a Scouse in the Kitchen…

Chicken Tikka Masala  This recipe is based upon one from Pat Chapman of “the Curry Club”. So it must be good.

First :

You need to make a bowl of mixed spices, half of which you will use to marinade the chicken and the other half goes into the sauce.

Cumin Powder:  2 teaspoons  (get it at any supermarket but cheaper and in quantity at a middle Eastern or Indian store, comes in a packet, put it in an airtight jar and it keeps for ages.

Garlic Powder 2 teaspoons, you can used minced garlic in a jar from the supermarket and you only need half the quantity.

Ground ginger 1 teaspoon, as above I like to used the minced ginger in a jar, half measures.

Ground coriander 2 teaspoons, nice to have this spice but ok if you can’t find it. It is literally the ground seeds from a Cilantro plant.

Paprika , 2 teaspoons I like the smoked paprika from Fresh and Easy but any will do.

Chilli powder 1 teaspoon, heaped if you like a kick, level if you are a first timer.

Garam Masala, 1 ½ teaspoons, I like to buy a big bag of this as I use it a lot.

Chopped mint, 1 teaspoon of fresh or ½ teaspoon of dried (fresh is better)

Mix it in a bowl, if you use all dried ingredients it will keep for eternity in a sealed jar, but it is so easy to mix that I keep all the ingredients in an old box and knock it together as need it.

Prepare the chicken:

Chop it into big cubes about a generous inch, bigger chucks cook slower and seem to work better.

Place the cubes in a bowl with the juice of half the lemon and leave it in the fridge for an hour or so.  

Meanwhile….

Tandoori Marinade

3 or 4 oz of natural yoghurt, natural not flavored ! , full fat, low fat no fat doesn’t really matter.

3 fl oz of sour cream, milk is an ok substitute.

2 tablespoons ( about half of the tandoori marinade you have just made)

1 teaspoon of curry powder, you can use Patak’s curry paste if you prefer

2 teaspoons Garam Masala

Chili powder  ( from a ½ teaspoon for a hint of heat to 4 teaspoons if you want meltdown.

A handful of chopped cilantro, leaves and stalks (hard to get it wrong) .

Ditto Chopped mint

2 teaspoons of garlic puree, I liked the minced garlic but you can use paste or 2 or 3 bulbs of fresh in a liquidizer with a dash of water.

1 teaspoon of minced ginger or an inch of fresh ginger, scraped and sliced.

1 teaspoon of ground cumin,

juice of the other half of the lemon.

Mix it all in a big bowl.

Place the chicken cubes in it an let it sit, (for at least an hour, ideally overnight) in the fridge.

Tikkas

Big onion, cut in half across the middle then quartered:

Take a skewer and load onion chicken onion along it. Reserve the sauce.

Cook the tikkas on an oiled barbecue grill low heat, turning regularly until the chicken  is cooked right through, I like the edges to be blackened a little but it is personal preference.

Meanwhile..

Masala Sauce

1 jar of Pataks Curry sauce, available at Fresh and Easy and Ralphs

1 teaspoon of tandoori paste  ( the leftover spices mixed with a little vingar and oil) or you can buy a Patak's Curry paste.

2 tablespoons of vegetable oil  (ghee if you can find it but oil is healthier)

the rest of the tandoori marinade that the chicken was in

2 teaspoons of tomato paste

a can of tomatoes (chop them up as they are cooking)

a red pepper chopped up small

a handful of chopped cilantro

2 tablespoons of sour cream

Heat the oil in a large pan add the tandoori paste and keep it moving for a minute or two then add the jar of curry sauce,, use a little water in the jar to rinse out the remainder. Drop the heat and keep it moving around the pan, add the marinade (it’s important to keep the temperature low at this stage or the yoghurt and cream will separate).

Next add the tomato paste, the tomatoes and the pepper, you should have a creamy sauce, if it looks too thick add a little water. Now add the chopped cilantro and sour cream . Keep  it simmering and deskewer the tikkas straight into the sauce,

Serve on a bed of basmati rice or in pitta pockets as a snack.

Delicious with Garlic Naan bread.

This is a really easy curry..

Humming bird

You've got to be in it to win it..

Some time ago, back in England there was a roll-over weekend, the national lottery had not been won and the prize had doubled to an astronomical amount, for the sake of this story let's say 55 million pounds.


My Mom like many others bought a ticket. On the Friday evening before the big drawing she sat down with a pencil and a piece of paper and made a list of the family, friends and charities that would share in the prize with her.


At the side of each name she added an amount of money. Then she reached for the calculator and guess what it added up to 57 million.


Back up the list the amounts get switched and changed. This time there is a little to spare.
But there's a problem, she can't give cousins 80,000 if great aunts are only getting 75,000 and the League of Cats  and Dog's  Refuge ought to get equal amounts.


The night wears on and the more she works on the list the more the balance tilts, first this way then that way but each time there are winners and losers.


In the wee hours of the morning she gives up and goes to bed...but can't sleep. The worry of how this money is going to fracture a very strong family bond is simply too much to endure.
In the pale might of early morning she surveys the list, it is now a frantic scribble with increasingly frantic sums written all over it, scanning the figures and worrying again, she sits down closes her eyes and prays...she prays that she does not win.


I was told this tale on the Sunday morning when the power of prayer had done its thing and  she was happier not winning than she ever would have been otherwise.


 Like Johnny Cash's Boy named Sue , I think of it every now and then and every time I think and every time I win, she could have just given the whole lot to me !

Happy Valentines Day