Black pepper goat curry

Paul bought me an early Christmas present - a replacement for my Braun multiquick that recently went to join the choir invisible. And he very kindly isn't making me wait until Christmas to start playing with it, so over the next while you may see the signs of a Morphy Richards Food Fusion Hand Blender Set in my cooking.

For instance, it came in rather handy when making a Keralan black pepper goat curry. This recipe makes a paste of fried onions, curry leaves and peppercorns and adds it to the goat meat frying in a bunch of aromatics. The one thing I changed from the recipe was the addition of water - I only added 50ml to the spice paste and then no more. From watching Paul make curries for many years I have learned that the meat and onions give off so much liquid that adding extra water only gives you a really runny gravy. Which might be OK if you are serving it with rice but we prefer naan.

The curry was delicious - but I think I should have cracked the peppercorns in the mortar and pestle before adding them to the blender. They stayed pretty much intact and didn't add the flavour that I think they should have.

For dessert I made some baked buttermilk custards, pretty much using this recipe but using buttermilk instead of cream and flavouring it with some of my calamondins in brandy. I figured that in Indian cooking there is a pretty strong heritage of reduced milk desserts and yoghurty things, so a buttermilk custard was just a short step away.