Thursday 6 October 2011

A tale of two curries

I have made a couple of really stonkingly good curry meals recently. I mean really, seriously good curries. I have been astonished at my own cleverness.
The big thing about these curries - which slightly takes the wind out of my sails - is that the side dishes, made from other people's recipes, were what totally made the meals.

My pork vindaloo, adapted from Camellia Panjabi's recipe, is always good. The saag aloo was made particularly memorable by
fragrant, fresh turmeric. The dish of the meal, however, were the bhindi bhaji from Mamta's kitchen. They were crisp, flavourful and absolutely delicious. Which is not something you can always say about okra!

A couple of weeks later I made a chicken curry, again from an adapted Camellia Panjabi recipe (I used coconut water instead of coconut milk for the gravy). It was excellent, but again the star dish was one of the sides - Nigel Slater's baked, spiced tomatoes. The unusual thing about these tomatoes was that I used a touch of mustard oil instead of mustard seeds, and it ended up with a very intense dairy flavour - like they'd been stuffed with roquefort almost. Very interesting and extremely delicious.


13 comments:

leaf (the indolent cook) said...

This is making me crave curry! I think I need to work in an Indian dinner next week.

hungryandfrozen said...

I love fresh tumeric! but have never tried okra. Am curious about this mustard oil, will have to look out for it if it imparts as delicious a flavour as you say.

Anonymous said...

i'm going to wait 9 months or so, until you have forgotten that you wrote this, and then steal the title. just sounded brilliant to me. cheers!

Alicia Foodycat said...

Leafy - I need to make them more often too.

Laura - okra is funny stuff. I have only come around to it cooked the Indian way so it is really crispy!

HPD - feel free! Although if you could work in the line "It was the best of times, it was the wurst of times" and make it about currywurst I would be SO happy!

Kavey said...

Oooh, can I come next time, please? :)

Simona Carini said...

The middle photo is really intriguing. One of these days I'll finally try to prepare okra. It's not that I don't like it: it still feels unfamiliar. Those tomatoes are quite tempting.

mscrankypants said...

I agree about your comments regarding the little stuffed tomatoes: they look wonderful. And the accompanying rice is making me hungry here.

Alicia Foodycat said...

Kavey - Sure, but I might make you eat okra!

Simona - okra is a strange vegetable! It does take getting used to.

Cranky - the rice was lovely!

Joanne said...

I love a good curry recipe...I'm definitely going to have to check these out!

Dharm said...

Certainly looks very delicious! Interesting that you use coconut water instead of coconut milk. Does it still have that rich coconut taste? Mustard Oil is new to me too! Brilliant job you are indeed very clever!!

Larissa said...

I love curries! Looks great.

BalticMaid said...

I love the title :-) brilliant. I also love adding turmeric to all sorts of dishes, not only curries. It is so healthy.

Angie's Recipes said...

You have me at curry at this rainy and windy day!

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