Yoghurt-Sour Chicken Curry & Spicy Fried Okra

Please give this dinner a chance! Yoghurt-sour is a good thing, plus yoghurt helps all the spices to penetrate the chicken meat whilst tenderising it as well. 
The dry fried okra is really delicious and together they beat any greasy takeaway offering hands down, both on the healthy front and on the tasty front. 

This is inspired by a dish in "Indian Food Made Easy" by Anjum Anand and I would totally recommend this book to anyone who thinks they love a takeaway!

So, pop some chicken thighs into a bowl, 1-2 per person, and pour over one of those large pots of natural yoghurt.

Add 7-8 large cloves of garlic, smashed up or minced if you can be bothered to clean the mincer - I never can. Take 2-4 cardamom pods (depending on how much you like them) smash them open, extract the seeds, crush them with the back of your knife and tip them in. 
 Top with a large hunk of ginger chopped up very finely, a heaped tablespoon of ground coriander, a heaped teaspoon of garam masala, a teaspoon of chilli powder, and a generous pinch of cumin. 

Sprinkle in a good amount of salt, maybe as much as 2 teaspoons, and mix everything together really well - make sure every inch of the chicken is coated. Marinate for as long as possible, in the fridge overnight would be great, but if I'm honest I left it for an hour on the sideboard and it was tasty for just that time.

When you're ready to cook it, upend the whole lot into a pan and put on a reasonably high heat. In a separate pan, cook up a chopped onion and some green chillies. When they are soft, add them to the chicken mixture.
 

Cook the curry for 20 minutes, then stick a lid on it, turn the heat right down and cook for another 10 minutes. You can add extra water if it dries up. 

While the curry is cooking, slice the okra up vertically and liberally sprinkle gram flour, garam masala, chilli powder and salt over the top. Mix up well, heat up oil in a frying pan and, shaking off excess powder, fry the lot for about ten minutes.
 
Serve the curry with rice and shedloads of fresh coriander, plus the okra. 

Balinese Style Stir-fried Curry

This was inspired by a Balinese curry recipe I found in Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey. My dinner didn't end up resembling the original too much, it was pretty tasty though. 

This does involve a fair bit of slicing and dicing, so maybe one for a quiet evening rather than when you're in a rush. It fed two for dinner with enough left over for lunchboxes the next day.

So, step one, thinly slice a purple onion and as much garlic as you like. Step two, dice two large or 4-5 ordinary tomatoes, a fat thumb of ginger and as much fresh chilli as you like. Step three, slice an aubergine into big bitesize peices.

Finally, step four, skin, de-bone and dice a couple of chicken legs (or buy pre-prepared chicken leg meat, or just breasts) and lightly coat with a little cornflour. That's it, all the tough prep work is done!

Get your rice on to cook - I can really recommend getting a ricebot (aka electric ricecooker, preferably with a delay timer function). My favourite rice for steaming is Japanese short grain.

Heat up a large frying pan on the hob with a little sesame or vegetable oil and fry the chicken peices until you can't see any pink on the outside, then add the aubergine and continue to cook until the chicken is cooked through and the aubergine is softened but still has a little bite to it. Take them out of the pan and put to one side.

Reusing the same pan, add a little more oil and stir fry the onion and garlic until softened, then add the tomatoes, ginger and chilli along with a smidge of shrimp paste. Give it a couple of minutes before adding the chicken and aubergine back to the pan, along with a massive pinch of lime leaves, a big squeeze of lemon juice, 2 tbsp of soy sauce, a decent scraping of palm sugar and a splash of water. 

Five more minutes in the pan at most and it should be ready, mix in a big handful of coriander and serve with a nice mound of steamed rice and, if you like it, some hot chilli sauce.

  

Tofu Rendang Curry

I ripped this recipe out of some food magazine ages ago; it was on an advert for Cauldron (the tofu brand) and had been stuffed between the pages of my Malaysian cookery book. I omitted their dessicated coconut but was otherwise reasonably true to the recipe: it was really tasty.

First of all assemble the "paste" ingredients: a couple of sliced lemongrass stalks, 2 chopped red chillies, a generous tablespoon of chopped ginger, a heaped teaspoon of turmeric, one of palm sugar and a pinch of salt. Also once sliced purple onion and a few cloves of garlic.

Heat up a pan with some oil and cook the garlic and onion until translucent, then add all of the other ingredients which you've already prepared. Cook for a minute or two before adding a can of coconut milk, 125ml water, 1 tsp tamarind paste (or more if, like me, you love the stuff), 4 star anise and a cinnamon stick. I also added a load of halved chestnut mushrooms and trimmed green beans.

Simmer on a low heat while you cook the rice. Then, while the rice is on the side having its final steam, pop the tofu in to cook through. I used plain tofu and I think it would have been even better if I'd drained it and fried it first, but it was still lovely au naturel. Serve over the rice and top with fresh coriander.


 

Malaysian Style White Fish Coconut Curry

I got the idea for this from "Cook Malaysian" by Lee Sook Ching but, as usual, I had to tailor it to what was in our fridge. The peas are definitely not in the original recipe but they were perfect with it.

So, first put together a couple of diced purple onions (shallots would be better but I didn't have any), lots of sliced garlic, and a couple of tablespoons each of: chopped ginger, lemongrass and lime leaves.

This lot goes into a big frying pan with some oil and a chopped, red chilli. Fry these up for a minute or two, until the aromatic smells start to fill the kitchen, then add a can of coconut milk, a tablespoon or two (depending on your tastes) of tamarind paste, one or two of palm sugar (again according to taste) and a big teaspoon of shrimp paste.

Stir together and bring up to a simmer, then lower the heat and leave it to cook for a while, maybe 10-15 minutes. Taste it, I added fish sauce because I love it, but whether you do is up to you.  
I shelled a load of peas because I had fresh but frozen would have done just as well. Throw them in the sauce and let them cook almost through before adding whatever white fish you have; I had whiting fillets.

Cook the fish through but take care not to overcook it. Finally stir in a load of coriander, fresh is best but I didn't have any and the frozen kind is really very good. Spoon over a bowl of rice (instructions for perfect rice here) and sprinkle a sliced spring onion on the top.

Wogan Gosh (a Eurovision dinner)

I named this curry in honour of the one time eurovision commentator, much lamented since he left:- his ascerbic comments are the memories of my childhood and couldn't be matched by any modern presenter, no matter how much I love Graham Norton.

We don't see this very often: the UK at the top of the leaderboards

Of course it's basically rogan josh, a lamb curry with tomatoes and onions. I've used scrag end of lamb because it's super cheap but you can make it with other cheap cuts like neck fillet, or more expensive ones if you're feeling flush.

First things first, I trimmed all the meat off the scrags and set about turning it into a stock. Just the usual ingredients: celery, carrots, onion, parsley stalks, pepper and bay leaves. Covered with cold water and left to simmer for a couple of hours, lovely.



I coated the meat in cornflour and browned it in a hot pan and then put it to one side while I cooked up sliced garlic, a large sliced onion, a diced stick of celery, a dollop of grated ginger and some crushed cardamom pods.

Once the onions were getting soft I added in a couple of teaspoons of cumin, one of tumeric, one of ground coriander and a couple of bay leaves. When they started to smell terrific, a can of chopped tomatoes went in with a cup or so of lamb stock and sliced green chillies.



Brought it up to a boil then turned down and left it to simmer, just in time to catch Russia's entry, including the immortal lyrics "I lost my mind somewhere between your face". 

Go France though, seriously: an operatic singer at eurovision? Winner. I love it.

Italy, you have done me proud. Reasonably hot man playing a catchy song on a plastic grand piano, short instrumentals by an awesome trumpet player, plus end-of-chorus screeching. He's the Italian Jamie Cullum. Reminds me of my grandad, aw.

Oh Moldova. What are you like, though. Love you guys.

About now, my husband was kind enough to pop out to the kitchen and add the rest of lamb stock to the curry. By romania I was on my 3rd glass of wine. I needed it.

By Azerbaijan I was already thinking about my fourth. They are usually the highlight of the contest but this year's low grade, standard pop offering was a theatrical disappointment. (NOTE: when I wrote this I had no idea they were going to win. Oh the trauma...)
Iceland deserved good voting just for the sad story, but they were actually alright. As my husband said: happy Mumford & sons.

Seriously, this tastes way better
than it looks in my photo!

Anyway, when the curry tasted done, I added a load of chopped coriander, some lemon juice and lots of seasoning.
We ate it with warm, wholemeal pitta breads and some leftover rice, whilst enjoying Georgia's 2Unlimited style offering. Especially the "unusual" dress. 
Interesting fact: Georgia have basically the same flag as ours and share our patron saint. They had a king called George the Brilliant.

I voted for Italy. But it was a close decision: France, Iceland and Moldova all got serious consideration. Italy came second in the end, I'm not too upset about that, but seriously... Azerbaijan's song. Really? There's no way that was better than Italy's entry!