curry – ¡Comemos!

Coconutty Fish Curry

3rd Oct 2020Leave a comment

This recipe wasn’t planned. It was a ‘what have I got in the fridge that needs using up?’ kind of meal, which then ended up being utterly delicious. It turned out that it was fresh fish stock and coconut cream that were in my fridge, crying out to be saved, avoiding getting lost behind mountains of double cream, yoghurt and pancetta, or indeed, just ending up in the bin.

I can’t say it’s the most photogenic dish, but we’ve got way too caught up in a world where a dish’s appearance is more influential than its flavour, so excuse the imperfect imagery, and simply try it for yourself – this definitely bears more resemblance to curries in India than restaurant or takeaway curries!

The idea of making a curry without using a ready-made sauce or paste can often seem like a lot of effort, but experimenting with different spices and flavourings is what makes it exciting. I can assure you that this curry recipe is very straightforward and doesn’t require a food processor or hand blender for the base paste.

You can adjust the spice levels to your taste – this wasn’t fiery, but I do like a fair bit of chilli in mine.

Serves 2

1 large onion

Thumb of ginger

1 whole chilli

1 ½ tsp turmeric

1tsp chilli powder

40g coconut cream (I used the kind that comes in a solid block)

250ml fish stock (fresh if you can find or make it)

2 white fish fillets

A pinch of saffron

Sprinkling of desiccated coconut

Rice or flatbread to serve

Slice the onions and cook for at least 20 mins in oil on a low heat until they are beginning to caramelise.
Add the diced chilli and grated ginger along with all the spices except the saffron. Cook for a few more minutes until fragrant.
Add the coconut cream and fish stock, turning up the heat slightly and cooking until reduced by1/3.
Add saffron and chunks of fish (or you can keep the fillets whole) and cook until fish is done.
Serve with rice and a sprinkling of desiccated coconut.

As you can see, there are so few steps to this recipe, and once the onions are done, it’s a pretty quick-to-cook meal. It’s sometimes difficult to leave the onions alone for so long, as the temptation is just to get on with things, but allowing them to properly caramelise really does add to the flavour so try to resist the urge to move on too early – I promise it’ll be worth it.

¡Comemos!

Butternut Squash and Spinach Curry

27th Apr 2020Leave a comment

I love following recipes. When I’m conscientiously working step by step through someone else’s instructions for a masterpiece, I’m learning.

More recently, however, I’ve started to think that although I do love other people’s recipes, the only way to take my cooking to the next level, is to trust myself a little bit more, and take what I’ve learnt, trying to put that into practice to produce my own recipe-less meals.

I had an Indian takeaway the week before last, and realised that my absolute favourite kind of curry is that creamy, thick, slightly sweet sauce. Sort of like a korma, but sweeter. That’s not to say that I’m not good with spice, because I love the heat, but I’m just such a sucker for sweetness.

I don’t think I’ve ever followed a cookbook or internet recipe that has successfully emulated this sweet and fragrant kind of curry sauce, so that’s where my mission came in.

I’m very happy with the paste I’ve managed to produce. It’s so full of flavour, and could be adapted to work with a variety of main ingredients, so if you’d rather try chicken, or wanted to substitute the spinach for chickpeas, etc., it would work.

This curry didn’t end up being as thick and creamy as those I’ve tried and loved in the UK, however, thinking back to my recent visit to India, curries over there really aren’t like that at all. They tended to be either slightly more runny, or towards the other extreme, lacking in sauce and instead focusing on the paste as a sort of coating.

So there’s my excuse for the consistency of this delicious, healthy curry.

As always I come with disclaimers – my oven behaves like a bonfire, and so any recipe that says roast for 40 minutes, in my oven, has to be converted to about 20 to prevent a lump of charcoal emerging 40 minutes later. Therefore, timings may need to be adjusted accordingly to account for differences in appliances. Just use your common sense.

Serves 2

Ingredients:

½ butternut squash + seeds
olive oil
chilli or paprika flakes
1 tbsp turmeric
200ml coconut milk
2 mini packs of raisins
2 handfuls of spinach
small handful coriander
rice of your choice to serve

For the paste:

1 large onion
2 cloves of garlic
2tsp ginger paste or thumb of fresh ginger
1tbsp curry powder
½ tsp cinnamon
1tsp cumin
½ tsp chilli powder
1 tsp fenugreek
large pinch of salt
seeds of 1 cardamom pod
large handful of coriander
handful of almonds
4 dates or 2 tbsp maple syrup
1 tbsp water

Preheat overn to 180
Cube the butternut squash then rub the cubes and seeds with olive oil and chilli or paprika flakes
Roast for 10 minutes (ish) or until almost cooked through. Then put to one side.
Heat oil in a pan and add chopped onion and garlic. It doesn’t particularly matter how they’ve been chopped, as they’ll end up blended anyway.
Add all the paste ingredients to a blender and blend to a smooth paste. Don’t worry if the colour doesn’t look particularly appetising; we’ll correct that shortly.
Begin to cook the paste in a pan, adding the turmeric, coconut milk and raisins.
The coconut milk will make the curry very runny so around 20 minutes on a medium heat should allow it to reduce and thicken slightly.
5 minutes or so before the curry has reduced to your taste, add the butternut squash, making sure to reserve the seeds for later.
Seconds before you remove the pan from the heat, throw in the spinach and mix through so that it wilts slightly but not completely.
Serve with rice, sprinkling over the squash seeds and chopped coriander.

This would also be wonderful served with naan to soak up all the delicious juices.

The paste is absolutely the star of the show, so as I said, the bulk ingredients (meat/veg) are pretty interchangeable so feel free to adapt this as you wish.

The lovely thing about making your own pastes and sauces is that you know exactly what’s gone into them. This is definitely one of my favourite things about cooking from scratch – no dodgy added ingredients with long-winded scientific names.

So next time you fancy a curry night, try and give those jarred curry pastes a miss. This time it’s down to you, throwing in as much or as little spice as you need to create your own Indian masterpiece.

¡Comemos!

Yaalu Yaalu

8th Nov 2019Leave a comment

Back to my individual restaurant reviews, and this one, lucky for me, is just down the road.

I think sometimes I neglect places super close to me, instead favouring restaurants in Central that keep appearing on the social media scene and are very hyped up, whereas actually sometimes it’s good to take a step back and have a look at what you actually have on your doorstep.

Yaalu Yaalu is a Sri Lankan restaurant on Green Lanes, nestled amongst the huge number of fantastic Turkish places. It stands out along the high street with it’s light blue and white exterior and interesting decor. I had walked past it a fair few times and thought that it looked pretty nice, but it was my flatmate’s suggestion to go for her birthday dinner that finally got me there.

We went on a Thursday evening so it was pretty quiet, but there were still other people in there. It’s so lovely on the inside, and clearly a lot has been put into the restaurant’s presentation.

We decided to share all plates as they aren’t huge portions, but the price reflects this. We also ate our starters and mains together, but there are clearly labelled starters and mains on the menu.

First up with one of my choices, I was intrigued by the ‘Yaalu Gives You Wings’ coconut oil-infused chicken wings. I wouldn’t normally order chicken wings but the coconuttiness was what appealed to me.

Apologies for the quality, and sometimes lack of, photos. The lighting wasn’t idea for photo-taking, added to the fact that I just wanted to get some quick snaps so that we could enjoy our meal without me spending ages rearranging and rephotographing everything.

I feel like you can look at these wings and get an idea of how flavoursome they are just from their appearance. They did have a pretty spicy kick to them, but that always works for me. Would definitely recommend these.

Next up is the okra, or ‘Ladies Fingers’, which is one of my favourite vegetables, if not my absolute favourite.

To be honest I wasn’t blown away by this okra. I feel like it didn’t have a huge amount of flavour and it wasn’t as ‘meaty’ in texture/substance as okra I’ve had before so it didn’t soak up flavours as well. It wasn’t unpleasant at all, and is still a nice side, but nothing exciting.

For my own side, I got a coconut roti which I didn’t get a picture of. It wasn’t soft, but had been divided up into almost pitta chip-like pieces. It wasn’t amazing but was a really good way of scooping up all the sauces, and the little coconut sambal style chutney on the side was sweet and tasty too.

This next shocking image is of the chilli paneer and aubergine dish (‘Humble Moghuls’). The sauce and flavours here were really good, and you can see how creamy it is. This was another really good dish, with a fair bit to share around between us.

My absolute favourite dish, I sadly don’t have a photo of. Although it was much nicer than it looked. I chose the ‘Wilding’, wild boar in a spicy (flavour-wise rather than in terms of heat) and it was beautiful. Such tender meat in a salty, cuminy curry style sauce, and there was a decent amount of meat served up in small chunks. This definitely was the most impressive thing we ordered and I’d urge anyone who visits to try it.

This final dish slightly defeats the object of the photo as you can’t actually see the fish wrapped in the banana leaf but you get the idea. This is the ‘Catched…Wrapped…Sealed.’

This sea bass took a little longer to come but that was fine as they told us in advance and good to know it’s being cooked to order. I’ve been thinking recently about how I always neglect fish dishes in restaurants – I’ll often order seafood like mussels, lobster, prawns etc but fish I too often ignore so I was excited to try this sea bass. To be honest I wasn’t that fussed by it. It was nice but again, I wasn’t getting a huge amount of flavour so I’m not sure it’s something I would order again here but it was good to try.

Overall though I really enjoyed the meal. There was so much on the menu that I wanted to try but just couldn’t with only having three bellies to feed! The service was great, overall price such good value for money, and it was just a really nice dining experience overall.

I definitely think it’s worth making a trip to Green Lanes to try, and the chicken wings and wild boar dishes are top of my recommendations.

Sri Lankan cuisine is not one that gets much airtime, so let’s change that and…

¡Comemos!