I was a little wary of this recipe for obvious reasons, although curiosity got the better of me in the end. It’s been on my ‘to do’ list for a while, along with the famous, ‘roast chicken with 40 cloves of garlic’, which I still haven’t got around to making. I got this recipe from Das Sreedharan’s ‘Easy Indian‘ where he says that I will, ‘wonder how the strong flavour of garlic is so well tamed by the spicy and tangy tamarind sauce‘. He was right; although I did make a little mistake which meant the sauce wasn’t as tangy as I think he intended it to be. After soaking the tamarind pulp, without thinking I drained the liquid into the sink instead of saving it and then scraping the pulp through a sieve. So, I just ended up with the pulp which I then realised needed extra water to form the sauce of the curry. I didn’t have time to soak any more tamarind so I just added the extra liquid. The curry was still delicious, spicy but not too hot. The recipe calls for two dried red chillies and 3 fresh green chillies which are just slit lengthways to release a lot of flavour but not so much heat.

One of the best flavours for me in the curry is the fenugreek seeds. At the beginning, half a teaspoon of the seeds are fried with some whole garlic cloves and dried chillies, which are then ground to a paste. This makes a wonderful rich, pungent paste which gives a real depth to the curry, beyond the flavour of the garlic. I found the seeds burn easily so I would advise keeping a close eye on the heat. More fenugreek seeds are then added later in the cooking process. The flavour of the curry leaves is also essential and works really well with the fenugreek. I am lucky to live near to Asian grocers so I always pick up some fresh curry leaves when I pass by, which I then store in the freezer and just add them straight away as needed. Kaffir lime leaves also keep very well in this way, as does fresh ginger which I just grate straight from frozen. I didn’t add quite enough liquid to the curry so although the garlic was soft and edible, it was still pretty fiery and we couldn’t eat all of the 150g of whole garlic cloves (that’s about 3 heads in real money) that Das called for. I think that the curry should be soupier in consistency, while mine reduced to more of a thick sauce. I will definitely make the curry again (properly) and I think it will be really delicious. I urge you not to be put off by the quantity of garlic, although you might not want to cook it if you are likely to be in close proximity to anyone else for the next two days…..

I followed the recipe verbatim from the book and so I can’t rewrite it here although the recipes, here and here are similar (except for the addition of coconut, which Das does not use, although his style of cooking is Keralan and they do use a lot of coconut). We ate the curry wrapped in a paratha with a mango and spinach moru (very delicious, very yoghurty – like a warm raita with mustard seeds!), some chicken tikka, yoghurt and chopped coriander. This could be a contender for the ultimate kebab! I love making chicken tikka at home, so much tastier. Whatever recipe I use, I marinade the chicken in all the ingredients for as long as possible, leaving out the acidic element (e.g. lime or lemon juice) until 20 minutes before I want to prepare it, to avoid cooking the chicken. This means you can leave it in the marinade for as long as you want. I usually add an extra squeeze of lime at the end of cooking too or when they are under the grill, for an extra zingy freshness. The parathas I buy frozen – you just cook them for 2 minutes each side in a dry pan and they are actually really good. Unless you are brave enough to make your own, in which case, I salute you.