I finally got around to making Gastrogeek’s aubergine dhal after months of bleating on about it. The addition of smoky burnt aubergine flesh is simply inspired and the dish lived up to expectations even after the long build up. With a lot left over though, I wanted to try experimenting with stuffed parathas, which would also solve the problem of not having any bread left to scoop everything up with.

Most recipes instructed to make a dough first, then roll each piece out, spoon a blob of cold dhal in the centre and then pinch it around and seal as if making a dumpling. The ball is then pressed down and rolled out, thus incorporating the lentils. I suppose you could call that ’stuffed’ – the dhal was certainly stuffed inside the dough at one point, but the rolling basically just mushed the whole lot together.

This method does not make things easy when it comes to rolling. Despite liberal flouring, it was hard not to end up in a big, sticky mess as the lentils burst forth from the dough with alarming force, taking no taming whatsoever no matter how gently I rolled and flipped and turned. There had to be an easier way.

It made sense to me to try mixing equal amounts of flour and dhal at the very beginning, so the curry becomes the water that holds the dough together. Since they are not really ’stuffed’ anyway then what would it matter? I made another batch and it worked well; I added just a drop of water to bring it together completely and the result was a much more workable dough that rolled out to a neater, thinner paratha. I didn’t fold the dough over though, so they weren’t as flaky as a regular paratha. Next time, next time.

I cooked them in a cast iron skillet in a little oil, brushing each with an indecent amount of ghee. We scooped up mouthfuls of leftover rogan josh, pumpkin and coconut curry and one of my favourite chutneys: walnut and mint. The recipe comes from Madhur Jaffrey’s ‘Curry Bible’ and is well worth a try. You just stick walnuts, mint, garlic, chillies and lemon juice in the blender, then mix with seasoned plain yoghurt. The result is rather hot with a tangy kick from the yoghurt and it has that immensely satisfying texture of blended walnuts, just like that of muhammara.

I’m not exactly the world’s most skilful paratha maker, but I did manage to produce some buttery, toasty, curry scooper-uppers, which had a pleasing sour and smoky kick and a bit of texture variation from the lentils. A welcome addition to the leftovers repertoire and one well worth the extra couple of pounds in weight gained due to my inability to control myself around clarified butter.

Dhal ‘Stuffed’ Parathas

This isn’t the most authentic recipe you’re going to come across but it is easy, so do what you will.

Equal amounts of dhal (cold) and chapatti flour. If you can’t find chapatti flour then use a 50/50 mix of wholemeal and white flour.
A pinch of salt
Ghee, for brushing
Oil, for frying (I used groundnut)

Mix the dahl and flour together with your hands and then add a drop of water if needed to bring it together. Knead it on a lightly floured surface until the dough becomes smooth (apart from the lentils, obviously). Then cover and leave to rest for about 10 minutes.

Divide into balls roughly the size of a small lemon and roll out to 10-15cm wide circles. You basically want to get them nice and thin. You can then try folding the parathas like I forgot to do, in half and half again before re-rolling. This should give you some nice flaky layers. I imagine this might be harder with the stuffed ones however, as the lentils make the dough a bit lumpier.

Heat a heavy pan until very hot (I used a cast iron skillet), then fry each in a little oil (about 1tsp) on both sides until brown blistered patches appear. Brush liberally with ghee once cooked and set aside on a warm plate while you finish the batch.

Madhur Jaffrey’s Walnut and Mint Chutney (from The Curry Bible)

60g walnuts
30g mint leaves
1 clove garlic
1 tablespoon lemon juice
4 tablespoons plain yoghurt
4 birds eye chillies (I used 2 larger green ones)
1/2 teaspoon salt

Whizz the walnuts, garlic, mint, chillies, lemon juice, salt and 5 tablespoons water in a blender until you have a smooth paste. Using a fork, whip the yoghurt in a separate bowl until light and fluffy. Mix the paste from the blender into this. Taste and adjust the balance of seasonings as necessary.

Apologies for the week long absence; work plus problems accessing the blog have made writing anything impossible. I actually made this a couple of weeks ago now, when the weather had just started to really turn. What better way to stoke the internal fire than with a big bowl of rich rendang in the belly.

The recipe comes from William Leigh (which you can find on Dos Hermanos) and I will come out right now and say it: this is the best rendang I have ever made. So perfectly balanced; fragrant and rich. There is something very satisfying and heart warming about putting a load of ingredients in just one pot and a few hours later plating up a thing of great beauty, the smell of which has been intensifying with every teasing minute.

Aside from whizzing up the paste, that is essentially all you do until you get to the end stage when things get a little hairy. The final step of the recipe involves the splitting of the coconut milk and I’ll admit to feeling slightly alarmed when I returned to the pot to find this unholy mess.

Don’t panic though – this is normal. As the liquid cooks out of the milk the oil is left behind and the beef then fries in it, resulting in that all important flaky texture. You need to keep a careful eye on it at this stage, as once it begins to dry up, you are done. I would also recommend using a solid, heavy based pan (or a wok) and be prepared to give it a good soaking afterwards. One final bit of advice: the method section of the recipe on Dos Hermanos does not tell you when to use the can of water so I added it to the pot with the coconut milk as I couldn’t see any other logical time to do it.

I was rewarded for my patience with a deep, sweet, tongue titillating rendang;  fragrant with lime leaves, galangal and lemongrass, with a tropical note of coconut and a good heat from the 10 Thai chillies I added. William acknowledges that his final seasoning of fish sauce and lime juice is a break from tradition but I agree that it lifts the whole dish and gives a very welcome burst of freshness. The meat flaked apart at the merest prod with an eager fork. I urge you to try this recipe.

I served it with a  raita (tomato, cucumber, coriander, lemon juice and seasoned yoghurt) and an onion salad, which I serve with pretty much all curries. Just plunge finely sliced onions into a bowl of icy water and leave for an hour or so until they turn crisp then season and add dried mint; I keep a pot of dried mint for no other reason. We scooped up each greedy gob-full with warm chapattis then sat back and rubbed our bellies in an appropriately satisfied manner. If I could, I would have purred like a cat. I made the rendang again the very next day.

The tinda masala is one of my favourite dishes at Tayyabs; certainly my favourite vegetarian dish and a no-brainer when it comes to ordering. The very first time I went there, I noticed it clinging on at the bottom of the menu and decided to try it as a sympathy order. When I put the first mouthful in my greedy gob however, there was no doubt that the dish was laughing in the face of my pity. I’ve only ever been served one disappointing tinda which, sadly, arrived after I’d been talking my mate’s ear off about it in the pub beforehand. It was watery, bland, lukewarm and all the worse for me bigging it up so much. Generally though those juicy little gourds are cooked on a fierce heat with a punchy, slightly sour sauce, the main ingredients of which Tayyabs insist are just garlic, ginger and chilli; I can’t blame them for not wanting to reveal their secrets.

I’ve seen fresh tinda around recently, but they always seem to look very tired. I cannot tell you the frustration this caused me until eventually, the canned ones stepped in to offer succour.  As soon as I opened that tin, I got a familiar waft of briny tinda – Tayyabs must use the canned version too.

I used this recipe from Mamta’s kitchen, although I omitted the potato and used mustard seeds where she suggests a choice between mustard and cumin. Overall I was pleased with the result: a perfect starting point for some experimentation, although I did think the tomato dominated and will reduce that considerably or just add some fresh at the end like Tayyabs do. A crispy onion garnish would also be most welcome. The tinda don’t really have much flavour of their own but are special for being so incredibly thirsty, soaking up the spiced juices which then burst into the mouth at the slightest pressure. Next time, I will tweak the spices and cook it faster at a higher heat, to avoid breaking up the tinda so much. Of course, I’ll need to make a trip to Tayyabs first for research purposes, just to make sure I get that spicing right. What a hardship.

Chris and I returned to my student stomping ground, Oxford last weekend to pay a visit to Chris’s bro who has just moved back over from Dubai. Amongst his possessions he had stashed a magazine clipping which he kindly saved for me and which covers one of my favourite subjects in the whole wide world – sandwiches. I was drawn immediately to a confit oxtail creation and set out in search of the necessary caudal appendage in Oxford’s Covered Market. Alas, it was not to be – sold out in every one of the five or so butchers inside. And then I spotted the goat. Not advertised as ‘mutton for goat’, which is the usual offering of, well, mutton instead of goat but the genuine, bona fide Billy.

An early afternoon train meant I would get back in time to pick up the other requisite ingredients from Peckham – scotch bonnets, thyme and spring onions. Ingredients secured I scurried back to the house, my eager mind racing with thoughts of welcoming a whole brand new meat into my life. And then a thought struck me…I’d never cooked curry goat before but I would bet my bottom dollar it needs marinating overnight. A quick Google confirmed this. Knowing I wouldn’t have a chance to cook the next day I resolved to push on regardless – a brief 1 hour marinade and 3 hours on the hob.

The results were, quite simply, dribble inducing. I sprung out of bed the next morning and missioned it down Peckham Rye in search of some more goat, striking gold almost instantly. I bought double the amount this time plus some bony bits for extra flavour. This batch would get some overnight marinating, even longer, slower cooking and a healthy mountain of rice and peas on the side.

Making a dish like curry goat takes serious patience and I strongly advise stocking up on snacks to save sanity. The smell of the meat in the marinade is a tease, the smell of the marinated meat hitting the hot pan is enough to make your knees turn to jelly, and the smell as it bubbles away gently on the stove is almost unbearable. The reward however is a deep, complex curry with meat that melts apart when you so much as show it a fork.

Although the second batch of curry was even better than the first due to the extra effort, I’m not convinced it actually was goat meat. The first batch melted almost completely and tasted a little bit like lamb but a bit more beefy. This second batch smelled just a bit too, well, lamby. It also had a huge amount of fat, and tasted suspiciously like mutton. Hmm. Whatever, the resulting curry was still fruity, spicy, fragrant and rich. If you’ve never made curry goat before I strongly encourage you to try it, although avoid, if you can, using mutton dressed as goat.

Curry Goat

For the goat and marinade

1kg goat meat or mutton, diced into large chunks (a few bits of bone for flavour won’t go amiss)
Juice of 1 large lime
1 bunch of spring onions (about six or seven small or three large), sliced
1 tablespoon salt
2 scotch bonnet chillies, finely chopped
Leaves from 1 large sprig of thyme
1 onion
2 fat cloves of garlic, crushed
3 large tomatoes, de-seeded and chopped (you can remove the skins if you like by blanching them in hot water and peeling but I didn’t bother)

For the Jamaican curry powder (makes a nice little batch – adapted a bit from this recipe)

25g coriander seeds, toasted and ground
25g turmeric
25g ground ginger
7 cardamom pods, crushed and seeds ground
25g black pepper
10g ground fenugreek
10g ground cinnamon

- Mix all the spices together well. Add the meat to a bowl then add the lime juice and salt and mix well. Add 3 tablespoons of spice mix along with the chillies, thyme, onion, spring onion and garlic.
- Mix really well, rubbing the marinade into the meat and then cover and refrigerate overnight or for as long as possible.
- Heat a heavy based pan with some oil for frying the meat. Dust the excess marinade off the meat and reserve it. Heat some oil in a heavy based pan until very hot and brown the meat on all sides, then set aside.
- In the same pan, fry the reserved marinade for a few minutes. Add back the meat, together with the tomatoes and enough water to cover the meat. Bring to the boil then reduce the heat, cover and simmer on the lowest heat possible for 3 hours or until the meat is falling apart and the gravy coats the back of a spoon.
- Serve with rice and peas.

Sometimes, somehow, I manage to forget to eat a whole cuisine for months on end. Then a moment of realisation and craving comes on, like today, when I saw the pineapple sat splendidly spiky and proud next to the fruit bowl and thought, I want to eat that with prawns…in a curry…and make it Thai.

I resolved to mission it down to Peckham’s Asian supermarket after work no matter what, although I wasn’t quite prepared for the apocalyptic weather conditions that I would find myself braving. At first, the rain was fairly heavy, but I just pushed on through with soaked trousers, wet and grimy London-flip-flop-feet and the hair do of a drowned rat. And then…whoa! We have the most incredible thunderstorm. It was completely exhilarating. At first. And then, well, I had to seek shelter. The thunder was spectacular, deafening, so loud it sounded like something had struck the ground – it raised screams from ladies in the street (myself included).

I scurried under the nearest shop awning and once I’d shaken myself off and got my bearings I became aware of the sick beats pumping from the shop behind me and turned to see people dancing within. Talk about a feel good moment. This is why I love Peckham – it’s so alive. The longer I live here, the more proud I am to call it my home.

When the rain eased off I dashed for the supermarket and made it, just in time. Little did I know I would be stranded again for the next half an hour, huddling into a pile of durian for shelter and cursing my Iphone camera for not capturing the awesomeness of the plummeting hail. I got soaked to the skin for this curry so I’m pleased to say it was worth it. I used this recipe (link to the curry paste is included), which is perfectly balanced – spicy, salty, sweet and sour with deep and complex flavours. It is perfumed and fragrant and Chris rather eloquently remarked he thought he might ‘drown in his own saliva’. That was a compliment. The rain eased off just long enough for me to nip outside and take these pictures and then we curled up on the sofa, windows thrown open for dramatic effect, slurping at our two big bowls of sunshine.