The perfect curry.....

For the last few weeks on Monday evenings at 9.00pm who else has been glued to Rick Steins Indian series and his quest to find the perfect curry? He's been scurrying across the country from coast to coast and various destinations inland checking out everything from street food to home cooking - all with great gusto and enthusiasm!

I've never actually been to India (unlike everyone else working here!) but all the stuff he's testing out is really familiar to me from working at the Spicery - it's amazing how much you can pick up from reading books and researching on the internet! The programme's put a lot of the things made in the Spicery kitchen into context for me. For example in episode 3 he made a Keralan Syrian Christian curry which is going to be our christmas Friday night curry box. He's also eaten Pav Bhaji in Mumbai - we did a season and spice version of this earlier this year (but with a lot less butter) and it looked a little something like this:

Here's a quick version for you to try at home:Fry an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic until really softAdd 1/2 tsp cumin, 1/2 tsp coriander, 1/2 tsp turmic, 1/2 garam masalaAdd any veg you happen to have in your cupboard (e.g a couple of carrots or parsnips, 1/2 a cauliflower, a large potato) and cook until softThrow in a tin of tomatoes and a couple of handfuls of red lentils and cook until the lentils are broken downMash up and serve inside buttered (lots of!) white rolls. Delicious!