Wow, What A Sunday!

The wind howled again last night and I swear I don't know what's holding the roof on! So it was a wonderful delight to wake to an absolutely stunning mid-winter day. After a nippy early (for a Sunday) start (teenage son was refereeing three soccer matches this morning) all of a sudden the sun put on a burst of warmth. I sat by the field in my fold-up chair, my sunglasses on and a coffee in one hand and just soaked it up. Since we were in the neighbourhood we dropped in to the mall afterwards and he proceeded to spend most of his earnings. Tonight's dinner will be fairly simple. We do love a good curry. We were first introduced to curries by some english colleagues back in the early eighties. Friday night summonses of "Let's go for Ruby!" were common. Ruby? Hmm, that needed explaining for us as well. It's one of those charming english rhyming slang expressions. Translation: Ruby: Ruby Murray: curry. In Sydney, and much of New South Wales for that matter, every suburb and every town has a chinese restaurant. This is largely because when Australia was still a very young nation we had a large influx of Chinese immigrants all attracted by the goldrushes of the 19th century. England's equivalent of the chinese restaurant is the Indian curry house. In London, on every corner not occupied by a pub (or an offie, sorry, off-licence, that's a bottle-shop) there is an Indian restaurant. We fell in love with curries almost immediately and were soon out-challenging each other in the heat factor. The next logical step was to learn to cook them for ourselves. I invested in a fantastic Indian cookbook by Charmaine Solomon and learned to cook curries from scratch with authentic ingredients. When we decided to go travelling, the first stop on our itinerary was India. We spent five weeks there and quickly learned to eliminate meat from our diets if we wanted to spend more time seeing India and less time seeing the inside of her public toilets. Now that we have children I need to cook meals that will be eaten by them. I haven't succeeded yet in tuning their tastes to the more fiery meals that we used to love so much but I am gradually introducing a bit of heat to get them more accustomed. I also don't have the time I once had to spend on cooking. So I have embraced the easy to use curry pastes and sauces that are now so freely available. Tonight we are having Chicken Korma. I will panfry some chicken strips, add the Korma sauce, let it simmer until tender then add some yoghurt at the end. We will serve it with steamed rice, pappadams, chapatis, cucumber with sour cream, banana & coconut and tomatoes with chopped green onions (are they scallions in America?), chopped coriander (cilantro) and a sprinkle of lemon juice. I also did a vegetable side dish of spiced potato and spinach.

Here is the recipe for Palak Alu (Spinach With Potatoes) courtesy of Charmaine Solomon's Indian Cooking For Pleasure

Serves 4

500g (1lb) new potatoes
1 bunch spinch
2 tablespoons ghee or oil
1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
1 teaspoon cummin seeds
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon ground cummin
2 fresh green chillies, split and seeds removed
1 teaspoon salt or to taste
approximately 1/2 cup water
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg

Scrub the potatoes well and cut into small cubes. Wash the spinach in several changes of water. Discard tough stems and put into a large saucpan with just the water that clings to the leaves. Cover and steam for ten minutes or until tender then chop roughly. Do not discard any liquid in pan.
In a large frying pan or karahi heat the ghee or oil and fry mustard and cummin seeds until mustard seeds pop. Cover the pan or you will mustard seeds all over the place. Add turmeric, coriander, cummin and the chillies. Add potatoes, stir and fry for a few minutes, then add salt and about half a cup of water, cover and cook for ten minutes. Add spinach, stir cover and cook for five to ten minutes more. Sprinkle nutmeg over and serve.

Oh, and the souffle last night? Was OK. I probably won't do it again in a hurry. There's plenty more wonderful meals out there.

What's your favourite keep it simple family meal?

See more cockney rhyming slang.