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Curry night at Battenburg Towers

Instead of sitting down with a cup of tea when I got home from work yesterday, something possessed me to make a selection of curries.

In defiance of the “one in, one out” ruling, Mr B brought home a new cookbook the other day – recently published by Professor Mohammed Keshtgar, a doctor of his acquaintance. The Breast Cancer Cookbook says it contains “over 100 easy recipes for cancer prevention and to boost health during and after treatment” – I’ve had a good look through it and it’s actually full of great, healthy recipes and nutrition tips that would benefit everyone.

For curry night with Angus & Clive plus my brother in law Mark, I tried the Prof’s split pea and coconut dhal. Definitely comfort food – like being wrapped up in a blanket of loveliness. The recipe suggests serving this with a carrot and coriander salad. I didn’t do that, as we had a large bowl of various salads that Mark had rescued at the end of a film shoot he was working on.

Mark also brought some chicken home from the shoot, so I adapted one of Diana Henry’s recipes from A Bird in the Hand – this time I tried her “soothing north indian chicken”. Instead of poaching chicken thighs, I used the cooked chicken that Mark and his colleagues hadn’t managed to finish at lunchtime and added that to the sauce of cumin seeds, onion, garlic, ginger, coriander seeds, red and green chillies and plain yoghurt. Finished this off with a squeeze of lime juice and some chopped coriander. Diana says you can add a little brown sugar, but it was so lovely already I didn’t see the need. This was another truly comforting dish and a great way to pimp up some left over chicken.

The last of the trio of curries was a spiced sweetcorn makai, which I liked but didn’t love. To be fair, I strayed quite a long way from the recipe, as I used cashews instead of peanuts, I didn’t spice the dish up with chilli pickle, nor did I serve it with a fried egg on top, which I didn’t think would really go with the rest of the meal. It did look beautiful though – maybe I should give it another chance and actually follow the recipe…

In deference to Angus’ dairy intolerance, which I sometimes slightly ignore, Clive made this delicious chocolate tart, which he served with a lovely refreshing lime and basil sorbet. Really gorgeous and moist and a great way to finish off the meal.