Rick Stein's India

We own a lot of cook books, infact a ridiculous number, too many to fit on the shelves, so they are piled all over the place....... by the bed, on the sofa, on the floor. Some that we haven't used for a while are consigned to two spare rooms. You'd think then that we didn't need anymore.

Wrong!!! You can never have enough cook books!

For Christmas Chris had Rick Stein's India and already we have made several recipes from it.
I have five (from what I can see) other books by Rick which have all been well used over the years. I like the way he gives a little tale about each recipe at the start, where he was when he tasted it or how he came by it. I can hear his voice as I read it.

Two days after Christmas we made vegetable makhanawala to give us a break from meat and all the rich food. Although it was before we started our year without supermarkets, all the ingredients were
in the fridge, freezer and cupboard. It was delicious and so easy to cook.

Vegetable Makhanawala



 

 

On New Years Day Chris cooked chicken passanda, potato and cauliflower curry (aloo gobi) and chickpea curry. They were all lovely and as I adore anything with chickpeas, that had to be my favourite one. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo!

I love dal and could eat it at every meal, so I had to try the tarka dal recipe. It was so simple to make ..... just bung everything in and simmer until cooked. I have always used split red lentils in the past and as I didn't have either of the two types that Rick specified I used an out of date pack of split red lentils from the food mountain. It was heaven! Chris then made it, finishing off the pack of red lentils. We had it with seasonal vegetable curry, again all the ingredients were available in the food mountain without having to buy anything although I did substitue the spring cabbage with sprout tops.

 

 Seasonal vegetable curry with tarka dal

 

 

 

The other night I was flicking through this book in bed and came across shami kebabs. These are made with lamb mince and apparently were invented for some toothless bloke. Well I'd taken 500g of lamb mince out of the freezer that night as Chris had requested koftas for supper on Saturday so as I only needed half of it for them I was wondering what to make with the other half. Incidentally the lamb mince is from the lovely  www.partridgefarmtiverton.com 

Not only that but Chris was going to need soft food tonight as he had  an appointment for two fillings at the dentist.

 

I made them on Saturday night as the meat is cooked before they are formed and fried. So I froze half and kept half in the fridge to fry tonight. I found them a bit time consuming to make but it was definately worth it. They were delicious! We had them with dal again but this time with out of date split yellow peas and aloo gobi. Although it was good I actually prefer the dal made with split red lentils.

Shami Kebabs

 





 

The great thing about this book for me is that the recipes are very easy, they have subtle flavours, not harsh like some curries and for the ones that we like the look of we haven't needed to buy any special ingredients, its all been in the cupboard, fridge and freezer.