Recipes

Rogan Josh

- Alex 1 Comment

Rogan josh spice mix

Ages ago I won a copy of Just Add Spice, by Lyndey Milan and Ian Hemphill. I have actually made a couple of things from it, including an excellent fish dish, but not blogged them. So today we redress that with the book’s take on rogan josh.

Rogan josh is a Kashmiri dish which is typically made with lamb but I’m sure this dish would work just fine with any other meat of your choice.

Just Add Spice has a lot of emphasis on making your own spice mixes, which I wish I found in more recipes. I always like to compare recipes for dishes such as this and while googling came across too many that gave lists of ingredients that included “jar of Rogan Josh curry paste”. Sigh.

If you can spare yourself the 5 minutes (or so) to make a spice mix it’s an invaluable thing to have in your culinary drawer. There are plenty of times when making a curry needs to be a quick exercise and if you have a decent homemade curry powder you save yourself a ton of time (and money).

Having said that, in this case the recipe gives you just the measurements you need for the finished dish but you can always double or triple up. The other thing about this spice mix recipe is that you don’t need to toast the spices at all. It’s just a case of measuring them out straight into the grinder and off you go.

Don’t be too pernickety about measuring things out here – you’re working with rough ratios and we’re not baking. So, into your grinder measure out: 2½ tsp coriander seeds, 2 tsp cumin sees, 1 tsp paprika, ½ tsp each of chilli powder, ground ginger and turmeric and ¼ tsp each of fennel seeds, nutmeg, cardamom seeds (from green cardamom) and cloves.

Measuring out nutmeg is a bit of a pain so I just grated what looked like roughly the right. Cardamom seeds – well, yes, if you only have pods there is a bit of bother here. You’ll need to get the seeds out of about 5 pods. The pods are easy enough to break into: a firm whack with the back of a solid knife will do the trick.

Grind everything up into a powder. This makes approximately 2 tbsp.

Although this supposedly makes enough for this recipe I found I had some leftover which I used up next time I needed to jazz up some meat.  Of course, it would work perfectly well for vegetarian dishes too!

For the rogan josh itself, take approximately 1kg of diced lamb (we used leg) and marinate it in a mix of plain yoghurt and the spice blend. The recipe calls for 500g of yoghurt but, based on my experience, this will be way too much. Tread carefully with your yoghurt!

You only need to marinate it for about 15 minutes so don’t feel you have to start this recipe a day in advance.

On the stove, heat ⅓ cup of mustard oil in a heavy casserole which will be OK in the oven. When it’s hot, add some chopped onions (I used 3 – I suggest you use some judgement depending on how much you like onion!) and cook until golden. Add 5 or 6 cloves of crushed/chop garlic and then the lamb and yoghurt mix.

Give it a stir, then add ½ tin of chopped tomatoes and bring to a simmer. The place in a preheated oven and leave it to do its thing.

The book says to have the oven at 100°C (80°C fan) and to cook for 2 hours. This temperature is just waaaaaaaaay too low. After two hours the meat was barely cooked through, the sauce hadn’t even begun to thicken up and dinner was starting to look a long way off.

When cooking meat slowly like this you don’t want to hit a boil – you want things to stay just under a simmer. And I guess that is why the recipe suggests putting the curry in the oven on such a low heat. Next time I’d just cook this on the stove because it’s much easier to keep an eye on how quickly things are moving, and it’s also much easier to take the lid off to allow for sauce thickening up. If you do want to use the oven I think I’d be starting things off at around 150°C and seeing how they progress.

When the lamb is cooked and tender serve with rice, garnished with coriander.

On first eating this dish I thought it was really dull – the yoghurt really seemed to have washed out the flavours of the spices. However, the next day it was much tastier, so I suspect the problem lay in the fact that the oven cooking had been at such a low heat the flavours (and sauce) had had no opportunity to concentrate. I may have also been too generous with the yoghurt marinade.

I later used the leftover spice mix in something else and it was perfectly tasty so I can’t lay the blame there.

The spice mix I will definitely make again but as a whole, this curry recipe doesn’t really cut the mustard.

Thai Fish Curry Recipe

- Alex 1 Comment

Thai curry paste

While living in England I was lucky (or skilled!) enough to have a recipe published in The Fairtrade Everyday Cookbook. Recipes, using Fairtrade ingredients, were submitted from across the UK and the best were published alongside those of celebrities and chefs. The launch party was also excellent.

However, aside from me showing off my recipe to anyone with the time to look, the book has been underutilised. As part of my new weekly meal planning regime (something which is making life very easy indeed), I’m choosing a random recipe from a random cookbook each week.

Last week it was the Thai fish curry which was submitted by Karen Darnton from Somerset. This recipe is a brilliant example of how easily you can make a tasty Thai style curry without resorting to jars or packets.

Begin by making the curry paste. Into a blender, put two red chillis, the juice and zest of one lime, 2 stalks of lemongrass* (roughly chop these first, and the younger and more tender the better), a generous teaspoon of ginger paste, 4 cloves of garlic, 1 small onion (peeled and roughly chopped), one finely sliced kaffir lime leaf (my addition because I happen to have some in the freezer – leave it out if you don’t have any to hand) and a good splash of Thai fish sauce.

Whizzy this up and you have your paste. This you can make in advance – it will keep quite happily in the fridge in a sealed container for a day or two.

When you’re ready to eat, heat a wok with a small amount of oil (peanut oil or other neutrally flavoured oil) and, when hot, add the curry paste and stir fry for a couple of minutes. You want the pan hot so that it sizzles, and you’ll need to stir to stop it from sticking.

Add a tin of coconut milk, mix well and bring to a simmer.

Next – add your fish. The original recipe used cod, I used barramundi (my barra had the skin on – and normally I would advocate this – but for this recipe, prefer skin off). You want a firm white fish that won’t collapse. You could also use prawns or even chicken thighs (although then it would be a Thai chicken curry …). If using fish, choose Australian and sustainably fished.

Simmer the curry until the fish is cooked.

The original recipe at this point starts adding things like mango or pineapple to the curry but that’s not how I roll, at all. I added a single serve of hokkien noodles to the pot and simmered away until the noodles were separated and hot. So now I had some kind of cross between curry and laksa.

Finally, taste the sauce and add fish sauce or lime juice as required.

Finish with a garnish of coriander and serve immediately.

While this was not the most complex (or, probably, authentic!) Thai curry I’ve ever eaten it certainly ticked all the mid-week meal boxes. Prep in advance, quick to assemble when you’re ready to eat, and tasty to boot. Definitely one we’ll return to.

* As an aside, lemongrass freezes. If you buy a packet from the supermarket, freeze the leftover stems in a snaplock bag. They defrost quickly. Freezing does make them a little tough so be sure to remove the outer layers before using.

Sausages with Lentils and Feta

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We have recently taken to meal planning, which sounds dull as dishwater, but is actually working out very well. My little rule for each week is that one dinner recipe should come from my delicious backlog (or the internet) and another should come from one of my recipe books.

Even though I have a reasonable amount of cooking time available to me, it is always less than I expect so I keep a beady eye out for quick recipes. This one, for sausages and lentils, from taste, certainly fitted the bill. And we even had Puy lentils that probably needed using up. Of course, the taste recipe was a guide and what I actually did follows.

I’ll definitely be making a variation of this recipe again but when I do, I’ll throw a few vegetables (carrots, celery, for example) in the with lentils – it saves having to bother doing vegetables on the side.

For 2 people (with leftovers for the baby) I used 150g of Puy lentils which I cooked in advance in some beef stock. I recommend this – it adds great depth of flavour to the lentils. Puy lentils cook more quickly than the lentils you’d use in a dahl. Don’t cook them to a mush – you want them to retain their shape and some bite.

When we started to think about dinner, I grilled six Italian style sausages (that’s how many came in the pack – you’re unlikely to need them all but a cold sausage never goes astray).

I sautéed a finely chopped leek with a couple of cloves of garlic and then mixed that into the lentils (for reheating purposes they were on a low heat). I then fried up a couple of rashers of bacon (chopped) and added them to the lentils. I finished the lentils by adding a very generous teaspoon (or two!) or wholegrain mustard and a splash of red wine vinegar.

The recipe calls for dressing the plate with marinated feta. Seriously – have you seen how expensive marinated feta is? I made some of my own: buy some Australian feta from the deli counter in your supermarket. Chop it up and put it in a container with some extra virgin olive oil (naturally, also Australian) and add herbs and spices of your choosing. I used some dried oregano, some chilli flakes, some crushed juniper berries and some black peppercorns.

I only made the feta a day in advance so it hadn’t had too much of a chance to absorb flavours and rather than decorating the plate with it, I stirred it through the hot lentils. It gave the lentils a lovely creaminess and also added some much needed salt. Perhaps not as pretty as the picture you see on taste, but certainly tasty.

Serve the lentils in hot bowls, top with chopped sausage and some extra vegetables. Quick and healthy. Oh – if you want to be really healthy, swap the sausage for something leaner, perhaps a grilled chicken breast or lamb chop.

A quick storecupboard meal that’s also healthy. Marvellous.