Thai Red Curry with Chicken & Butternut Squash

I know it's lazy but when I get home from work I can never be bothered to make my own curry paste. In place of the real deal, I tend to use a good quality paste and spruce it up with some extras, you'll hardly notice the difference. To save the pennies, I only used two chicken breasts and bulked the recipe out with butternut squash. It's still super tasty, just cheaper and healthier! 

Serves 4
2 free range chicken breasts, cut into large chunks
Butternut squash, deseeded and cut into 2cm chunks
White onion, chopped
Red pepper, chopped
3 garlic cloves, grated
2cm piece of ginger, grated
Mixed pack of mange tout & mini sweetcorn
400ml can reduced fat coconut milk
100g jar red curry paste (ideally Bart's)
Juice of 1 lime
1 tbsp fish sauce
Rice to serve

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Put the butternut squash chunks into a roasting tin, drizzle with oil and pop in the oven for 45 minutes
2. Meanwhile, heat a large pan with a tablespoon of oil on a medium heat. Add the chopped onion and red pepper to the pan, gently fry for 10 minutes. Next add the mange tout, sweetcorn, garlic and ginger, allow to soften for a few minutes
3. Now add the Thai curry paste, reduced fat coconut milk, fish sauce, lime juice and chicken. Bring to a light simmer and cook for 20 minutes, allowing the chicken to poach in the sauce. Add the roasted butternut squash for the final 5 minutes, serve with jasmine rice

Spicy Lamb & Feta Burgers

Inspired by a recipe on Good Food, I decided to make lamb and feta burgers for dinner. Sainsbury's on Stoke Newington High St didn't appear to stock harissa, so I swapped it for a tablespoon of tomato puree and two tsp each of paprika, chili powder and cumin. I also added some garlic and ginger and swapped the mint for parsley as I have some growing on my balcony. As Valentine Warner would say, they were 'bloody good' served with plenty of salad, hummus and tzatziki. YUM!

Burgers ready to go in the oven:

Tasty tasty buuuurger:

Al fresco dining, that's how we do in Clapton:

Spinach & Lamb Curry with Coconut Dhal

For last weeks Sunday night dinner I decided to make an Indian feast. I love homemade curry, but I normally end up making it with Patak's paste for ease, so I decided to make it from scratch.

The recipes were both from Good Food, which always offers a good range of recipes. For the lamb and spinach curry I used 400g lamb rather than 600g and doubled the amount of spinach, but other than that I kept to the recipe. It had a good amount of heat, but maybe could have done with some extra cumin, coriander and turmeric. By not using an oily paste and adding plenty of spinach it tasted a lot fresher than your average curry. I only made half the lentil recipe, as I just wanted it as a side dish. I added twice the amount of water and cooked them for a hour until they were really soft, I also added a teaspoon of madras curry paste to spice them up a little.

Both dishes were really tasty and simple to make, it's well worth buying your own spices although I do still think you can make a great curry if you use a good paste. The left over lentils made a quick and easy Monday night meal, with some naan bread for dipping.

Lamb curry cooking:

Amazing lentil curry:

Finished lamb curry:

Thai Green Curry with Prawns

I love Thai food, but I’ve never been particularly successful at recreating it at home. Unless you’re lucky enough to have a good Asian supermarket close by, I find it’s quite difficult to get hold of the ingredients for the paste. As you can see from this recipe on the Guardian’s excellent ‘How to make the perfect…’ blog, the majority of the ingredients aren’t the kind of thing you can pick up from the local supermarket. As I have to make do with ingredients from Sainsbury’s and I’m quite lazy when it comes to midweek meals, I decided to make do with a ready-made curry paste. The paste has the basic flavours needed for the curry, by adding extra lime, fish sauce, lemongrass etc. it gave the sauce the extra zing the paste alone was missing. The end result was pretty good, and considerably cheaper than buying all the ingredients for the paste, the remainder of which would inevitably have ended up rotting in my fridge.

Serves 4:

4 tbsp green Thai curry paste

1 lemongrass stalk

1 tbsp fish sauce

1 tsp light muscovado sugar

Juice 1 lime

Tin coconut milk

1 green chilli

3 cloves garlic, grated

2cm piece ginger, grated

1 onion, finely chopped

1 red pepper, chopped

1 courgette, chopped

1 small butternut squash

100g mange tout

Handful basil leaves

Method:

1. Cut the squash into 1cm chunks, toss in olive oil and roast for 45 minutes until soft.
2. Fry the onion, garlic & ginger for 5 minutes until soft. Add the chilli, pepper and courgette and fry gently for a further 5 minutes.
3. Add the curry paste, fish sauce, sugar, lime juice, lemongrass and coconut milk. Bring the sauce to a light simmer, add the mange tout and roasted butternut squash and keep on a low heat for 20 minutes. If the sauce gets too thick add a little vegetable stock to loosen it.
4. To serve, remove the lemongrass and top with basil leaves and spring onion. If you’d like to add some protein, either add some raw king parwns for the final 5 minutes or add chicken breast chunks for the final 15 minutes and allow them to poach in the sauce.

Curry cooking:

Ready to eat!

Vegetable Tagine

With a fridge full of random ingredients from various different meals, I decided to create my own version of a vegetable tagine. I hate letting anything go to waste (mainly because I’m poor!), so creating my own recipes with left over ingredients is a great way to save money and hopefully end up with something tasty for dinner.

It’s a very simple and cheap recipe as it doesn’t contain any meat, and helps you on your way to 5 a day! I’ve never been to Morocco (it’s on my very long list of places I’d like to visit), but I doubt this recipe is particularly authentic, but it does taste goooood!

Serves 4 hungry people:

Half a butternut squash

2 red onions

1 red pepper

1 carrot

2 parsnips

8 dried apricots

4 cloves garlic

2cm piece of ginger

1 tsp light muscovado sugar

1 tbsp harissa paste

1 tbsp tomato paste

3 tsp paprika

3 tsp cumin

1 tsp cinnamon

2 tins chopped tomato

Chopped mint to serve

Method:

1.       Put the chopped vegetables into a roasting tray and sprinkle on 1 tsp of paprika. Drizzle with oil and put into a pre-heated oven for 45 minutes. Check on them every 15 minutes to make sure they’re not sticking to the tin.
2.       Fry the ginger and garlic for 1 minute, then add the spices and fry for a further minute. Add the chopped tomatoes, sugar, harissa and tomato paste and bring to a light simmer. Leave on the hob on a low heat to allow the sauce to thicken. If it gets too thick add a little vegetable stock to loosen it up.
3.       Add the apricots to the sauce for the final 5 minutes, then add the cooked vegetables and coat thoroughly with the sauce. Serve with couscous and top with the chopped mint.

Veggies roasting:

Tagine & couscous:

Moroccan Meatballs

This is a recipe adapted from a few that I’ve read online, I love Moroccan food and the more spice you put in the better! These are great as meatballs, or you can serve them as burgers with pitta, hummus and salad.

Serves 4:

500g lamb mince

2 red onions, finely chopped

4 cloves of garlic, grated

2cm piece of ginger, grated

4 tsp ground cumin

4 tsp ground coriander seeds

2 tsp paprika

2 tbsp harissa

Chopped fresh mint

2 tins chopped tomatoes

Tabasco

Method:

1. Fry the onion, garlic and ginger for 5 minutes until soft. Then add the spices and fry for 1 minute.
2. Add the onion & spice mix to the lamb, half the harissa and the chopped mint. Mix with your hands and shape into 24 balls.
3. Fry the meatballs in batches until browned on all sides. Add the tomatoes, the rest of the harissa and some tabasco to taste.  You may also want to add a sprinkling of sugar if the sauce is too acidic.
4. Simmer for 30 minutes and serve with couscous or pasta.

According to Chris, this looks ‘disgusting’, but I promise it was nice!