May 2010 – A Wee Bit of Cooking

Hurrah! I’m back! And I’m very happy to be so. Missed this space rather a lot in the last few weeks but a blogging break was much required. It’s been all go up here. Work has been insanely busy; D is back home after 5 months snowboarding in Canada; Marco’s in training to be a better behaved dog; we’re moving house (again); and I’m running my first half marathon next weekend.

With so much going on, I hadn’t been very adventurous in the kitchen, instead relying on simple dishes, old favourites and more than a few takeaways. Last weekend, however, I got my cooking mojo back and had a super Sunday trawling through cookbooks old and new then tearing up the kitchen trying out new ideas. It was great. 🙂

One of my successes was the following tomato curry. Now, I’ve included two amounts of spices in the below recipe and for good reason. This is a lovely simple dish to eat alongside some plain boiled rice and if that’s how you fancy it, go for the larger quantities of spice to really taste the curry flavour. However, I think this dish truly shines when the flavours are mellowed and it is paired with a really hot beef curry. The sweet, tangy tomatoes compliment the dark spiciness of the meat dish absolutely perfectly. If this is how you want to eat it, use the smaller quantities of spice.

P.S. Best use slightly acidic tomatoes for this. The really sweet Italian ones turn a bit too syrupy.

Simple Tomato Curry

(serves 2 as a main, 4 as a side)

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

1 tspn chopped ginger

1/2 or 1 tspn ground coriander

1/2 or 1 tspn ground cumin

1/4 or 1/2 tspn turmeric

1/4 or 1/2 tspn cayenne pepper

1 tblspn tomato puree

500g tomatoes, preferably not sweet Italian ones – 250g chopped finely, 250g cut into quarters

Fry the onion, garlic and ginger in a little vegetable oil over a medium heat until onion is softened.
Add the spices and fry for a minute more.
Add the chopped tomatoes, tomato purée and 50ml of water. Cook over a gentle heat for 30 mins until tomatoes have turned all pulpy.
Add the tomato quarters and cook for 10 mins more until tomatoes are softened but still hold their shape.