Curry-tastic

Since moving to the UK, and in particular since moving to Preston, I've realised just how popular Indian food is. Curries were never my favourite when I was younger, but they are one of my boyfriend's favourite type of food. So I've sucked it up and made myself go out for curries now and then and have grown to enjoy the cuisine a lot more.

Which is why, when my mother suggested to me that I cook curry for my entire family of 25 people a week ago, I jumped to the challenge. Going through my mother's numerous indian cookbooks was a good bit of fun, because I got to visualise all the different curries that I normally see on menus in restaurants and have never ordered. I realised that although I simply adore spicy foods, making very hot curries for my family might be a bad plan. So I settled on the following three dishes:

1. A mild chicken with cashew nuts curry
2. A mild beef keema with potatoes and peas
3. A spicy chicken rogan josh (I didn't make very much of this one)

It's a mountain of chicken!!

So let me explain a few things. First of all, when my family cooks we don't do things by halves. There must never be a risk of running out of food so we make tons and tons of it. And side dishes were also a big excitement. Secondly, because I am easily (and I say this with no trace of egotism but merely with the knowledge that I am burdened with this greatness) the best cook in my close family, I was left with the chore of cooking these curries by myself. The stress was on!!

Chicken Rogan Josh - nice and spicy

One of the best bits of cooking for me is shopping for the ingredients. There is something intensely relaxing about wandering up and down the aisles in a supermarket and slowly picking out the things you need. Clearly, for these recipes, we needed to buy a lot of herbs and spices, yoghurt and tomatoes, and much much meat. In fact, we bought 2 kg of minced beef for one curry, and a similar amount of chicken for the other two. A crazy amount!!

 I'm not going to bother putting the recipes I used here, as they're easily accessible in books and the internet. However, I would like to say that if you're trying to make a curry that is totally non spicy, then tone down the amount of spice recommended in the recipes. These curries were all excellently flavoured, with my favourite being the Beef Keema, which came DIVINE!! I've taken pictures of the final results and showed them here, to give you all some sort of idea what they should look like. Not that I expect you to judge by the covers, of course ;p

Chicken with Cashew Nuts

Beef Keema

A big lasagne and a little one for me :D

With the curries, we made a ridiculous amount of rice, which we cooked with a bit of turmeric to make yellow and fluffy. We also had poppadoms and chappatis, but unfortunately no naan bread. It's amazing how expensive naan bread is in Malta, when other foods are so cheap. I guess it's all imported though, which would probably explain that little fact. To go with the poppadoms, we put out a mango & pineapple chutney, a tangy tomato salsa, some homemade sweet raita, chopped bananas with coconut and (my personal favourite) spicy lime pickle. All made for some very yummy curries!!

And, not to forget my little cousins and the few oddballs who don't like curries, mild or spicy, I made a massive dish of lasagne, which went down extremely well. In fact, they all did. In the end, the only problem was that I made so much curry that my mum will be eating it once a week for the next few months. I guess it saves her having to cook though!