For those who haven't, let me explain. Dan's job involves some lonely, low-spirited, lugubrious**, late-night shifts during which he not only makes do with the most depressing of supermarket ready-meals for dinner, he does so whilst enviously reading, via food blogs and twitter, the delicious feasts being enjoyed by the rest of the foodie community. Torture! So, in his inimitable, rapscallion way, he has successfully persuaded the denizens of London Foodie Land to feed him with a share of their home-made creations instead! Of course, he's not a scrounger, our FoodUrchin, not at all, so he's exchanged these culinary comforters for goodies ranging from home-made chutneys, to spoils from his allotment, to descendents of his sourdough starter (Veronica), to picking up the bill for a smashing brunch.
For our little exchange, it was the latter, and we met for delicious Eggs Florentine at Canteen, in the Southbank Centre. Thanks for that, Daisy - very tasty! (Daisy being what I most commonly call Dan, for a number of reasons... none of which I'll go into here).
So, what did Daisy get from me (and Pete, who helped me make it all)?
We opted for a veggie selection from Mamta's Kitchen, of Shahi Paneer and Egg Curry.
Both dishes start out almost identically with cumin seeds, onion, tomato and spices
Egg Curry is one of my favourites and is both easy and economical to make. Mum reckons it's also a great option when unexpected guests arrive at meal times as she always has eggs in the fridge, tinned tomatoes on the shelf and spices in the spice rack! I would recommend including the asafoetida which counteracts one of the, ahem, after-effects of boiled egg consumption!
Incidentally, on this occasion we used home-grown tomatoes puréed in the Magimix, in place of tinned tomatoes, in order to use up the last of the garden's summer bounty.
Egg curry
The Shahi Paneer uses a ready-made spice mix {gasp!}, combined with some additional spices and an arterie-clogging volume of butter and cream - hey, it is a paneer dish fit for the shahs! (Paneer, by the way, is a fresh Indian cheese, bland on it's own but great within tasty dishes like this one).
Shahi paneer
We had itended to make naan bread too, but didn't get around to it, and went for basmati rice instead. And I picked up a box of colourful goodies from our local Indian sweet shop, Mahavir Sweet Mart. I can't claim to know what they all were, as I picked based solely on colour and appearance! The selection did include my favourite freshly-made cashew-nut and pistachio roll! Yum!
Read about the meal from Dan's perspective, here.
* Yes I'm talking about you, Linda of With Knife and Fork and Jan from The Ample Cook and Naomi aka The Ginger Gourmand!
** Come on, at least be grateful I didn't cram "lachrymose" into there too!
Posts
8 comments:
Dan is doing pretty well out of this lark isn't he now...??!!! Looks like he was well fed yet again by you and Pete too. I made a cauliflower and potato yogurt curry off Mamta's Kitchen website last week to accompany Gastrogeek's smoked aubergine dahl - all very lovely.
*swoon* I am total curry addict and this looks fantastic. I could do with a better source of paneer than supermarket as it's hit and miss whether they have it. Or I could be really brave and make my own???
Sarah, you can sometimes find paneer in the main supermarkets, especially in areas with large Asian populations...
But best bet is if you have any small, local Indian food stores near you. Also best places to buy spices etc. at much lower prices than the main supermarkets!
AND yes, you can make it yourself - the texture is generally more crumbly but it tastes great. There's a recipe for making it on mum's site.
Looks gorgeous! I've always thought that Indian vegetarian food just might convert me to vegetarianism.... (but I can't do without pork!)
Its been a while since I made this dish. My mother would make it for us quite a bit and I had forgotten about it until now, may give it a whirl over the weekend, as it s great lunch grub.
No you definitely should have used lachrymose to describe the late shift.
Thanks once again Kavey, the curries were laaaaverly.
i adore egg curry as well- what a pantry-fridge friendly dish this is. btw mamta's recipes rock.
I will be making this, this weekend! It looks wonderful and very easy.
Post a Comment