A couple of useful vegetable curry recipes courtesy of my bud Mark. I’m a big fan of recipes that only specify quantities when they are important. I like to be given the freedom to express myself when cooking. Although recipes which specify quantities in slavish detail can be ignored they then tend to spoil your fun by sending out subliminal bad vibes from across the kitchen, as if to say “how very dare you”. My favourite cookbook, Fergus Henderson’s Nose To Tail Eating is parsimonious in its detail, with many recipes being only a couple of lines long. He shares this in common with the legendary French cookbook “Ma Gastronomie” by Fernand Point. Such recipes give you the confidence to know a dishes intention without taking the joy out of cooking. The counterpoint would probably be Delia or Heston – both cooks that like to leave nothing to chance.
Anyway, that’s enough blathering. here’s Mark’s recipes and very good curries they make too:
Dish 1: Fry cumin seeds, add a shit load of mashed garlic, fry a bit more, add tomato and then simmer the the chickpeas and potatoes in it with salt and chilli, with maybe extra ground cumin if you want. Make this spicy and thick. You could put the beans in this mebbe. Dish 2: Fry panchoporan (equal fennel, mustard, cumin, fenugreek and nigella (all unground)) OR a mixture of fennel, cumin and sesame, add sliced onions and fry till browning, add the spinach with salt and chilli and get it pretty tender, and I guess add the beans too if you want. Finish with lemon or amchoor if you got it. Keep this mild. It's quite nice to add chopped mint with the spinach and cook it down. Serve with breads and, critically, yoghurt. If I was getting fancy I'd do red lentils and rice too.
