Friday's eatings

Today (and yesterday) I have been mostly eating....

A variation on Aloo-Sag (curried potatoes and spinach) recommended by my mother - I had a surplus of tinned tomatoes and frozen spinach and this has taken care of them nicely.

First I toasted some cumin seeds, then ground them up with some cayenne pepper and a good dose of smoked paprika.

I sweated two medium sized onions and three cloves of garlic (all finely chopped) in some butter and olive oil, with a pinch of salt to stop it all browning.

I had a couple of carrots left over in the fridge, so they too were finely chopped and sweated down in the oil and butter.

Once the carrots went in I added the spices, stirred vigourously and stuck the lid back on the pot while I messed about defrosting frozen lumps of spinach in the microwave.

In the mean time I started boiling 6 small spuds chopped in half.

The spinach went into the curried veg. mix, and I added half a pint of chicken stock. I let this simmer while I rinsed off a tin of butter beans (again, it was what was hanging around the kitchen without a dedicated purpose in life....).

In went the butter beans, along with two tins of chopped italian tomatoes.

A note on chopped tomatoes: Napolina for preference - I tend to buy loads of tins whenever I see them on offer - failing this Cirio are very good, also Italian, and are about half the price.

This simmered away a bit more while I drained the par-boiled spuds, they went in along with another half pint of chicken stock as I was concerned it was getting too thick.

Lid back on - leave it for about an hour.

It needed loads of salt - I always under season things. Plus, although it had a great background heat and depth of flavour from the spices - I felt it needed an extra kick, so I added loads of dried chili flakes - Yowzer! Now it tastes great!

Seeing as the six small spuds got eaten in the first two portions - since then I have been cooking spuds seperately and covering them in the vegtable curry mixture. Bloody marvelous.