At the risk of getting ahead of myself, I think spring has actually sprung! Today saw glorious sunshine with not a rain cloud in sight, a blessed relief after all the inclement weather we have had to endure for what seems like an age.
So lovely was it I decided to have a potter in my garden. After all the rain and storms my garden is certainly the worse for wear, I have lost a couple of trees and some mature shrubs and my lawn is like a quagmire. Joyfully I spotted a ladybird amongst the daffodils and my little frog beside some garden pots.
Ladybirds hibernate through winter and sleep through until March or April, when they start to reappear in our gardens it's normally a good sign that spring is on its way.
I don't have a pond in my garden but I do have a water feature which over the years has been home to several frogs. During the winter frogs will leave the water and find an underground tunnel, leaf litter or a large log pile. Here they will hide away from predators and enter hibernation. Frogs emerge from their sleep and travel back to the same pond they came from, this can happen anywhere between January and April.
Each winter I create a corner of logs and leaves in my garden in the hope that my frog will hibernate there, Glenn calls it my 'frog hotel'. I can't be sure that the little frog I came across today is the same one as last year but I'd like to think so.
Well, I don't know about you but having used my beef brisket firstly in a stew and secondly in ratatouille hotch potch pie, I still had enough left for a third dinner. This is predominantly how I shop and cook, I visit my butcher once a week and buy one or two pieces of meat or a free range chicken, I then use other ingredients such as vegetables, pulses, rice and pasta to make the meat stretch further. It is a historical fact that the best food in the world has always come from communities under massive financial pressure! I would also like to say that whilst I am feeding a family of three, both Glenn and Bert have big appetites so effectively I am feeding a family of four/five.
I always worry that by writing the word curry in a recipe a large proportion of readers will automatically conjure up images of hot, spicy food. Curry comes from the Tamil word kari, which was originally a thin, soup-like, spiced dressing for meat and vegetables. Kari was a gentle, aromatic stew which changed when chillies originally found in Mexico and south America, were introduced to Asia. But it was us British who favoured really hot curries, the Victorians liked their curries 'hot as the hinges of hells front door!'
Spices have been used since time immemorial, ginger in gingerbread, cinnamon in mince pies, nutmeg in custard, cloves in apple pie, and not only in cooking but also for medicinal purposes. 'Spicy' doesn't necessarily mean 'hot'. Spices should enhance food with their warmth, sweetness and pungency and we shouldn't be afraid to use them!
Beef curry
Recipe
1 can chickpeas
A large handful of ripe cherry tomatoes
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 red chilli, finely sliced (optional)
1 tsp turmeric
1 ball stem ginger, finely sliced
2 cardamom pods, crushed dicard shells and use only the seeds
Preheat oven 200c/gas mark 6
In a food processor blend tomatoes, garlic, stem ginger, turmeric, chilli and cardamom seeds until you have a loose paste
Mix with half a pint of water
Put beef and chickpeas in an ovenproof dish and cover with sauce
Cover with tin foil and place in the oven for 45 minutes
I served this with chips and chutney but of course it would be equally delicious served with rice or chapattis. The flavours of this curry were warm, sweet and intense, it was utterly delicious.
'I'm going to scream this from the mountain top, there is no such thing as 'a curry'. There's six kazillion different kinds of curry, when someone asks how to make chicken curry, I have to ask 'which one?'
-Aarti Sequeira
Love Donna xxxxxxxxx
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