Twenty Six

And, just like that, we’re halfway through the year. To celebrate, I baked a cake.

Easy Almost-Korma Curry

It has been a very long time since I’ve last posted a recipe, but I was asked for this one recently, and figured that, since I am typing it out, I may as well share it here.

I call this Almost-Korma, as it cannot be considered to be a true Korma, due to the lack of tomato and my methods. As my daughter is allergic to tomato, I do not cook with any and often find other ways to match the taste.

Ingredients

Method

2-4 T coconut oil Two large onions, chopped 1 medium ginger root, finely chopped 1 cup cashew nuts, raw 1 can coconut milk 1 can coconut cream 1t cumin seeds 1t ground cumin (or to taste) 1t ground coriander (or to taste) 1T curry leaves (or to taste) 1T sugar (or to taste) Salt to taste 2t garam marsala 1t ground chilli (to taste) Paneer cheese, cut into blocks Soy chunks, soaked – may be replaced with chicken pieces for a non-vegetarian meal

1. Add some coconut oil to a large pot/sauce pan and melt over low heat. Add the chopped onions and cook until soft. 2. Turn up the heat and caramelise the onions slightly. Add the ginger, cashew nuts and spices and fry lightly. You may need to add a little bit of water to make this a little more saucy. Now add the soy chunks and fry lightly until the soy has absorbed some of the flavours 3. Add the coconut milk and cream and simmer slowly for about 10 minutes 4. Add the paneer and simmer for another 10-15 minutes. Serve warm with basmati rice, sambals and naan.

Eight

The daughter has recently started baking muffins on a Sunday for her school lunches during the week. This week, she baked beautiful vanilla muffins with chocolate centres. Quite impressive, considering the state of our house currently.

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I made a thing. An eating thing perfect for the hot weather we’re experiencing.

What’s in it:

• 1 tin Caramel treat (caramelised condensed milk)
• A bit of milk
• 1 large tin litchis in syrup
• 250ml cream
• 1 ½ packet of Tennis (coconut) biscuits

How you do it:

1. Mix the caramel with the milk and blend well until it is slightly runny.
2. Drain the litchis, but do not discard the syrup. Break up the litchis into smallish pieces.
3. Place a layer of the tennis biscuits into a fridge tart friendly dish, and spread a layer of the caramel mixture over the biscuits.
4. Spread half the litchi pieces over the layer of caramel, mixing slightly.
5. Repeat the layer of biscuits, caramel and litchis. Top with another layer of biscuits.
6. Evenly pour about ¾ of the syrup over the entire dish.
7. Whip the cream to a thick spreading consistency. Spread over the top layer of biscuits. Decorate with whipped cream and cherries and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

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Strawberry, walnut and wasabi mayo sushi. Homemade, yo!

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This must be the biggest biscuit I have ever seen.

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Cinnamon and Marmite, a few of my favourite things on my pantry shelf.

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I plan out our meals for the week every Sunday morning, and write it down on a notepad on the side of the fridge. This helps massively with ensuring that we do actually eat a meal every day and relieves the stress of ‘what to cook’. Sometimes we swap the days out and we sometimes veer off the menu, but since I have started doing this regularly, we’ve eaten a lot more healthily and stopped getting so much take-out.

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Sorry for the blurry, but Rorschach cake!

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I still have my first cook book, very obviously printed in the 70. Always fun to page through and enjoy the retro.

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Feta and cheddar muffins for the coming week’s lunchboxes.

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I baked biscuits today.

I used to bake all the time. I am not sure why I stopped, but I realised that I kinda missed it, so I will try and bake more often again.

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Dinner. Playing with the PhotoGrid app on my phone.

Bunny Chow for super lazy people

I really should not even admitting to using some of the ingredients I used, but hey, it is Friday night, I feel like having a bunny chow and I am super lazy, so I used really easy ingredients and improvised mostly from the pantry. I used this recipe as a very rough guideline, using a measurement style that is more up my alley.

This recipe yields 4 very big bunnies, could easily feed 6-8 people instead.

Ingredients:

• 2 Onions, chopped
• 2 Potatoes, chopped
• 1 tin tomato mix – Indian style
• 1 tin tomato and garlic mix <—this I added by accident, you could probably leave it
• 2 tins mixed vegetables in brine, drained
• 1 tin red kidney beans, drained and washed
• 1 tin butter beans, drained
• Water
• 1 stick cinnamon
• 4-5 cardamom pods
• 1t cumin
• 1t coriander
• 2T sugar
• 2 loaves of bread

Method:

1. Fry the onion until soft. Stir in the spices and the kidney beans and fry for another minute or so.
2. Add the sugar, the tomato mix and the mixed veggies, and some water, simmer for about an hour and a half, stirring every now and again.
3. Add the butter beans and simmer for another 30 minutes.
4. Cut the loaves of bread in half and hollow them out. Dish curry into hollows, top with plain yogurt and serve with sambals.

Some notes: The curry mixture should have some liquid to be absorbed into the bread. Using half a loaf renders a massive meal – you would probably have lots of left overs.

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Double roast

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A little decadence at the end of the day. Chocolate chai, topped with whipped cream and cinnamon.

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I’ve been craving cheesecake for some time, and finally had a piece. It was wonderful.

In other news, my daughter will be visiting the UK in October. We attended her visa appointment this morning, which made it more real than real.

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As it is some sort of baking day, I made cheddar and feta muffins.

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Pretty cupcake.