Dressed in my grungiest outfit, I made it to a plant nursery with hubby in tow.

I wasn’t fooling anyone. Three cries of “look honey, basil/coriander/jasmine” later, a kindly salesperson walked over with a thinly-veiled smiled and asked how he could help.

We wanted a creeper. Preferably something that grew bushy and tall. Without regular watering, sunlight or attention.

Or soil for that matter. We were talking about a three square feet, moss-ridden balcony here.

Finally we settled for a medium hedge. I brought it back and shoved it into a planter aided by a cheese slicer, kitchen scissors and amused neighbours.

Greenfingers Day, thankfully, is an annual event in my home. But I hope summer is here to stay.

With the first warm days, raw mangoes have made it to my Indian grocer cum spice shop. I made a light, sweet and sour dal made with them called Tauk Dal. The dal-making technique here involves boiling the lentils in lots of water in one go to get a watery, light texture.

Enjoy this with Basmati rice and a cool glass of Rose Blush. Preferably while gazing out of the kitchen at your new, bushy hedge.

Feeds 2:

• 75 gm Masoor dal (red lentils)
• 1 raw green mango
• Half tsp Nigella/black onion seeds
• 2 green finger chillies, slit
• Half tsp turmeric powder
• 1 tsp sunflower oil
• Half tsp white sugar
• 1 tbsp sunflower oil

Wash the masoor dal thoroughly in a medium pot under a cold tap, until the water runs clear. Add cold water three-quarters up the side of the pot, mix in the turmeric and bring to boil on a high flame.

In the meantime, slice the mangoes lengthwise, quarter and peel off the skin with a sharp knife.

Make sure you watch the dal so it doesn’t boil over. If it starts bubbling up, take off the flame for a few seconds. Gently skim off and discard any foam that builds up.

The lentils will go soft and squidy in 20 minutes. The water will still be seperate from them. Now, make the tadka.

Heat the oil and when it starts sizzling, add the nigella seeds, the green chillies and the raw mangoes. Fry for a few seconds until the mango is sealed and pale brown on its side.

Mix this and the sugar into the dal for about five minutes, add salt to taste, and serve. The consistency will be light and wonderfully easy on the tummy.

I’ll be trying this delicious, South Indian version of mango dal next.

As we settled into our crisp onion bhajis, I let out a gasp. I had suddenly remembered my recent brush with international foodie fame and fortune.

I’m in Olive, I declared with a flourish.

Uncle one raised an eyebrow. Uncle two gave me a grunt. Aunt Madge just said: “Who’s Olive?”

Great. Only, like, the best food magazine published by the BBC. Read by a gazillion people, none of whom I actually know.

They asked me about my favourite cheap eat in London - the £6.95 eat as much as you want lunch buffet at Diwana Bhelpuri House in Euston. But if you’re not in London, this information is about as useful to you as your local weather to me.

So here are my top tips for spotting a really good Indian buffet instead:

1. Elderly Indians: No self respecting elderly Indian will pay money to eat poorly cooked version of the food they eat at home
2. Hot chapattis/rotis: There is little point in rotis that have languished on the buffet table, turning rock hard and stone cold
3. Wide selection: Surely, the whole point of the whole exercise is to eat until you can barely move, a huge meal that you would be nuts to cook at home?

• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 tsp cumin
• 2 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
• 4 cups of water
• Juice extracted from 1 inch diameter of fresh tamarind or Half a tbsp of the ready tamarind paste

Tadka:

• Half tsp mustard seeds
• Half tsp cumin seeds
• 1 whole dry red chilli
• 1 sprig curry leaves
• 1 tsp sunflower oil

Bring the water to boil in a large pot. Smash the garlic, whole cumin and ground pepper up in a pestle and mortar. When the water starts boiling, mix in this paste and the tamarind extract. Lower the flame and simmer for 10 minutes. When the time is almost up, heat the oil in a small pot and sizzle the tadka ingredients for a few seconds until they turn a darker shade. Finally mix the tadka into the soup and add salt to taste. Drink this piping hot in a large mug and let it work it magic.

Now, this is a tragedy of epic proportions. There is only one thing I do better than Indian cooking.

Talking.

I sat at my desk, in silence. Simmering gently. With only grunts and sign language to communicate. One grunt, yes. Two grunts, no. Two fingers, leave me in peace.

Clients and colleagues heaped sympathy on me. The husband rushed to the pub to celebrate. I stared at 12 bullet points in despair. Only a simple Indian meal would now lift my spirits off the ditch outside the office.

It had to be chicken curry and rice. Even on a vocally agreeable day, chicken curry is pure genius in a large pot. It takes about 45 minutes to make, even quicker in my pressure cooker. I can make a massive amount of it with little extra effort. And any extras can be frozen for use during a later meal.

Ticks all my boxes for busy bee Indian cooking.

This wonderful, basic chicken curry recipe is from the Basu Kolkata kitchen and can be tweaked for variety with the addition of whole garam masala in the hot oil or some plain yogurt with the tomatoes.

There’s only one way to voice my satisfaction at the end of this meal. Grunt.

Feeds 2 (two times):

• 8 chicken thighs and drumsticks (about 750 gms)
• 3 medium tomatoes
• 2 large onions
• 4 fat cloves garlic
• 1 inch ginger
• 1 tsp chilli powder
• Half tsp turmeric powder
• 1.5 tsp cumin powder
• 1.5 tsp coriander powder
• 1 tsp garam masala
• Handful of fresh coriander
• 2 tbsp sunflower oil
• Salt to taste

Skin the chicken, roughly chop the onions and tomatoes, and finely dice the ginger and garlic. Heat a large, non-stick pan with the oil over a high flame. You could also use a pressure cooker.

When the oil is sizzling hot, add in the onions and fry for five minutes until pale gold and soft. Then throw in your ginger and garlic and keep frying for another five minutes until the whole lot is a darker shade of gold. If at any point the masalas start sticking to the bottom of the pan, just add a little water and scrape off.

Now mix in all the powders except garam masala, and the tomatoes. Keep frying this on a high heat for another five minutes until the tomatoes disintegrate and the pungent smell of the spices calms down to a softer fragrance.

Then, throw in your chicken, and stir like a maniac until it is white and coated with the masalas all over. Next, add just about enough hot water to submerge the chicken pieces, cover and cook on a high flame for 20 minutes until the chicken is cooked through. Just make sure you stir the chicken every five minutes or so.

If you use a pressure cooker, as I did, this takes about 6-7 minutes after the first whistle. But you won’t get a deep, red colour like the chicken curry in my new video.

Finally, stir in the garam masala, salt and a handful of fresh coriander. Serve with plain, steamed Basmati and a spicy pickle of your choice.

I now have a dinner party for 10 to look forward to, for which I have cooked an entirely Bengali meal of kosha mangsho, aloo kophir dalna, cholar dal and doi begun.

But I am afraid. Very afraid.

Will I forget the long-stemmed lilies at work?

Will I be exposed as a lying fake with a bleeding knee as I burn the food while trying to reheat it in the oven?

Will I get drunk before dinner’s served again this time as a result of an antihistamine overdose and not excessive alcohol consumption? 

This domestic goddess thing is way too stressful on a day like this. Wish me luck. Gulp!   

An award? For Blogs? In Britain? How fantastic.

Not like I bet money on winning anything. I grew up winning consolation prizes for failing to win and progress prizes for not failing. Even a beauty contest entry ended in a third prize - something about my lackadaisical response to the malignant malaria outbreak at the time.

(I mean, God, I was 17. Not like I wasn’t worried enough about the boy who didn’t fancy me and the boy who did…)

It would be nice to win something. Once. If you think me worthy (or feel sorry for me) please nominate me. Nominations are welcome from the UK and beyond. Oh, and I loosely fit in the arts and entertainment categorythere isn’t one for food).

Whether from the UK and beyond, you may have heard of Atul Kochhar? The only Indian chef with a Michelin star honour? As it’s cooking from cookbooks week, I decided to try one of his lamb recipes from Delicious magazine here in the UK.

As I flicked through the article, I read about Atul being faithful to the origins of each recipe. Great. Lamb curry with chickpeas. Superb. Takes three hours to make, plus overnight soaking.

Gulp!

The last time I spent three hours making anything, it spent two and three quarters of an hour in the oven. Baking.

Anyway, undeterred by this small problem i rallied on soon noticing that he’d used dried chickpeas and cooked them before chucking them into the lamb.

See this is where we have to be smart. Life’s too short and busy and a tin of chick peas is a far superior choice. Here is the recipe, which I have tried to be faithful to (bar raw chick peas) and it was delicious:

3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
3 cm fresh ginger, finely grated
1 tin of chickpeas
4 bay leaves
4 green cardamom pods
7 cloves
1 medium onion, sliced
1 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp chilli powder
2 tsp garam masala
2 large tomatoes, chopped
6 lamb chops
Fresh coriander, to garnish (optional)
2 tbsp vegetable oil
Salt to taste

Heat the oil in a deep pot and when hot, add the bay leaves, cardamoms and cloves. When they sizzle, add the onion and cook until translucent and soft. Stir in the  ginger and garlic and fry for two minutes.

Add the spices, the tomatoes and lamb. Cover the lamb with hot water, bring to the boil and then simmer for 30 minutes.

Add the chickpeas and simmer until the lamb is cooked (approximately another 30 minutes).To finish, stir in the garam masala and salt and garnish with coriander before serving.

For a start, Bollywood is as popular here as eating guinea pigs, drinking pina coladas and colourful fiestas. Secondly, my in-laws run a children´s charity which not only educates, clothes and cares for disadvantaged young children but also operates a vocational traning centre teaching them basic skills like cooking, dressmaking and carpentry.

Isai, the chef and professor of the cooking class let me take a morning session on Indian food. Hubby agreed to translate and take pictures. And voila, an Indo-Andes cooking class was born.

The easy part was working out what ingredients I could get here: cummin, fresh coriander, some whole spices. The tricky part was working out how to keep the kids interested given my broken Spanish and inexperience of cooking at an altitude of 3300m above sea level.

We made Tomato Chicken, a slightly dry and sweet dish that´s best eaten with rotis. We bought all the plates so the children could sample the food (with rice) instead of seeing it sold to other hungry bods. The class was a resounding success even though I firmly refused to do any Bollywood singing, dancing or performing.   

Interestingly, they don´t use cloves and cinnamon in savoury cooking in Peru. My little students were ace at chopping, stirring and eating the food.

Here is the recipe to serve 12 little mouths or six grown ups:

12 pieces of chicken (roughly 1.5kgs)

4 large onions

4 large tomatoes

4 fat cloves of garlic

3″ ginger

1 tsp turmeric

Half tsp chilli powder

Whole spices: 8 cloves, 2″ cinnamon, 4 bay leaves, 2 tsp whole cummin

Fresh coriander to serve

Salt to taste

3 tbsp oil

Two cups of water

Chop the onions and tomatoes roughly. Heat the oil and fry the whole spices. When they start spluttering, add the onions and fry until brown.

In the meantime, chop the ginger and garlic finely. We used a grater for speed.

When the onions are brown add the garlic and ginger and fry for a while until they start going brown too. Now add the turmeric and chilli powder, frying the mixture until the powders lose their pungent smell.

If at any time the mixture starts sticking to the bottom of the pan, add a little water and stir.

Then add the tomatoes and fry on a high heat until they disintegrate. Add a cup of hot water, lower the flame and let the mixture simmer.

Slowly, holes will form in the mixture and it will start oozing oil. When most of the water has evaporated, add the chicken pieces, raise the flame to high and stir them into the masalas.

Add another cup of water, cover and simmer until the chicken is cooked. This dish should be dry and slightly sweet. It is best eaten with bread.

We arrived in Lima on 27th January and I kicked off our break tucking into a giganormous plate of barbequed cow´s hearts. There goes my award for Hindu of the year.  

We are off to Huancayo this afternoon, the Andean valley town home to my mum and dad-in-law. It´s a gruelling six and half hours through the mountains, which inevitably involves a landslide, travel sickness and Pollo a la brasa (roast chicken… don´t ask).

Once I get there, I plan to cook salt and spice-free food for my mum-in-law. But also, spread the word about authentic Indian food using sign language and very broken Spanish. I hope the Huancayinos are ready for the onslaught.

The good news is that my in-laws are way less technologically challenged than my considerably younger mother and have embraced the world of broadband and working computers with ease. This means I can try to update QIC even in the Andes, with creative Indian recipes that don´t require a speciality store for ingredients.

Mirar este Espacio, as they say (I think) over here…     

But this year, it’s different.

I am edging closer to 30 by turning 29 and as far as I’m concerned, it ain’t no cause for celebration.

While I’m going all coy on the number, I thought it would be sensible to send my hubby a modest list of my preferred birthday presents (just thinking about it now makes me cringe). So this is what I send him:

If anyone asks… this is what I want for my birthday:

The Bharti Vyas Ayurveda Book
A £25 Mac make up voucher
A Waterstones voucher for cookbooks
A new garlic press (a really good one)

xx

I should have seen this coming, but within seconds he had forwarded this to all our friends, his brother and my sister, adding:

1 carat diamond platinum ring
Boob job to size DD
Driving licence (or driver)
2 babies, a boy and a girl

So while I sit back as the centre of attention for the wrong reasons and butt of all jokes, I thought I’d share with you how I know I’m ageing:

1. I like brussels sprouts and spinach
2. I enjoy trips to the countryside
3. I refer to anyone under 22 as “youth”
4. I call the noise police on neighbours partying beyond 3:00am

I will head home soon to sulk…