Quick Indian Cooking

I feel bad for this doyenne of celebrity cookery. Gnarled by the press. Pooh-poohed by her peers.

Bored stiff of doling out mind-bogglingly perfect and precise recipes for years, she decided to reinvent herself as NBF of the common people, the time poor types. Except no one told her we’d moved on from the Seventies.We are still looking for shortcuts. But we also care about what we put in our bods. And the convenience/health equation is a delicately balanced one.

Of course it can get terribly complicated. Eat oily fish. But not farmed fish. From the Atlantic. Chicken is low fat. Unless battery farmed. Organic can mean just that or not.Tricky, that.She thinks we need “leadership”. In the form of a controversial cookbook that uses ready tinned beef mince and potato mash powder that is flying off our shelves.I think we need to make up our own blooming minds. Tinned beans? Yes. Powdered spud? No way, I say.
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Okay so I’ve been rubbish at blogging lately.

It’s because I’ve been too busy running desperately around my kitchen in a chicken costume protesting about the perils of factory farming in an attempt to win £25,000 cash.

Seriously though, I am surviving on very few brain cells these days. The festive season has kicked in.

Along with too much general good cheer and gold glitter, way too much champagne is being consumed.

By no means does this spell the end of quick Indian cooking as we know it. Quite the contrary, in fact.

You try drinking more than you should three nights in a row. What do you think you’ll need after that?

Alka seltzer?

Fried breakfast?

Bottles of coca cola?

A new liver, perhaps?

Try dal. Lentils boiled to death, then brought to life with a medley of spices tempered in buttery smooth ghee.

My personal favourite is this masoor dal laced with ginger and spinach. I can say from experience: this stuff cures like no other. And requires very few brain cells to make.

All in all, an excellent choice for tomorrow night’s supper when I’ll be nursing a sore head from tonight’s office Christmas party.

I won’t wear my chicken costume.

But I can’t promise I’ll behave.

At least there’ll be a pot of dal at the end of it all…
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It was a week of two halves.

The first was all festive glitter, mulled wine and the most amazing macaroons at a chi chi Christmas lights on party for this London shopping arcade.

The second saw me travel cattle class to the depths of North England for work.

The 3-hour train journey I can handle. Being rudely awoken by drunk girls while I’m asleep on six-inch, deep filled mattress in a boutique hotel I can deal with. But failing to find something decent for lunch in a 60s-style shopping parade is where I give up.

Convinced the only decent thing to do would be to get with the programme, my colleague dragged me off to a local chippie. Which evidently sustained the town’s entire school going population and had a lucrative sideline in Chinese specialties.

Fancy a deep fried sausage with Singapore noodles?

Me neither.

The stress of it made me crave curry. Anything with a hint of masala would do. I bought a chicken tikka wrap. Slices of pre-cooked chicken smothered in a ready made curry sauce and doused with raw onions. But I couldn’t stomach it.

I’m not usually the tiffin box type but I wish I’d brought along kala channa, little black chick peas with an spicy masala coating. Low fat, high in protein and fibre, these are the just the thing for snacking, alongside a full Indian meal or when hopes are fading fast.

A handful of this stuff on a bed of simple salad would have considerably lifted my spirits last week. Thankfully, I soon found a cafe that sold green tea and home made cake.

Not quite the masala hit I was hoping for but this I could live with…

This recipe serves 4:

250 gm little black chick peas

1 tsp minced ginger

1 tsp cumin

Half tsp ajwain seeds

Half tsp chilli powder

1 tbsp sunflower oil

Salt to taste

Soak the chick peas overnight or at least four hours in a large pan of cold water until they double up in size. Drain, refill with cold water and then boil on a high heat for 20 minutes until you can squish them really easily with your thumb and index finger. When it’s ready, drain and set aside.

In another large pan, bring the oil to heat over a high flame. When it is hot, add in order the ginger, cumin seeds, ajwain seeds, chilli powder. Stir for a minute so that the ginger starts turning golden yellow.

Now add the drained chickpeas, the salt and fry stirring vigorously on the high heat for about five minutes until the masala evenly coats them.

Eat hot with your meal, or cold straight out the fridge as a healthy snack. Or take in a tiffin box where food may not meet your exacting standards.

PS = This is quick Indian cooking on the basis that you can eat it for days in many guises. But if you know where I can buy ready soaked, cooked little chick peas, please please let me know. You know how much I LOVE soaking and boiling…

You can never have too many clothes, shoes, handbags… and kitchen gadgets.

My super turbo hand-held blender has never let me down. But off late I’ve noticed its general reluctance to turn roasted spices into anything finer than granulated sugar.

Old age perhaps? A spot of rebellion? It happens to the best of us…

It was time for change. I needed a mean machine that would blast even the toughest little spice rogues into tiny specks of dust. I needed a coffee grinder.

It would have to be:

• Compact: The kitchen cupboards are bursting with stuff
• Easy to clean: My poor man has enough on his plate already
• Simple to use: Anything more than the click of a button is far too exhausting

I settled for this one. My first mission – to make the spice mix powder for sambhar, a South Indian dal eaten widely with steamed idlis, fried dosas and even plain rice.

Armed and dangerous, I spent 10 whole minutes reducing dry roasted whole spices to fine sambhar powder. I got 150gms worth. Enough to last a year, to be precise.

This is the sambhar dal I made with it. Fragrant, delicious and simple.

This recipe feeds 4:

250 gm toor lentils

6 okras (lady finger)

1 medium carrot

1 small onion

1 tsp mustard seeds

2 sprigs of curry leaves

Half teaspoon turmeric powder

2 tsp sambhar powder

1 tablespoon of freshly grated coconut (Unsweetened dessicated will work too)

Pinch of asafoetida (hing)

1 tbsp + 1 tsp sunflower oil

Salt to taste

Wash the lentils thoroughly in a large pot, until the water runs clean. Bring it to boil with twice as much cold water, the turmeric powder and a teaspoon of oil.

As it bubbles up, lower the flame to a medium boil and cook the lentils until they lose shape and start integrating with the water. Don’t let them dry up and keep adding hot water to make sure you have a dal iof fairly thin consistency.

In the meantime, wash the whole okra under cold water and then chop into one centimetre discs. Peel and chop the carrot into half centimetre discs and then quarters. Chop the onion into little pieces.

Bring the remaining oil to heat in a small pot over a high flame. When it is hot, add the asafoetida and the mustard seeds. As they sizzle up, add the curry leaves and fry them for 20 seconds.

Next add the vegetables and the sambhar powder and stir fry on a high heat, mixing the ingredints together well.

When the dal is cooked, stir this vegetable mix into it along with the coconut. Simmer together for five minutes and serve piping hot.

PS = Why stop at a coffee grinder? Use a pressure cooker to make the dal. It takes 5-7 minutes after the first whistle.