Chicken Curry

Here's my take on curry. I've cooked a lot of curry over the years and it gets closer and closer to my ideal.

I like my curry quite liquid, melt in the mouth meat, fruity and above all hot. Cooked in pressure cooker.

This makes a full pressure cooker of curry!

2-3 onions diced
4 cloves garlic
2-3 inches ginger
2 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp ground coriander
1 tbsp turmeric
2 tbsp Jamaican curry powder
1 tbsp dried scotch bonnets
Good handful of salt
250g sultanas
Some veg diced (sweet potato, aubergine etc)
Red pepper x2 (diced)
2 scotch bonnets (optional)
500 mushrooms (quartered)
250ml creme fraiche
8 chicken thighs (whole)
Oil (coconut or Palm oil - different taste, both good)

Fry onions, ginger and garlic until translucent
Add spices and fry off for 2 mins
Add a little water to stop it catching
Add all veg, sultanas and chicken and stir until coated
Add water until pot is 1/3 full (more for more sauce but no more than halfway)

Put lid on pot and bring to pressure then turn down to low.
Pressure cook for 1 hour then leave to sit without removing kid for 1 hour

Allow to cool then break up the meat and remove the bones.
Add creme fraiche and heat up and serve with rice.

Ox cheek bourgignon

It's been a while since I've posted but I've been cooking again with some good results that I thought I would share...

For some reason I had a hankering for some really rich comfort food but wanted to do it as healthily as possible. I spotted ox cheeks on the meat counter so I thought I'd give it a go - and they were amazing. I used my trusty pressure cooker for this but you could also just bake in oven.

This recipe will make a large vat of food - we've had around 10 portions so far before its started to get low! That's not too heavy on the meat (deliberately so adjust your meat/veg balance to taste)

• 1kg Ox cheeks
• 1 bottle half decent red wine
• 2 leeks
• 3 red onions
• 6 big shallots
• 3 sticks celery
• 2 sweet potatoes
• 1 tin anchovies in oil 
• Fresh thyme (handful)
• Dried mixed herbs (handful)
• Bay leaves (6)
• 500g button mushrooms 
• Olive oil
• Salt
• Plain Flour
• Cherry tomatoes on the vine
• Rice

I cook all this in the pressure cooker as I'm lazy and don't want to do lots of washing up. Chop red onions and shallots and fry in plenty of olive oil until they start to caramelise.

Meanwhile chop the ox cheeks which are crazy tough - I used a combination of a cleaver and a bread knife. Dice into cubes then cover them in flour and add to onions to fry off. Add more oil if necessary.
Fry on a low heat as the flour will catch - keep scraping the bottom of the pan periodically so it stays relatively clear.

When happy the meat is browned, add a little water (1 cup) to stop it burning then chop and add the leeks. Add the button mushrooms. Add the diced sweet potato. Chop and add the celery. Chop and add the anchovies including the oil they are in. Add all the herbs (chop the thyme first) including a good handful of salt.

Add the bottle of wine then put the lid on the pressure cooker and bring up to maximum pressure.

Once at pressure, turn the heat down to minimum and let it cook for 1 hour.

If you don't have a pressure cooker I'd suggest trying this in a lidded casserole at about 200degrees Celsius for about 3 hours (but check it periodically as that's just a guess!)

I recommend serving with the best small on the vine tomatoes - take lid off the pressure cooker and snip the tomatoes into groups of 3 or 4. Add to the top of the pan and replace the lid. Let sit without heat for another hour.

After this point you should have meat so tender it dissolves in the mouth.

Serve with rice.

It's amazing - definitely going to do this again. Very very rich but full of veggies and even young children love it.

Healthy breakfast

A healthy breakfast without carbs is pretty hard - given the usual suspects of toast, bagels, cereal....

I recently started with a personal trainer and here's what he recommended:

3 eggs
half an avocado

The whites should be cooked with the yolks almost raw. Fortunately this is how I love my eggs although I really struggle to get them like this anywhere in the US....

Here's how I make them - its real simple...

Heat the oil - use grapeseed oil - on low/medium heat
Crack the eggs and just leave them in the pan sunny side up until the whites are pretty much cooked, and going heavily brown around the edges.
Flip them for 10 seconds max and then turn out.
Add salt and eat!

I eat these every day - no ill effects so far...!

Saag Gosht (lamb with spinach)

Quick and easy Saag recipe - loads of these all over the internet but many are odd, wrong, and I'm sure they're fine in their own right but not what I would call saag...

Plus mine is much easier! But you need a pressure cooker.

This makes 2 big bowls for hungry people on a zero carb diet - or serve with bread/rice and it will happily feed 4 people

• 1lb lamb - trim the fat, or not, as you prefer. Cut to one inch cubes (ish) and include the bones
• 1 bag frozen spinach
• 1 white onion
• 1 inch ginger
• 4 cloves garlic
• cumin
• coriander
• turmeric
• chili powder (optional)
• cardamom pods - about 10 (optional)
• olive oil
• salt

Add the oil to the pressure cooker and heat

Chop garlic, ginger and onion fairly finely and add to pan - saute for a few mins while you chop the meat.
(sometimes I add thai fish sauce at this point for a meatier flavour but not essential - if you do, just fry it off until the strong aroma has nearly gone)
Add 1 tbsp cumin, coriander, and about half a tbsp turmeric.
Crack the cardamom pods if using and throw them in
Roughly 1tbsp of salt (to taste)
Don't stress over the quantities - slight variations make for interesting taste changes each time!
Add the Chili powder if you want it - I add 2 tbsp hot chili powder for a hot saag. You can reduce this to 1 tsp (or leave it out entirely) depending on how hot you like your food.
Stir this through and brown the meat - a few minutes is all

Add the frozen spinach.

Put the lid on the pressure cooker and get it up to temperature then leave it for 20-30 minutes on the lowest setting your hob will do. The water in the frozen spinach will provide the steam. I'm usually hungry by this point so it rarely gets allowed 30 minutes...

When you come back to it, check the colour of the spinach - it should be brown/green not green. None of this nonsense about adding the spinach late, or not cooking it for more than 5 minutes. If you want a warm spinach salad then thats fine, but its not saag....And don't puree it either. Frozen chopped spinach is perfect.

Tastes great if you leave it overnight too.

Mackerel Pate

Ingredients

500g smoked mackerel
300ml creme fraiche
2 scotch bonnets
1 red onion (large)
juice of one lemon

Break up the mackerel, chop the scotch bonnets, chop the onion and add all except the creme fraiche to a blender.

Pulse until it is broken up, then add the creme fraiche to get the consistency you want. I like it quite loose so add all of it.

Serve with warm crusty bread and a greek salad (cubed cucumber, olives, tomatos and I prefer sweet peppers to goats cheese - dress with balsamic and good cold pressed olive oil)

Tomato and chili sauce

This is pretty feisty - make at your peril!

Ingredients
2 bags of tomatoes (roughly 10-12)
heaped tablespoon of hot chili powder
2 large onions
2 peppers (I used orange and red last time)
3-4 cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon of paprika
1-2 tablespoons of salt
3-4 tablespoons of palm oil
1 stock cube of choice (I used vegetable last time I made this)

Blend onions until fine
Fry onions -  in pressure cooker without lid on -  gently in palm oil for about 10 minutes
Add garlic (chopped for stronger flavour, crushed otherwise) for 5 minutes
Add paprika and chili - fry off for 5 minutes
Add stock cube
Blend tomatoes and peppers until roughly chopped
Add tomatoes and peppers to onions and stir in
Add lid to pressure cooker and bring to max pressure
Turn heat down to minimum and cook for 30minutes to 1 hour (less means fresher, rawer tomatoes)
Season to taste

Serve 2 ladles of sauce with rice

We normally make a batch of this and it will last us about 3-4 days (2 people)

Pork tenderloin with creamed leeks, parsnip mash and sweet potato

to come...