Sort Of, but Not Quite

I had never made a curry from scratch before Wednesday. When I was a student, I was of the opinion that the only way to have curry was to either arrange a delivery or visit one of the many fine curry establishments in Leeds, or to open a jar of sauce, shake it all over some chicken and eat with some boil in the bag rice. Following those lost cooking years, I have lived always lived with at least one of A, F or Sam who can all cook the most delicious homemade curries (F has even been known to pick the whole spices out before serving for extra eating pleasure) so there really was no need for me to cook one! But resting on what others can do for me is not what this year is about, so I decided to cook my very favourite curry: chick pea masala (usually brought to me by Nazam's of Woodhouse). Never wanting to do things by halves, I chose to make some chapattis from scratch as well.

As usual I didn't have all the ingredients necessary (no coconunt milk, just some cream). And I used half fresh cherry tomatoes and half canned tomatoes (because the cherry tomatoes needed eating up as much as my desire to use fresh ingredients, although the flavour they gave the curry turned out to be very good).

Just when the spices had all gone in and the tomatoes were becoming nice and 'stewy' and it was beginning to smell like a proper curry, A and H turned up to be fed. I'm afraid I wasn't a very good hostess after they arrived: I was getting to grips with making chapattis. The recipe for these claims a ratio of half flour to water, but I had to add in two or three tablespoons of flour after the water went in before I could really knead it. As I was getting ready to roll them out, prior to cooking them and serving everything up, I tried my curry and although it was flavoursome, it did not taste right for a curried dish. Knowing nothing about the wizardry of spices, I gave A a teaspoon and he said 'it tastes like sausage casserole'. I told him 'fix it', and he shook my spice jars over the pan and made everything better. I missed what he was doing as I was rolling out the chapattis with tender care to make sure that they didn't stick or tear. I suspect I was making this look like hard work, as A then offered to fry the chapattis as I rolled them out and passed them to him.

The curry and chapattis turned out well. Both the boys had seconds (Sam had been out when the others were round, but later returned and ate nearly half a pan full), so I'm counting it a win. Although I'm not sure about recommending the recipe, as it needed adjusting.

I made a pudding out of the meringues from last week's recipes, which I clamped together using whipped double cream and a tiny bit of peppermint flavouring and food colouring and then I drizzled them with white chocolate. I do commend this to you.

However, this talk about  meringues has probably not distracted you from the fact that I became my own sous chef halfway through cooking the curry supper, much more so than when A and I made gnocchi, although I am very grateful to him for preventing me from serving a 'sausage casserole'. So this week, I'm docking half my points and ending up on 24 recipes.