the pumpkin harvest, quick pumpkin and coconut curry, and a winter planting frenzy

Now we’re rural, it seems that a constant electricity supply is not something that can be taken for granted. Today, for example, someone somewhere turned out the power, all day long. I took it as a sign to give the garden some attention. Luckily our friend and nanny is staying, and she actually knows what to do with a garden fork, plus she has significantly more strength and stamina than me. She pulled the weeds and old plants from the greenhouse, turned the soil, shoveled in compost and then planted neat rows of salad and red onions. In the outside beds went broad beans and broccoli, and a suspect a fair bit more besides from my bill at the garden centre. The boys assisted way more eagerly than if it had been me in charge of the gardening. Probably because a sense of confidence in what you are doing inspires participation (whereas I tend to mill around, half heartedly pulling at the weeds before giving up and deciding to go and bake some cookies). The boys collected piles of leaves from underneath the old oak for mulch. It all looks very promising. Provided the chooks don’t get in amongst it.

I got a light scolding for letting the sheep into the garden. Admittedly it was all starting to look a bit friendly as the sheep marched straight onto courtyard and peered in the back door, then sauntered off to eat the roses. ‘You’re getting them into bad habits’ I was told. ‘They will wreck the garden’. All this of course is true. I do not always have good instincts with these things.

In amongst the frenzy of winter planting, the pumpkins were harvested. Now, I don’t normally enjoy cutting into pumpkins. In fact, I’d go as far as to say, that cutting the things up is a major disincentive to cooking with pumpkin, but today I was eager to crack into one. If I was a proper blogger, I would have taken some photos of the rather beautiful orange interior. Next time.

Pumpkin and coconut curry

Ingredients
Flesh of one pumpkin (or half if it’s a biggie)
4 -5 cloves of garlic
1 chili
1 tsp finely chopped ginger
Handful of cherry tomatoes
2 spring onions
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tin coconut cream
1 tbsp coconut oil
Handful of mint.

Method

Fry the spring onion, garlic, chili and spice in coconut oil. Add the pumpkin and brown it slightly, Add the coconut cream and simmer for 30 minutes until soft and sticky. Mint to serve. Good with rice, and chutney, and a sprinkle of slivered almonds.

roast chicken, ginger and coconut curry and buttery, gingery, sweet sticky chicken sticks

If you are having a bit of a trying day then it is an excellent idea to get a chicken in the oven roasting. If for no other reason than the fact that the smell of roast chicken is extremely reassuring. It is a nourishing hug of a smell that allows you to potter around dealing with all manner of dramas, safe in the knowledge there will be something good to eat come the end of the day.

I wasn’t sure what the afternoon was going to bring yesterday, there were some pretty dicey moments in the day let me tell you. However, as it turned out there was enough of a a lull in the poxter fiesta to throw together a very quick roast chicken curry. This is not the stuff that masterchef dreams are made of. Just look at those great hacked up lumps of carrot. Neither is the photo very stylie or artfully lit.. but it tasted just fine, almost as good as the well deserved glass of wine that accompanied it.

Fresh chilli, garlic, lots of fresh grated ginger , turmeric, fried in coconut oil. Add roast chicken, carrots, celery, tin of chopped tomatoes and tin of coconut cream. Salt, pepper, simmer and add some baby spinach at the end.

As you know then I’m usually a big believer in adapting the adult meal for the kids .. however, I’m also of the opinion that when kiddos are poorly then you do your absolute best to make food special in a kid friendly special kind of way. My guys are usually pretty happy with some plain roast chicken but it’s  too common a meal to be world rocking stuff around here. So I put some of the roast chicken to one side to make some buttery, gingery, sweet chicken sticks. I make them by melting a good chunk of butter and into it grating some garlic, fresh ginger and palm sugar. The palm sugar is the secret ingredient. It gives the chicken a sticky sweetness. You toss the chicken chunks around in the pan until they get a brown, slightly caramalised coating. Then thread a couple of pieces onto bamboo sticks.

Of course another benefit of having a roast chicken on the go is that you get to make chicken stock. The stock was doubly useful today. Firstly to bulk up the leftover curry into a soup for lunch and then as a base for a quick risotto with hot smoked salmon and peas tonight.

All that from one bird. It’s kind of a miracle really, and the irony of the bird being a chicken is not lost on me.

leek, lamb, lentil, carrot and apricot curry.

This is another hybrid of curry and bone broth which seems to becoming a bit of a mid-week special around here. It works on the basic principle of slow cooking some ‘bone in’ lamb, together with vegetables and spices with plenty of water. Today the leek gets top billing, because it was a giant of a thing – almost filling the pan before I’d had chance to put anything else in. Cooked with a big dollop of coconut oil, turmeric, cumin, chili powder, garlic, ginger, cinnamon stick, a few cardamon pods, star anise, a couple of small and feisty fresh chillies and a whole lemon (cut in half and squeezed) …it’s really going to be hard to go wrong with that list, isn’t it? Added some chopped dried apricot, a few carrots and celery sticks. Then in with some bone in lamb leg steaks and covered with water and a good splash of apple cider vinegar Put in a cup of red lentils (I really just can’t help myself – they were sitting there staring at me)

Cooked for about 5 hours on a low heat. We had it with fresh tomato chutney and cucumber mint yogurt (amongst other things …but to list them could appear greedy).

slow cooked lamb and chick pea curry

I used a pile of lamb leg steaks, bone in, and cooked this slowly over the course of an afternoon (about 5 hours) so that the end result was a cross between a mild curry and a ‘bone broth’ sauce.  The lamb becomes braised and falls apart so there is no need to cut the steaks up. If you leave a bit of fat on the steaks when you cook them it, makes a very rich sauce indeed.

Start with a little coconut oil and some onion and garlic – then add spices – I think curry is an area you can be very slapdash with the spices provided you don’t go too wild with the chilli. Being a bit random means you keep getting slightly different results, which keeps life interesting. For this one I used a fresh chilli, a good lump of grated fresh ginger, turmeric, cumin, garam masala, star anise, a cinnamon stick, cardamon pods, salt and pepper. Get the lamb steaks straight into the hot pan and brown them with the spices. Then a tin of chick peas, a couple of carrots, some chopped dried organic apricots and a handful of sultanas. Cover completely with water and a splash of apple cider vinegar (if you have it) and bring to the boil on the stovetop and then put in a low oven and cook slowly – it would be done in 2 hours at about 160 but I kept adding more water and cooked around 140 for about 5 hours.

You do need to eat around the bones (the meat will have completely fallen off) and keep an eye out for a rouge cinnamon stick but that kind of stuff is hardly a major hardship. We had it with fresh mint leaves and slivered almonds and a side of cucumber mint yogurt, some mango chutney as well as rice and poppadoms.. be as regular readers of this blog will have figured then we can be a bit greedy around here.

lamb and aubergine curry with potato curry

Made a paste out of a couple of spoons of coconut oil, tumeric, cumin, 2 chopped fresh chilis, grated fresh ginger (couple of tablespoons) and garlic. Heated this in the le creuset and seared some lamb leg steaks (bone in). Meanwhile chopped an aubergine into chunks and salted the chunks, added them to the lamb with a couple of handfuls of sultanas, covered the lot in vegetable stock and slow cooked for a couple of hours with the lid on in the oven. About 1/2 and hour before serving added a tin of coconut cream. Sprinkled with fresh coriander when ready.

We had this with a fantastic potato curry and homemade roti – cooked by J & L – will get the recipes for these up later.

Braised beef curry with peas and almonds

Curry seems to be becoming a bit of a Wednesday night favourite because I can leave it slow cooking while I take the kids to afternoon swim class. Today I made a base out of celery, garlic, onion,  fresh red chili (star anaise, cinamon stick, cardamon pods, tumeric, cumin, garam masala, chili, ginger (would have been good fresh but I didn’t have any) squeeze of lemon, some sultanas, carrot – got all that starting to soften up in some coconut oil over a low heat in the le creuset and then added some diced beef – browed it and then added a sweet potato and covered in water. Put the lid on and then put it in a low oven for a few hours (added some more water part way through.

Just before serving it added some peas (basically motivated by ensuring the kids had a daily dose of green but actually the peas worked really well). Had some cucumber / mint / yogurt on the side and some slivered almonds over the top.

chicken, chickpea, kumara curry

Made this in such a crazy hurry at lunchtime today but it turned out really well – the star ingredient being was cardamon. Cooked onion, garlic, in coconut oil with fresh grated ginger, tumeric, cumin, little bit of chili powder, star anaise – added 12 chicken thighs, can of chickpeas, kumara, carrots, cardamon pods – covered with water and slow cooked in the oven for 4 hours – stirred in a little yogurt before we ate it.

fragrant beef curry with fresh mango, mint and cucumber salad

This was inspired by one of Gordon Ramsey’s recipes from Great Escapes but deviates quite significantly (the recipe was for chicken byriani)

Cubes of beef , couple of spoons of yogurt, tumeric , chili, cumin, garam masala, ginger, garlic (about a teaspoon of each) all mixed and marinaded for half an hour or so.

Coconut oil, cardamon, cinamon stick, star anaise, onions, garlic, more ginger, finely sliced celery and carrot – then add the meat cook till meat browned, add handful of sultanas, cover with water and slow cook for an hour or so.

Served with rice and fresh mango, mint and cucumber.

lamb and kumara curry

Despite getting Gordon’s ‘Great Escapes’ out of the library today with a view to getting some Indian inspiration  (after reading J’s facebook update yesterday about a fantastic meal they had just eaten in Jaipur) .. then tonight’s dinner was a random marriage of stuff that happened to be in the kitchen rather than something more thought through.

Onion, garlic, celery, chopped sweet peppers, carrots, grated ginger, tumeric, chili, cumin, all cooked in a coconut oil, then added some lamb leg steaks and chops, kumara chunks, salt, pepper, a little grated nutmeg, a handful of sultanas. Covered in water and slow cooked in the le creuset for 2 hours on low. Ate with rice and roti and mango chutney with slivered almonds over the top.

lamb and apricot curry

somewhere along the way curry became another casualty of our busy family life and rather than a thoughtful and fragrant creation it had become more of a chuck the contents of the veg drawer in with some meat and a couple of spoons of curry paste. Now the whole point of writing this blog is to inspire me to make food I want to write about and that last sentence just isn’t very poetic. Tonight I had some lamb shoulder steaks (bone in) and some apricots. Started with coconut oil, garlic, onion, chili, tumeric, cumin, garam masala, dried coriander (I guess fresh would have been better but I’ve never managed to grow it in our garden) and some fresh grated ginger (probably stuck in about a teaspoon of each – 2 of ginger) coated and seared the lamb steaks then added 3 chopped apricots, 4 chopped carrots, a handful of raisins and covered the lot in water then slow cooked for a couple of hours. Had it with rice and cucumber / mint yogurt.