A warming winter curry

Last weekend it was our friend Gavin's birthday and we contributed a lamb and eggplant curry to the festivities. You can read about how it all turned out on Gav's blog: the Greening of  Gavin. But I thought I'd share the recipe because it's one of our favourites.

This recipe is actually a Better Homes and Garden's recipe from sometime last year (very possibly the same time last year) and it's the perfect winter meal when you've got some time to let the seeds and spices and meat and vegetables just simmer away for an hour or more. It's served with a tomato salsa and yoghurt and rice and it's warming and fragrant and delicious.

Curry Ingredients

Besan (chickpea flour)

300mls natural yoghurt

600mls water

Olive oil

4 small eggplants, cut lengthways and cubed, salted and rinsed

900g lean diced lamb

2 tsp cumin seeds

2 tsp fennel seeds

2 tsp fenugreek seeds

2 tblsp black mustard seeds

2 brown onions, sliced

5 garlic cloves, chopped

3 long, red chillies (or to taste)

2 tsp tumeric powder

1.5 tsp cumin powder

1.5 tsp chilli powder

3 tsp salt

8 cm piece ginger, grated

1 can chopped tomatoes

2 sprigs curry leaves

Method:

It might look like a long list of ingredients, but it's really not too complicated. You just need to get everything chopped and measured out before you start cooking.

Combine the water and chickpea flour and whisk lightly

Add yoghurt and whisk until smooth

Heat the olive oil in a heavy saucepan

Fry off the eggplant until brown

Place on absorbant paper and set aside

Add a bit more oil to the same saucepan

Fry up the seeds for about 1 and a half minutes

Add a bit more oil

Add the onions, garlic and chilli and cook for about 2minutes

Add the spices and salt and stir through for a minute

Add the ginger and stir through

I can smell the spices now...yum

Add the lamb, brown and cook covered for about 10 minutes. (You might need to turn the heat down a fraction)

Add the can tomatoes, yoghurt mixture, eggplant and curry leaves and then simmer for at least an hour.

Just needs to simmer for a while

Salsa Ingredients

1 tbsp brown sugar

juice of 2 limes

1 spanish onion, diced

4 fresh tomatoes, diced

1 tsp nigella seeds

1/2 tsp celery seeds

1/2 tsp chilli flakes

4 cm piece of ginger, grated or chopped

Easy  - mix all that stuff together and there's your salsa.

Serve the curry with some basmati rice, some extra yoghurt and the salsa.

A homemade version of Homous

We have recently discovered the art of sprouting...well I guess art is perhaps a small exaggeration when you consider that you pretty much soak some grain or legumes or beans overnight and let them drain for a few days and before you know it...there's your sprouts!

We've been sprouting chickpeas...and last night we turned our sprouted chickpeas into the most delicious, nutty homous you could imagine.

Here's what we started with...

I went to the local market, to one of those stalls that has bags and bags of all sorts of rice and grains and beans. The lady behind the counter was remarkably patient while I made up my mind, following me along the rows expectantly clutching a little bag just waiting to measure out what I wanted. I managed to resist the urge to buy a little bit of everything and came away with about 240g of chickpeas and 150g of mung beans (they are destined for the sprouting jar later today!)

You can buy sprouting kits but I think they're expensive when really all you need is a reasonably large jar and some mesh with a couple of elastic bands. The mesh bags you get oranges in work really well. We put about half the chickpeas into a jar and left them to soak overnight. You have to remember not to fill the jar too much with beans ... they expand to at least twice their original size. 

Sprouts are ready

Rinse them the next day and then turn the jar upside down at an angle so the water drains out throughout the day. A dish rack works well. Then all you do is rinse them every day for about two or three days and...voila...you have sprouted chickpeas. We left ours for three days and the sprouted bit was almost a centimetre long and I reckon we probably couldn't have let them go much longer. 

Getting the sprouts ready to blend

Out came the trusty food processer and in went our chickpeas, two or three tablespoons of tahini, a couple of garlic cloves, some lemon juice from about three lemons (with a bit of pulp thrown in too), a little bit of olive oil, a teaspoon of paprika and half a teaspoon of chilli powder (we love our chilli too). All of the ingredients are to taste really and we did plenty of that as we blended. If you don't like spicy things then you can leave out the paprika and chilli.

Hmmm...chilli

Blend until you get a smooth consistency, you may need to add a bit of water or olive oil to help out. What you end up with is a bit different from the stuff you buy in the shops. I think the sprouting makes the chickpeas really nutty with a tiny, tiny hint of sweetness. Ours tasted more...well...earthy...if that makes any sense. We just ate it with crackers...a lot of it with crackers. 

There is twice as much again in the fridge!

I've got a shed...

It came with the house. It's about 6m x 3m and rests on an uneven concrete slab. It also came with some shelves (and the obligatory half empty paint cans). We have since added some ... er... other stuff...

We haven't yet unpacked all our boxes (I don't often turn on the light - that way I can't tell how much stuff I still have to sort out)...

Anyway the point of this post wasn't really to show off how much junk we can fit into a shed...but what I really want to do is set it up so that a) it's tidy and b) it's actually usable. I have visions of beer and wine bubbling away, shelves stacked with preserves and vegetables stored for use over the winter months.

But...there is so often a but isn't there...our shed has an inordinate number of red back spiders and who knows what other species of arachnids are out there hiding in wait in the dark corners. There are small gaps between the roof and the walls that while they don't really let in too much water, they do let in the cold (not to mention the above mentioned arachnids).

So today I'm asking for advice. I don't really want to get someone in to spray the spiders, but I would love a way to clear them out...I'm also wondering if it's possible to insulate the walls or, at the very least, cover the gaps with something to keep out the cold.

Do you have a shed? I'd love to see some ideas for sheds if anyone has links to any posts or blogs. One thing that continues to amaze me since I started reading blogs, is that when I start thinking about something, someone invariably writes about it...it's almost uncanny.

So all thoughts and suggestions welcome.