Chicken and Mushroom Soup

A simple chicken and mushroom soup, made with red onion, chicken from drumsticks, and stir-fried white mushrooms. Plus some diced boiled potato.

I diced the red onion and stir-fried it in sunflower oil until it began to brown. Then I added the mushrooms, which were quartered. Cooked for twenty minutes at a medium heat.

The chicken pieces were prepared and added to the dish at this point, along with half a pint of boiling water, and some chicken stock. Add the potato pieces. Simmer for half an hour to forty five minutes. I added Quixo onion granules to thicken the soup a little, and the herbs tarragon and oregano. Sage would also be a good choice.

Served with a flatbread - in this case two quarters of a plain naan. Delicious!

Mushroom and Pepper Curry

A delicious curry, with a flavour you may not have tasted before. Made with one green bell pepper, deseeded and cut into strips, one Spanish onion, diced, and some large white mushrooms, also diced. Plus half a teaspoonful of mustard seeds, half a teaspoonful of cumin powder, chilli powder, and dried coriander. I used a 400g tin of chopped tomatoes also.

The onion was added to a saute pan containing a drizzle of groundnut oil (sunflower is fine as an alternative). Then I added the mustard seeds. Cook for five to ten minutes at a medium heat, until the onion begins to brown, and the mustard seeds burst.

After that I added the pepper and mushrooms. Stir fried for another five to ten minutes.

The dish was now ready for the chopped tomatoes (I added some boiling water also). The cumin and chilli powders were added, along with the dried coriander, and stirred together thoroughly.

Turn down the heat and allow the dish to simmer under glass for between fifteen and thirty minutes.

Serve with rice, or as in this case, with a toasted garlic and coriander naan bread, along with some plain Greek yoghurt.

Vegetable Curry with Garlic Naan Bread

A straightforward vegetable curry, made to use up some vegetables in the fridge, including celery, Cavolo (dark green) cabbage, tomato passata, and some mushrooms and ginger.

First separate the leaves from the stems of the cabbage. Chop thin slices off the head of the celery, and a white onion. Add to a saute pan with some hot sunflower oil, and stir fry for ten minutes or so. Turn down the heat and allow to stand for two minutes.

Add boiling water (about two thirds of a pint), a teaspoonful of salt, vegetable stock, about 150g of tomato passata or puree. Simmer for twenty minutes. Blend for two minutes with an electric hand mixer.

Add Madras curry powder (a heaped dessert spoonful), four dried red chillies, and a teaspoonful of turmeric. Add the mushroom, the ginger, crushed garlic, and small wedges from two semi-skinned white potatoes. Add one diced red pepper. Allow to simmer under glass for half an hour to forty five minutes.

Serve with a garlic naan bread toasted for about five minutes under the grill, along with some lime pickle!

Lima Bean and Spinach Soup

Soup made with lima beans (or similar), leek, shredded spinach, and chicken stock.

The dried lima beans should be soaked in a covered bowl overnight, and  cooked separately while the soup base is being prepared, and then drained.

Once the chopped leek and the shredded spinach have been brought to the boil, add the lima beans, and the chicken stock. Simmer together for at least an hour under glass.

Serve with freshly ground black pepper.  I served this soup with a garlic naan bread (which is what I had in the fridge at the time), but any variety of garlic bread would be fine.  

Turkey Tikka Massala

Hot curry made with diced turkey breast, a tikka massala flavoured dahl, made with lentil and onion, tomato puree, coriander, yoghurt, ground almonds and shredded coconut. The turkey breast was stir fried in sunflower oil, and was then added to the tikka massala dahl, and cooked for twenty minutes at a moderate heat. Served with basmati rice. Also great to eat with Naan bread.

What is a tikka massala? Normally this is understood to be a chicken dish (for which turkey breast is a good substitute), marinated in spices and yogurt, which is then baked in an oven, and served in a masala sauce, which is a mix of spices, whose main basis is tomato and coriander, but there is no standard recipe for chicken tikka masala.

The spices which are used commercially are hard to discover, which suggests that the story that Chicken Massala is a dish invented in an Indian restaurant in Glasgow sometime during the past 50 years,  may be true. The Tikka spices I used were bought in powder form (as Tikka spices) from a large supermarket. It's a good guess that if you start with the standard curry spices, add tomato and more coriander, yoghurt, shredded coconut, ground almonds, and tomato puree, lentils and onion, you will have an excellent tikka massala dahl. 

Turkey Tikka Massala 

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