This weekend I decided that I wanted to make use of the spice mixes that my brother bought me for Christmas. There were various ones from a company based in London’s Borough Market called Spice Mountain, and the one that I really wanted to try was the Lamb Kofte Kebabs. To go with, spiced spinach potatoes from the Indian Cooking School book, published by M&S.
We made a trip into Pocklington town centre to visit the Deli (as per previous posts, Atkinson’s of Pocklington), and the butchers (again, as per previous posts W.F. Burtons) to get the ingredients – although the mince came in at an eye-watering £3.41 for half a kilo! I also wanted to take a trip to the fishmongers to get some mussels, to do Mussels in Coconut Sauce as a starter. Unfortunately I found that the shop closed at 13.00 on a Saturday. I was a bit surprised, especially as I had heard that the fishmonger was spearheading a local campaign to generate footfall in Pocklington’s shops. Nevermind, rather than the Mussel starter we would be having rice and Naan Bread.
I followed the directions to mix the lamb with 2 tbsp of the Kofte spice mix, a small slice of bread’s worth of breadcrumbs, and a finely chopped small onion, and left in the fridge to marinate for a few hours (do dry ingredients marinate?). I made a miniature finger of kebab meat for Junior, who, over the last week, has been eating his first solid foods after skipping purees under the baby-led weaning school of baby food. I have to admit, I did add a tiny dab of the spice mixture and felt a real stab of pride as I realised I was making my boy’s first curry! This also meant I got a practise in on the spinach, and served it up to my guinea pig like a child cautiously offering his first project to the woodwork teacher. He did seem to prefer the kebab to the spinach – a chip off the old block!
We put Jr. to bed and I got on with cooking for us. I had formed the mince into Kebab’s around some BBQ sticks we had in the cupboard. The Kebab’s were simply grilled while everything else was cooking. First things first, boil new potatoes. After this, the spinach was a case of frying garlic and ginger purees with half a chilli, adding spices, adding tomatoes, adding spinach and then potatoes and finally cream, all in a frying pan. Dead easy – didn’t stop me messing up though, as I forgot to add the cream. D’oh!
The rice was started as Kitchri, a recipe from the same book, but I realised that it called for lentils which I didn’t have. I decided to go onto pilau rice, but had already sliced an onion up… ah well, onion pilau it is! I shallow-fried the onion, added a tiny bit turmeric to give the rice colour. When the onion was done, I added the rice, along with water, salt pepper and a bit of Saffron, which I realised I had never cooked with before! The lid went on and the rice was left to its own devices.
I had made a bit of a conscious decision to try and improve the presentation of my meals. I feel this really lets me down and am conscious of just slapping food on a plate and serving. A bit of an effort with garnish was in order.
So, how was it? Well, the kebabs were a touch dry, but tasted delicious. The spice mix really does offer great value for money, I think I have enough for at least 4 more servings of the same recipe, but I think I will do meatballs next time. The rice was also good, although I am not convinced the saffron added anything. After discussing the better half, we realised that she had had it since we had met, and it would be fair to say it had probably lost its taste! I think I will buy some more and use on Wednesday when friends come round. The Spinach and Potatoes were good, possibly fried for a bit too long, and sadly lacking the cream, but I cannot blame the recipe for that!
In fact, the only let down would be the Peshwari Naan that I served with the meal. In an effort to get some more authentic bread I had bought a pack from Rafi’s Spice Box but found them to be very thin and a bit tasteless. The Mrs was very polite, but is a bit of a Peshwari monster, and I knew that she agreed with me about the bread when I didn’t have to fight her for the last bit!
