Curry recipe

I promised to write down my curry recipe after mentioning potato and chick pea curry in my last post.

Although I like to make an effort and follow recipes occasionally, most of my day to day cooking is very simply assembling the ingredients I have to hand to make something tasty.  I mention this because my "curry" is nothing like a traditional curry.

Potato, chickpea and spinach curry.

This is the quantity I made last weekend, would serve three to four.

• one onion, chopped
• curry paste
• potatoes (about two medium ones per person - more for teenagers!)
• one or two cans chickpeas 
• half jar of passata = 250 ml
• individual sachet of creamed coconut = 50g
• couple of handfuls of spinach roughly chopped 

First,  gently fry the chopped onion in olive oil for around five minutes until soft then stir in the curry paste and cook for a further couple of minutes. The amount of curry paste depends on how you like your curry, my husband is not that keen on spicy food so I use Korma curry paste which I think goes well with the coconut.

While the onions are cooking, cook the peeled chopped potatoes in salted water until beginning to soften.  Partly cooking the potatoes before adding them to the curry cuts down on the total cooking time.

Add the potatoes and the passata to the onions and simmer for about ten minutes.

Next add the sachet of coconut and continue cooking for five minutes until the coconut has melted. Stir well.  The sauce should now have thickened.

I add the spinach at the end and continue cooking for just a few minutes so its wilted rather than stewed to death!

That it.  We like to eat Nan bread with ours to make sure we can get at every last bit of sauce.

I adapt this basic recipe quite a bit.  This is the winter version.  I've made it with butternut squash in the autumn and with courgettes and peppers in the summer.  It is very economical, this time I bought everything except the spinach beet but it still worked out at only about £2.50 or just under 70p per person.