Lucknow Spiced Roast Lamb

Another excellent recipe from Rick Stein's India. There's a fair amount of prep work in making and applying the spice paste, but once it's done and the lamb is in the oven, that's it. You can serve with quite plain accompaniments (roast potatoes or boiled rice, and some simple vegetables or salad) because the lamb is so rich and the spice paste so delicious. It's tempting to skip steps like frying the onions but I urge you not to; much of the paste should end up inside the roast, and you want it to percolate into the meat, so it needs to be tasty straight from the blender. With this mix of ingredients, that's easy.

Ingredients

• 2kg easy-carve (boned) leg of lamb
• 2 brown onions, thinly sliced
• 6 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• 6cm ginger, roughly chopped
• 55g cashew nuts
• 75g desiccated coconut
• 300g thick Greek yoghurt
• 3 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 2 tbsp garam masala
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp Kashmiri (mild, bright red) chilli powder

Fry the onions in oil for 10 minutes until deep golden brown; add the garlic and ginger and fry for a further 2-3 minutes. Transfer to a food blender and blend to a paste with all of the other ingredients.

Sit the leg of lamb in a roasting tray and make 1.5cm deep and wide incisions all over, so you can push the spice paste in. If you like, you can take off the thickest part of the fat as well, but leave some on so the roast stays moist. Push the spice paste into the middle where the bone was removed, and into the incisions, and finally coat the surface of the lamb thickly. If you have any left over, plop it underneath the lamb. Add about 200ml of water to the bottom of the tray and cover the whole leg loosely with foil. Roast at 150C for 1.5 hours, then remove the foil and roast for a further 30 minutes uncovered. Allow to rest for 15 minutes before carving thickly.

Cauliflower and Cashew Salad (with Pork Chop)

I can't remember where I picked up this recipe but it's one of my favourite ways of eating cauliflower. By being extremely careful not to overcook it, you can preserve its earthy, mealy flavour and freshen it with a spike of lemon juice and mustard. I love to pair it with soaked raisins for sweetness, toasted cashews for a sort of smokiness, and serve it with a freshly-grilled pork chop, only just done and dripping with hot juices. A dollop of mash is purely optional (as is the chop, for vegetarians).

Ingredients:

• Half a head of a large or a whole small cauliflower
• A generous handful of raisins
• A generous handful of cashews
• juice of a lemon
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp dijon mustard
• a small bunch of basil

Break the cauliflower into small florets and pop them in a steamer; steam for four minutes, then test every minute until just barely done, and remove from the heat immediately. They will continue to cook in their own heat. Soak the raisins in a little hot water. Toast the cashews over a low heat until brittle and crunchy. Combine the remaining ingredients and shake to form a dressing. Wash and tear the basil into a salad bowl. Drain the raisins and combine with everything else in the bowl; toss gently and serve while still warm.

Butter Chicken

When I visited India, we had one particularly amazing meal out at a rather fancy restaurant, where the meals cost a whole $10! A friend of mine ordered this and I remembered that it's often cited as the measure of an Indian restaurant; if the butter chicken is good, then everything else is probably good too. His was excellent. We've had a couple of chicken breasts in the freezer for a while and I've been intending to do 'something Indian' to them. Then at the Good Food and Wine show I picked up a really nice 'butter chicken' spice mix and all the pieces fell into place. I don't normally use spice mixes but I tried a bit with some bread and olive oil and it tasted so much like the real thing from India that I couldn't resist :)

I used this taste.com.au recipe for a starting point, although we dropped the amount of yoghurt since I was worried cooking it would make it separate, and we found the overall result bit too tomatoey, so this recipe has a reduced amount of puree. We couldn't bring ourselves to pour in the amount of cream they said to use, but feel free if you weren't using those arteries anyway! We served it with some plain rice and spicy & sour green beans: perfect counterpoint.

Ingredients:

• two large chicken breasts
• 2 tsbp yoghurt
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp turmeric, 2 tsp garam masala, 1/2 tsp chilli flakes, 1 tsp ground cumin, 1 tsp ground cardamom, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 2 tsp of paprika (or 4 tbsp of butter chicken spice mix!)
• 2 tsp grated fresh ginger
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 125g cashews, roasted
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 Indian bay leaf or normal bay leaf
• 200g can tomato puree
• 150ml chicken stock
• 125ml double cream (double the quantity for extra richness)
• fresh coriander, to garnish

Slice the chicken breasts into bite-size pieces. Put in a bowl and toss with the yoghurt, lemon juice, spices, ginger and garlic; marinade overnight, or for a couple of hours if possible.

Blitz half of the cashews in a blender until well-ground. Gently fry the onion in a little oil, then add the chicken and toss about until the spices are fragrant. Tip in the ground cashews, tomato puree, bay leaf and stock, and simmer for fifteen minutes, until the chicken is cooked. Stir in the cream and warm through; serve over rice, topped with a handful of coriander leaves and the remaining toasted cashews.

Cashew and Vegetable Stir-Fry

The weather's cooled down a bit so we're having a couple of BBQ-free days :) This is a simple vegan version of the usual chicken and broc stir fry since we've not been particularly active and don't really need the meat. Just substituted some carrots and baby sweetcorn for the chicken, egg-fried the rice, and added some extra cashews for more protein. I'm still poorly so super-husband cooked this one, and he very cleverly came up with a way of not burning the garlic and ginger - he fried them first for a minute in the vegetable oil, then removed them, stir-fried the rest of the vegetables in the flavoured oil, and added the ginger and garlic again at the end. Really tasty!

Pork Chop with Cauliflower Salad

I know, crazy combination right? But the caulis looked so cheerful in the market: nestled in a crate with cheeky white florets poking out from within a cocoon of emerald green leaves. I always preferred broccoli or carrots as a child, but with the right seasonings, the slightly nuttier flavour of cauliflower can be delicious. It's just important not to overcook it!

As for the pork chop, I ended up with a huge thick slab from the butcher, and it has kept quite well for a few days. I like to flour and fry it, but grilling a monster like this would also be fine as it would probably stay quite juicy. No marinade, no spices, just seasoned flour and a slow caramelisation in the pan. The juices ran all over the plate with the salad dressing, and one could certainly use some soft white bread to mop them up.

Ingredients:

• a small handful of raisins
• 1 tsp caraway seeds
• 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
• a good handful of cashew nuts
• 5-6 florets of cauliflower, and a few of the small leaves if desired
• a handful of peppery salad leaves (I like watercress) or flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
• One large pork chop
• a few tsp plain flour
• juice of half a lemon
• a splosh of really good olive oil

First, put the raisins in a pyrex bowl and pour a small amount of boiling water over them, and leave them to soak. Dry-fry the seeds in a non-stick frying pan until they are hot and smelling fragrant, then tip them into a mortar and pestle and gently crush a little. Dry fry the cashew nuts, tossing around frequently on a low heat so that they don't burn, then remove from the pan.

Dip the pork chop in seasoned plain flour and fry in olive oil over a moderate to low heat. Thin cuts will need a higher temperature and less time, but the slab I was given took a good five minutes on each side before the juices no longer ran red. Don't overcook your chop: it should still have a hint of pink, and it's fine if the middle of the bone is still red, as it does not conduct heat well.

Slice the cauliflower florets into half-cm slices, maintaining their essential shape - I'm sure there is a name for this technique but neither my recalcitrant brain nor Google seem to be able to help me. Steam them for 3-4 minutes, until al dente. Drain and run a little cold water over them, and also drain the raisins. Toss together the cauliflower, leaves, spices, raisins, cashews, lemon juice and olive oil, and tip over the sizzling pork chop on your plate. Enjoy!