Quorn and Pea Curry with Spicy Potatoes and Beetroot Thoran

If Chayne was famous enough to make an appearance on Saturday Kitchen, her food heaven would be potato. She loves it in all its forms but especially when mashed, chipped or roasted. In fact, she believes she should be the patron for the potato society because there isn't a greater advocate of the potato in the British Isles. This is partly one of the reasons we don't have rice with curry. That and the fact that Chayne thinks rice is borin'! On this one I'm going to agree. I'd much rather have these spicy potatoes on my plate than a spoonful of plain boiled rice. The potatoes were once featured in a Delicious Magazine Indian supplement, the Quorn and pea curry is my creation while the beetroot thoran is a recipe I picked up on an Indian cooking course I went on a few years ago. More on that another time. This will be enough for three.

Quorn and Pea Curry
Ingredients
Large handful of mint leaves
Large handful of coriander
2 green chillies, roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves
2.5cm piece of ginger, grated
5 tbsp sunflower oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1/2 tsp turmeric
350g Quorn pieces
1 can of coconut milk
2 tomatoes, skinned and chopped
150g peas

Recipe
1) Put the mint, coriander, green chillies, garlic cloves an ginger in a blender or mini chopper. You need to blend this into a paste with 4 tbsp of sunflower oil.
2) Dry fry the coriander and cumin seeds in a small frying pan. Grind in a spice or coffee grinder, or bash up with a pestle and mortar. Set aside.
3) Heat 1 tbsp of sunflower oil in a saucepan, add the onion and fry for five minutes. Then add all the spices and continue cooking for a minute. Next add the spice paste and stir around the pan for two further minutes. Then stir in the Quorn, add the coconut milk and simmer for 30 minutes.
4) Now for the peas. If you're using frozen peas (which is what I used by the way), put them in a jug, cover with boiling water and leave to stand for a minute. Then drain them and add them to the curry for the final five minutes.

Spicy Potatoes
Ingredients
15-20 new potatoes
2 tbsp sunflower oil
4 cardamom pods
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 cinnamon stick
2 bay leaves
2.5cm piece of ginger, grated
200g can of chopped tomatoes
1 tsp sugar
2 tbsp, chopped coriander

Recipe
1) Cut the potatoes in half and boil for 15 minutes or until soft. Drain and set aside.
2) Crush the cardamom pods with the back of a spoon. Heat the oil in a frying pan to reach a medium heat and add the cumin seeds, cinnamon stick and bay leaves. When they start to pop, add the potatoes, ginger, tomatoes, sugar and 100ml water. Season with salt, partially cover with foil or a lid if you have one and cook over a low heat until the sauce has reduced by half. Stir in the coriander.

Beetroot Thoran
Ingredients
2 tbsp sunflower oil
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
2 tbsp grated coconut (use dessicated coconut soaked in 2 tbsp water if you can't get fresh)
3 shallots, roughly chopped
1 green chilli, roughly chopped
1/2 tsp turmeric
150g fresh beetroot, grated

Recipe
1) Peel and grate the beetroot. Now you need two tablespoons of grated coconut. It is nicer fresh but if you can't get a coconut or can't be bothered with the faff (more likely!) you can use dessicated coconut. Just put it in a bowl with a couple of tablespoons of water to rehydrate.
2) Put the coconut in a mini chopper or blender with the green chilli, shallots and turmeric. Give it a quick whizz.
3) Heat the oil in a small saucepan or frying pan and add the mustard seeds. When they start to pop, add the coconut mixture and stir fry until light brown. Next add the beetroot and fry for ten minutes until it is really dry.

Linguine with Watercress and Feta

Chayne was out last night and I'd usually take this as an opportunity to eat meat or fish. I had planned to do something with the beetroot that's currently poking its head out of the soil in the garden but when I got back to Walthamstow, I was absolutely starving and couldn't be bothered to wait around for the beetroot to roast, so I picked up a bag of watercress and made a quick pestoey pasta sauce with stuff I had lying around in the cupboards. I say pestoey because I didn't have any parmesan and couldn't find any pine nuts in the kitchen even though they were right in front of my eyes. Black olives would be good, too but Asda didn't have any! Chayne returned home when I sat down to eat so I asked her to try some. "It's nice but not as good as chips," she said before putting some chips in the oven and smothering them with cheese. It's hard to disagree with a statement like that.

Ingredients
200g linguine
4 cherry tomatoes (you can have more!)
85g watercress
1 tbsp cashew nuts
1 garlic clove
1 tbsp lemon juice
6 tbsp olive oil
50g Feta cheese
1 tbsp sunflower seeds

Recipe
1) Pre-heat the oven to 200c. Cut the cherry tomatoes in half, season with salt and pepper, drizzle with olive oil and stick them in the oven for 15 minutes.
2) Put the watercress, nuts, garlic clove, lemon juice and olive oil in a mini-chopper and whizz until smooth.
3) Meanwhile cook the the linguine in salted water according to the packet instructions. 10 minutes should do it.
4) While the pasta is cooking, dry fry the sunflower seeds until they're toasted and crumble some Feta.
5) Drain the pasta, return it to the pan with a spoonful of the water you cooked it in, stir in the watercress 'pesto' and serve in bowls. Spoon the tomatoes and crumbled Feta on top and sprinkle with roasted seeds.

Enchiladas

This is one of Chayne's specialities. She says she can only cook four things but that's not true. She's a very good cook and even if it were true, the four things (sausage and mash, roast dinner, spicy cottage pie and these enchiladas) are great and I'd be happy to eat them every week. Which is good as part of the pre-nup was that we had to eat sausage and mash once a week and have a roast on a Sunday. Fine by me. I'm not allowed to grow my hair either which is probably for the best, too. People who have seen pictures of me with long hair have compared me to Mick Hucknall.

Ingredients

For the salsa
8 medium tomatoes, peeled, deseeded and roughly chopped
1 red onion, finely chopped
1 red chilli, finely chopped
1 green chilli, finely chopped
1 lime, juiced
Handful of coriander, roughly chopped

For the enchiladas
4 flour tortillas
250ml creme fraiche
125g mozzarella, sliced
150g cheddar, grated

Recipe
1) First make the salsa. Finely chop the red onion (if you have one of those mini chopper things, now is the time to use it!). Put in a bowl and cover with the juice of one lime. Leave for 20 minutes.
2) Dry fry the chillis in a frying pan until the skin is blackened. Place in a sealable sandwich bag or Tupperware box with a lid and leave for 20 minutes. Skin, deseed and finely chop them.
3) Skin and the tomatoes. To do this you should put a slit in each of the tomatoes, cover in boiling water and leave them for a few minutes or until you can peel them easily. Alternatively, buy a soft fruit peeler (available at Lakeland and other well known kitchen shops) and peel the things. Much quicker and you won't burn your fingers. However you skin your tomatoes, you'll need to deseed and chop them next.
4) Roughly chop the coriander, put it a bowl with the rest of the ingredients and mix together.
5) Now you're ready to make the enchiladas. Pre-heat the oven to 200c. Slice the mozzarella (you might as well eat your end slices as they'll be too small) and put one slice in the centre of a tortilla. Dollop about three desert spoons of salsa on top and put another spoonful of creme fraiche on top of that. Roll into a sausage shape. Repeat this with the remaining tortillas, put then all in a glass pyrex dish and cover with grated cheddar. Put the dish in the oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Serve with a salad. We like to use tomatoes, spring onion and baby leaves with a lime dressing made with one tablespoon of lime juice, three tablespoons of olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper.