Topic: Gaspodia's cooking (various dishes)

[Gaspodia]

I don't usually take many pictures of my cooking (too busy actually cooking!), but here are a few of those I have taken over the years:

Saag - if I had to choose only one curry to eat for the rest of my life, this one would be it!


Another family favourite - pakoras.  These were made with spinach, cauliflower and potato


Various curries I've made for my parents - potato with peas, chickpeas and kidney beans


Mixed veg curry, made with peas carrots and potatoes


Potato and chickpea curry


This one was a fairly mild chicken curry I think


Keema peas - my husband's favourite, which he likes to eat stuffed into a pitta

[Peripatetic Phil]

Thank you for posting those, Gaspodia.  Although I enjoy saag, I confess that I far prefer it when mixed with mildly spiced potato to make saag aloo.  George and I shared a wonderful exemplar of this in Zaman's (Newquay) a couple of weeks ago, and we agreed that it was about as close to perfection as one could reasonably hope to get.  Your "fairly mild chicken curry" looks good, and would be a nice contrast to the Chicken Madras I brought home from the Taj (St Austell) earlier this week

[Gaspodia]

I do like a good saag aloo, but it seems to be one of those dishes that a lot of restaurants don't get quite right for my tastes.  The only reason I don't add potatoes to my version is that it has a lot of butter in in and I think I would be comatose after eating it if it had potatoes in it too!

This is one of the few curry dishes I don't use my standard base sauce for; it doesn't start with spices fried in ghee but instead the chillies and onions are boiled with the green veg (spring greens+broccoli+spinach) and the garlic and ginger are added at the end after being separately tempered.  I think it is the mix of veg that makes most restaurant saag taste odd to me; I think they probably use much more spinach and less (if any) broccoli.

This chicken curry was made for friends that were a bit apprehensive about chilli/spices, so I dialled up the tomatoes and switched to a milder chilli than I would normally use.

[Peripatetic Phil]

Yes, the saag aloo in Newquay was almost certainly not made using a base sauce

[Gaspodia]

It's also a very slow cook if done traditionally; everything bar the garlic/ginger/ghee/polenta is boiled together for absolutely ages.  If the neighbours haven't been round to comment on it, you've not boiled it for long enough

Experimenting with the cooking of this using the instant pot is very much on my to do list though.