“Turn left!!” I tell my father from the back seat watching in horror as he turns right into the cross city tunnel taking us in the opposite direction that we want to. We are running late for our date with Chef Kumar the chef and owner of Aki’s and Abhi’s Indian restaurants. He is going to show my mother and I how to make a curry paste from scratch-or so we thought…
Escaping the tunnel and arriving at Aki’s breathless and panting we meet Kumar. “Cooking has to come from here (points to heart) and not here (points to his head)” says Kumar Mahadevan, chef and owner. Aki’s has just been given its first chef’s hat in the Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide Awards and is the only hatted Indian restaurant in Australia while Abhi’s, well that remains a perennial Inner West favourite packed every night including Monday nights.
I must admit that I don’t often make Indian food at home as I want to stay away from using bottled pastes and sauces as much as possible and yet I don’t often have the recipes to make my spice pastes from scratch. I invited my mother along as she is a keen curry maker so I knew that she would be interested in this.
Which brings me to my next point “I don’t believe in spice pastes” Kumar says. I look around. Hmm okay, I have come for a lesson on how to make my own Indian spice pastes and he doesn’t believe in them? He explains further that most spice pastes are meant for convenience but at his two restaurants, each sauce is made from scratch using different flavour combinations. Unlike say French cuisine where there are five master sauces, Indian cuisine has a multitude of different sauces and even within a huge country such as India, people find themselves as strangers to the cuisine from another area.
South Indian cuisine tends to be lighter, more watery and spicier whereas North Indian cuisine tends to be richer, creamier with more cream, butter and nut sauces. He explains the origin of the very popular butter chicken. It originated 60-70 years ago in Delhi where a chef had some leftover Tandoori chicken. He made a tomato, butter, cream and garlic sauce and that’s how we find ourselves with butter chicken. And check out this vat of butter chicken sauce being made. That’s a lot of butter (or buttah!). And Kumar tells us that the best results are achieved with a tandoor oven as that imparts a smokiness to the chicken that is hard to replicate at home.
A pot of butter chicken sauce-now that’s a lot of butter!
But now onto the recipes. Today we are making my favourite curry a palak paneer. How long will it take? Once the mise en place is prepared, just 15 minutes. Palak Paneer is a delicious and very healthy curry made up of a spinach puree with cubes of Indian cottage cheese.
The spice drawer
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| September 23rd, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
August seems to be a month of lateness. No matter how much I try I can’t seem to gain any traction and I find myself constantly apologising to people for being late, for handing in things late, for getting back to people late or turning up to dinner late. The first words that tumble out of my mouth are “I’m sorry” combined with a sheepish smile reserved for such very occasions.
Cinnamon almond and sea salt dark chocolate bark
I’d get caught in queues and in traffic with people going at a snail’s pace. Just yesterday I was running late and in the supermarket where I spotted what I thought was a miracle, a checkout without anyone in the queue aside from one woman. I soon learned the reason why. She had insisted that the checkout lady clean every inch of the conveyor belt until it was sparkling clean and bone dry! The job that the girl did apparently wasn’t sufficient so she grabbed the paper towels and finished the job off herself. Everyone else of course had given her a wide berth but in my frantic state I hadn’t seen it. I ignored her as she glared at me for putting down my goods on her newly cleaned conveyor belt and rushed off without giving her a withering glance as I would have normally.
Lemon sherbert white chocolate bark
One thing I was determined not to be late for was Father’s Day this year this coming Sunday the 4th of September (for those of us in Australia at least). I got the reminder a week or so before when we were arranging Father’s Day lunches and dinners (and my uncle seemed to want in on the action so we have three fathers this year!). I got the idea from a recent trip to Canada. I was gifted with a bouquet of chocolate bark from Edmonton chocolatier Kerstin’s Chocolates and when I saw it I fell upon it like a diva receiving an ornate arrangement of flowers. It was a fantastic idea and I immediately thought of my mother and making her one of Mother’s Day next year but then stopped and thought that this might be the perfect gift for Father’s Day too. After all fathers like chocolate too. Chocolate bark is one of the easiest things to make of course and it is simply melting good chocolate, spreading it out and then sprinkling toppings over it and breaking it up!
As for flavours, it’s easy to tailor the flavours to whatever sweets or toppings the lucky recipient likes. I liked the idea of balancing the sweet white chocolate with crushed tangy lemon sherbert lollies and experimented with a more adult sea salt and cinnamon toasted almond and dark chocolate.
Milo white chocolate bark
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| August 30th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
“I’m right!” Mr NQN said.
“No, I’m right!” I answered.
“No. I’m the boss of you because I’m taller and bigger than you!” he reasoned.
“So what, everyone’s taller and bigger than me!” I countered.
Don’t tell him Dear Reader, but sometimes Mr NQN is right (I hope he doesn’t read this story teehee 
). But it isn’t because he is taller than bigger than me. He was after all the person that suggested putting up the really super easy recipes that I frequently make for the two of us onto the blog. I always considered them not really blog worthy but your enthusiasm and kind response to them has convinced me that he was right.
This is one of the most delicious and easiest dips you can make. It is also low in fat and you don’t even need a food processor to make it. You can mash it with mortar and pestle of a potato masher, add the other ingredients and voila, you have a dip that is somewhere in between hummus and baba gannoush. Unlike a chickpea hummus you use a single tin of four bean mix to do this which also has the added benefit of being softer and easier to crush if you don’t have a food processor or when you can’t be bothered washing one up. This time I did it in the small bowl of a food processor and it was done within minutes-call this a dip at the ready in case friends drop by or you get peckish and want to eat something healthy but tasty. Perfect for the weekend and done in about five minutes!
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| August 5th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
When I first started dating Mr NQN his mother Tuulikki lived in Coffs Harbour. She would ring him frequently worried that her eldest son was living far away from her in Sydney and seeing a girl she had not met. He was notorious for being a poor communicator with her and she was the kind of personality that couldn’t quite understand that her son didn’t want to be interrogated about his new girlfriend. So she kept prodding and talking and asking questions about me and he would offer up one word tight-lipped tidbits like “Yep” or “No” to her innumerable questions. I would listen and wonder how a person could talk to so much without taking breath once.
Her standard greeting when calling was “Hello? So anyway…” and out would tumble an entire week’s worth of conversation and questions. This would prompt the very strong and silent Mr NQN to fasten his bottom lip to his top and keep quiet. I even witnessed a conversation where he put down the phone on the table, got himself a drink, drank it, flicked through some mail and picked it back up minutes later only to have her still talking having not missed a beat nor noticed.
As he was stonewalling her for information, she sought information out different ways. She wanted my star sign and time of birth so that she could construct an astrological chart for us so that she could see the potential for our relationship. She hounded him for days for this information and he finally capitulated with the correct date but the wrong time as we didn’t know it.
Shortly later she sent through a chart for both of us detailing out future together as told by the starsigns. And if anyone should ever dip their toe in the Elliott family no matter how casually or hesitatingly, you can be sure that she will ask for your birth date and time. Cue Mr NQN and his brother who will then make jokes and snicker about “looking for Uranus” (boys!). Although I don’t quite believe that you can have a horoscope that fits one twelfth of the population there is no denying that I do befit the characteristics of Taurus.
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| July 13th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
I’m not brilliant with technology. It doesn’t come as naturally to me as it does to others. Mr NQN has to literally put an item in front of me and stand over me while I whimper and whinge and hit buttons like a petulant child learning coordination. Sometimes I doth resist too much and find myself doing silly things. Once he tried to get me to use the iPad calendar function.
“It’s setting everything in the wrong time zone! It set my lunch date for 2am” I wailed after putting in an entire month’s worth of appointments.
“Calm down” he said.
“Forget it, I don’t want it” I said and I may have even stomped off in a pouty tantrum. After that I was still resistant. I had an appointment with my beautician who is so sought after that I need to book her 3-4 months in advance. So I did what any slightly technology inept person would. The next time I was in her salon and we needed to make appointment I fished out my large paper desk calendar from my bag much to her alarm and we coordinated dates. Luckily large bags are in fashion and I can bring large desk calendars with me. But I did see his point. I would need to be more at one with technology.
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| May 18th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
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