Indian feasts

I thought I'd share with you the occasion that I cooked one of my Indian feasts with you and give you my own little tips for sourcing the ingredients.

This is one area of cooking that I feel really comfortable, being more of an enthusiastic amature in general.

After I picked Miss Masala up I got a call from my friend who lives in Manchester telling me that she'd be down for the weekend with her bloke and asked what I'd like to do. Naturally I offered to cook them an Indian as I was dieing to try out my new find.

As the weekend approached I gathered supplies and had my menu planned out, I was going to cook all 3 of the recipes included in the first chapter, keema mattar, mattar paneer and the berry dal. I was also obviously going to serve it with basmati rice, but I was also hopeing to make my sag aloo and raita to go alongside.

This was all very manageable as I had all afternoon to potter around the kitchen until the day before when another friend asked if he could come and see me that afternoon as well with he's wife and child.

I'm normally pretty good at saying no to people, being of a fairly unsociable nature but this friend is different. Due to bad health of which I won't go into detail about, he is often out of action for a few months at a time so when he suggests doing something I try to make sure that I'm available. So a time was set that still gave me time to cook everything after he'd left and I looked forward to an afternoon filled with friends.

Unfortunately my first friend of the evening was late due to his little girl taking an unusually long nap, as we sat chatting and catching up I noticed the time slipping away.

As the minuets slipped through my fingers I sat there reajusting the menu in my mind, "It'll be fine, I'll just have to leave out the dal this time" then as a bit more time flew by whilst we were having fun out went the sag aloo on the menu, I needed to cook fast to have this on the table in time for my other guests.

As I stood at the stove frantically cooking, of course my friends arrived, and of course they had brought booze round to share.

This is where I share my first tip for making an Indian feast, if you run out of time or if your not comfortable cooking a lot of the side dishes that make it a veritable feast. Only make the main dish or dishes and order the rest in.

My local, is only 10 min away and is a very tasty takeaway to boot. So I set the menu in front of my guests and got them to pick out some side dishes, ordered rice and nanns, kept the main meals warm on the hob whilst we waited and relaxed.

This is a great way to serve if your feeling harassed as you don't have to worry about the boring parts of the meal that you can never cook as well as the takeaway anyway (nann) but you get a bit more variety of tastes than if you just ordered the whole lot in. Win- win situation, although the person taking your order may ask you to repeat yourself a few times as what you've just told them doesn't constitute a whole meal.

My second tip is buy some ghee, it's amazing. If you've cooked some Curry's before and feel like it's missing something it's probably this. Don't go crazy with it though as it is incredibly fattening being clarified butter and all.

My last tip would be don't buy ghee or any of your spices from the supermarket if you can help it, they royally rip you off!

Down my end of the city we have loads of Indian and Asian grocery stores, for the same price of one of those tiny glass bottles of spice that you get in the supermarket you can get at least twice the amount in the Indian grocery.

I think this is down to the fact that in these stores they're just ingredients rather than exotic ingredients, one of these stores also sells the nicest fresh tomatoes that I've found in my locale that aren't straight from someones garden or allotment.

The other thing that you'll get that you never get from a supermarket is advice on how to use some of the wonderful stuff they stock, (just don't let them catch you chasing your boyfriend round the top of the store with a whole dried catfish, the look you receive is most defiantly unimpressed.)

I know that these places can seem scary if your not used to shopping in them and your not absolutely sure about what your looking for in the first place.

My fave store is always full of people talking in foreign languages loudly. The first time I went inside the store I was mobbed by some of the staff and customers asking if I'd ever been to India and telling me very loudly that it was lovely to see someone trying to cook the food for themselves as the restaurant stuff just isn't the same.

The enthusiasm was infectious and I ended up leaving with loads more stuff than I needed and loads of tips on how to use it all. Another friend of mine told me that he'd had exactly the same experience in the shop too.

The second Indian meal I cooked was a much more relaxed affair just consisting of a vegetable stew from monsoon diary and a chicken jalfrezi for me and my boyfriend.

The only problem I have really with cooking Indians is that it has become my go to food and now when a friend comes round for dinner I'll occasionally hear a little sigh followed by..... yet another curry. Maybe I'll try cooking a roast next time.