Chicken curry, veggie curry, rice and roti

I’m on Week 2 of a five-week FREE “Healthy eating on a small budget” cookery class from the GCDA (Greenwich Co-operative Development Agency) taking place in the London borough of Greenwich. It’s great! They run once a week for five weeks but there are classes in different venues throughout the week with two classes (in two different places) on Monday. They also run several times throughout the year so there are plenty of opportunities to get involved.

Not only is there such a thing as a free lunch but you often get to take a portion home too. Bring a lidded container.

See my post on Week 1 – potato and curried parsnip soup and mackerel pate mini pittas.

Week 2:
Chicken curry, veggie curry, rice and roti

Because there were nine of us in the class this week and multiple recipes happening we divided ourselves into groups to prepare and cook the various bit, but were encouraged to peer over the shoulders of our fellow chefs to see how things were done. My task was preparing some dough for the roti / flatbread.

I’m having to be a wee bit vague about the recipe because it’s copyright and also I wasn’t involved in the preparation of all of the bits of the meal, just the bread bit.

1. Chicken curry

• Chicken thighs – skin off but meat on bone, vegetable oil, spices (fresh coriander, garlic clove roughly chopped, some cardamom pods, a few cinnamon sticks, mild curry powder, cumin, lemon), veg (onions – chopped, potatoes – cubed, tinned tomatoes – chopped [we used passata]), tomato puree and yoghourt (optional)

Start with the onions frying in the oil then add the chicken. Then add the chopped tomato or passata, coriander and garlic. Then the potatoes and tomato puree… drop the heat and let it cook for a minute. Add the rest of the spices..

Then add enough water to cover the meat and bring to the boil. I think we shoved some aubergine in there as well, cos why not.

Above: Chicken curry cooking

2. Veggie curry – sweet potato, onion, chickpeas

Sweet potato (diced), onions (chopped), tomatoes (chopped), tins of chickpeas (drained), some coconut milk, water, herbs (garlic, ginger, chilli, fresh coriander – finely chopped, turmeric, ground coriander, cumin, pepper), lemon juice, salt.

To serve 4 it’s 100ml coconut milk and 100ml water in a pan and add onions, sweet potato and the herbs (minus the fresh coriander). Bring to boil and simmer for 10 mins until potato is softened. Add tomatoes, lemon juice, chickpeas and more water if required – cook for another 5-10 mins. Then stir in fresh coriander.

I missed the bit at the end here, not sure if it cooks all the water away or if there’s draining involved, but if so I’d say add the fresh coriander after draining!

3. Turmeric rice

We doubled our portions to serve 9 people (and we still had leftovers to take home) but to serve 4 the recipe involves about 8oz or 225g brown rice, a tablespoon of turmeric, 6 cardamoms and an optional 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

Boil some water in a kettle, or heat a saucepan with cold water in it and add everything except the rice until it’s nicely boiling on the stove. Add rice, turn heat down to a simmer and leave for 25-30 mins.

Rice hidden by water, cardamoms floating.

4. Roti flatbread

• 300g strong wholemeal flour, 1/2 teaspoon oil, half pint lukewarm water

Mix together, give it a good stir and then cover the bowl with a damp dishcloth for about 15 minutes to let it do whatever it’s going to do.

I peeked at the mix while it was under its damp towel…

Once ready to flatten your dough into cookable bread, flour your surface liberally, take a tablespoon’s worth of mixture (above recipe is meant to make about 12 rotis) and roll it out to form a vaguely circular flat thing that would fit both in a pan and on a plate. My mixture was really annoyingly sticky and I kept adding more flour to it to get it to obey. Eventually I won the battle.

Heat a frying pan without oil and stick the roti / chappati on and turn occasionally. It will puff up on being pressed when it starts to be ready and bits of it will char quite nicely.

Above: Roti rolled flat, on the pan, on the plate
Below: Here it is all ready to serve – looking, smelling and tasting delicious.

Thanks jo. So well documented here is the final picture with all aspects combined on the lunch plate 😋 pic.twitter.com/RnZ1P7bpya

— Laura tilbury (@tilbury_laura) January 24, 2019

 

Curried parsnip soup / mackerel ‘paté’ in pitta

I’ve signed up to some free healthier eating cookery lessons in Greenwich, kindly provided by the GCDA (Greenwich Cooperative Development Agency). They run once a week for five weeks but there are classes in different venues throughout the week with two classes (in two different places) on Monday. They also run several times throughout the year so there are plenty of opportunities to get involved.

The first series of 2019 began this week with the new classes for the Thur, Fri and Sat starting from tomorrow onwards. The Wednsesday classes take place at Eltham Green Community Church (nice loos! Also nice café but I was there to cook so didn’t take advantage of that).

I signed up because while I can just about cook I’m not really doing much more than heating separate food items and then combining them – it doesn’t really feel like cooking (though it is healthier than take aways!).

We all pitched in to make a curried parsnip soup and some mackerel pitta sandwiches as a side dish. More information about the recipes are below, but first the dates and locations of the free classes around Greenwich (taken from this PDF, from this page) in case you want to sign up to this municipal munificence. Ring 0800 470 4831 to book.

Info about the courses also appears in local SE / Greenwich blogs – 853 and The Charlton Champion and my own Blackheath & beyond blog. The GCDA also have a Fruit and Veg Seminar coming up at Greenwich University for people who’d “like to learn more about how to set up and run a community fruit & veg stall” on the morning of Tue 29 Jan 2019.

General recipe for curried parsnip soup (vegetarian)

I don’t want to share the photo I’ve taken of the recipe as I suspect it’s under copyright, so here is the gist of it (we’ll each get a copy of the recipe book at the end). This recipe is for 6 portions, we tripled our amounts so that we could all have lunch there immediately, then everyone would get a chance to take some home. Soup can be easily frozen (for about three months) or kept in the fridge (for about a week) so it makes sense to make the full six portions and then keep the rest for another time.

Here’s a pic of the starting material, organised by carbs, veg, dairy (it being a healthy eating cookery course!).

1. One each of onion, parsnip, potato (+3 cloves garlic) – chopped (see a range of ‘how to chop veg’ videos from YouTube below). Also chop some parsley but don’t add until end. [If you have a blender (see point (6) you don’t need to chop very small]
2. Big pot or saucepan with a tablespoon of oil in heating up – add in the chopped veg , stir, put lid on if you like
3. Cook for 10 minutes or so, then add a teaspoon or two of curry powder and a level tablespoon of flour (and boil water in a kettle)
4. Cook for another 2 mins with some more stirring
5. Add in 2 pints water and cook for a further 15-20 mins (for nice soft parsnips)
6. Puree – this step assumes you have a hand blender but I suppose you could try using a potato masher – then add 150ml creme fraiche (the recipe calls for low fat but I won’t tell anyone) and heat through
7. Now’s the time to add some of your chopped parsley, then serve

Point 5 in the list above is when you make the mackerel paté and toast the mini pitta breads.

Mackerel paté

1. Chop some cucumber (see vids below)
2. Toast mini pitta breads
3. Peel back the skin from a pack of smoked mackerel fillets (see video at the bottom of the page), removing any bones, flake the flesh, add a bit of low fat mayonnaise and yoghourt and mix together.
4. Cut open the pitta pockets, spoon in some mackerel, add in some of the chopped parsley and cucumber.

Here’s the finished meal, ready to serve. It tasted lovely and the time whizzed by (we’d had a bit of chat and getting to know you beforehand so were doing one of the quicker recipes). I’m a new convert to mackerel. Thanks to Laura our tutor for a really fun session 🙂

At the end I took one of these fellows home in my bag. Turned out to be a bit of a mistake as I banged my bag when I got on a bus and when I got off it discovered that I’d knocked the lid off and some of the soup had escaped, parsnipping the contents. Oops. Fortunately there’s enough soup for a meal, and there wasn’t much in the bag.

Chopping the veg for the soup

Chopping parsnips

Chopping potatoes into chunks (from 1m 16s)

A way of chopping onions

Chopping onions faster, for the brave

How to dice a cucumber

Preparing smoked mackerel fillets