Prawn Patia and an unsuccessful Saag Bhajia.

I was really quite keen to try Anjum Anand's Prawn Patia recipe (from her book "I Love Curry").  My interest in the dish stems back to when I was courting my ex-fiance (some 34 years ago) and we would habitually go out for a curry on a Friday evening, after having spent some time in the local pub.

One such evening, said chap was feeling unusually generous and coughed up for a starter as well as a main course (we knew how to live, in those days!) and I indulged in a Prawn Patia on a chapati.

The memory of that dish - its colour and flavours - have obviously stayed with me ever since.  Which is more than can be said for the fiance, who blotted his copybook and got kicked to the kerb a very long time ago.

Hence, I was quite excited to find a recipe for Prawn Patia from such a trustworthy source.  I was ready for the end result to differ somewhat to the memory I had carried for so long, but as it turned out, it was remarkably close!

Which, as an aside, got me to thinking that a 34 year old English recipe almost certainly wouldn't taste similar these days!  It just goes to show how recipes handed down in other cultures have the ability to stay so close to their roots.  Mind you, I suppose a Roast Beef dish wouldn't be so different now to one roasted in Medieval times - provided we roasted it over wood, instead of in an electric oven.  Still, interesting, eh?

I will admit to getting a little bit frustrated with the recipe, as it seemed to involve a lot of creating a reduced sauce, then diluting it, then boiling to reduce it again - which seemed to be wasting an awful lot of time and energy.  However, in restrospect, if I had have measured the liquid accurately instead of by eye, I might not have experienced such a lot of "reducing the sauce".  (I couldn't find the measuring jug and didn't want to disturb hubby to come find it for me). I wound up with a sauce which was too watery, for two reasons.  One, because I needed to have more patience with the reducing of it and two, because the prawns I used were inferior and carried a lot of water.  Next time, I'll use the better type of prawns!  Can't guarantee having more patience, but I'll try, honest!

The flavours were lovely  - sweet, sour and spicy - and I can absolutely see how it would have been so close to the memory as to have been satisfyingly similar.

The Saag Bhajia, however, was a different story.  What I SHOULD have done, was take the recipe for the Saag Aloo and just left the potato out.  *sigh*  What I did, was find a different recipe, which sounded as though it would end in a Saag Bhajia that would be very like one from your local takeaway.  Wrong!

The end result was overcooked slimy spinach in a gritty mixture of spices that were way too hot for a bhajia.  Both hubby & son & heir tasted and immediately rejected their portions - and I could understand why.  I ate as much of mine as I could - after all, it was spinach and spinach is incredibly good on the Inflammation Factor scale, so I didn't want to lose that goodness.

I will have another go at the Patia, as on another (more comfortable) day and paired with a lovely saucy vegetable curry, it will be a completely different story.  As such, I recommend it to you - but be prepared to be patient with it!

PRAWN PATIA   Serves 3

Ingredients :

4 red chillies

4 tbsp sunflower oil

2 onions, chopped

3 large tomatoes, quartered

3 garlic cloves

1 tsp ground coriander

1½ tsp ground cumin

½ tsp garam masala

salt to taste

2 tsp sugar

1½ tsp tamarind paste

400g raw prawns

handful fresh coriander, chopped.

Method:

1.   Heat the oil in a wok. Add onions and cook for 10-12 minutes until really brown.

2.  Place the tomatoes, garlic and chillies into a food processor and blitz until a paste.   (The tomatoes will make the paste more of a liquid than a paste, but ensure there are no big bits of ingredients left unblitzed).

3.  Add to the pan with the spices, salt & 350ml water.  Bring to a boil and cook for about 20 minutes, stirring. The sauce will thicken and darken.

3.  Stir in the sugar, tamarind and a little more water if you think it needs it.  Bring to a boil until the sauce is very thick. Add the prawns and heat them through as quickly as possible, so as not to release too much juice into the sauce.  

4.  Taste and season and add more tamarind or sugar if required. Sprinkle with coriander.

Serve with a vegetable curry and steamed white rice.

Inflammation Factors (approx) for the Prawn Patia : 1786+ (595+ per person).

Keeping the planning straight in the face of many changes!

It all boils down to this .....

For once, there's a fairly good reason why this meal planning post is a tad delayed.

I put the plan together on Monday evening, as usual.  Then, that evening, I watched "The Food Hospital" on Channel 4 (all about using food as medicine), which reminded me that I was going to try to find the website which gave the Inflammation Factor for various foodstuffs.

Versus this!

Having done so, I quickly realised that a great number of the foodstuffs that I had been eating were right up there on the scale of "foods that are really bad for people with inflammatory conditions".  If you consider that both Polymyalgia Rheumatica (inflammation of the blood vessels) and Arthritis (inflammation of the joints) are both conditions that have contributed towards my current disability, then perhaps I needed to do something about it.

Hence, my diet has changed fairly radically - and the menu plan had to be changed along with it. Interestingly, it didn't have to be changed all that much.  I had planned to have Macaroni Cheese on one evening, which has had to be ditched, but otherwise everything else has stayed (pretty much) the same.  It's more a case of changing what I had for breakfast and lunch, rather than the dinner meal.  In brief, the dietary changes involve the loss of a great deal of carbohydrate and the input of foodstuffs with positive scores for inflammation such as mackerel (+465), chilli (+498), green leafy veg etc.

I've got to say, that although I am missing our oaty bread (-49 for 1 ounce), I am absolutely cock-a-hoop about increasing my vegetable consumption.  I absolutely adore veggies of all kinds, so to be "forced" to eat more of them is so far up my street that it's not even funny.

You may notice a change in the types of dishes I'm blogging about, but it will be interesting to see how that change manifests itself - if at all!

No doubt I'll bore you all to tears with talk of "Inflammation Factor" scores (breakfast today - mackerel & horseradish on toast - scored +350, for instance).

So, it's probably a good thing that I didn't do all of this until Monday evening - which was after we'd been to Macdonalds to cheer up a very glum Son & heir.  (It worked, he was much more cheerful after a "Big Tasty" burger).

Here's the plan for this week :

Tues : Macdonalds - Big Tasty burgers all round!

Weds : Prawn Patia, Saag Bhajee & white rice

Thurs : son - pizza, adults - Bacon & brussels sprout risotto

Fri : Chicken & Tenderstem® casserole with cheddar dumplings

Sat : Toad in the hole with carrots, swede & Tenderstem® broccoli

Sun : Roast gammon ham with baked Mozzarella gnocchi

Mon : BBQ glazed pork steaks with baked sweet potatoes and peas.

There now, doesn't really sound like "diet" food does it?  I would say that's because it really isn't "diet" food.  For instance, with the chicken casserole with cheddar dumplings - I will have more of the vegetables than the chicken and dumplings.  So dishes that might score a potential negative score, I'll just have more of the positive scoring elements.  Easy!

I was looking forward to making the Prawn Patia (which is an Anjum Anand recipe) and had sourced an alternative Spinach Bhajee recipe from a curry recipe book that we'd had for donkey's years.

In the event, the Patia was fairly successful but the Spinach wasn't.  At all.  Anyway, I'll leave the explanation of that for the blog posting or I'll be repeating myself - and considering I'm taking Cod Liver Oil capsules at the moment, that's the last thing I want to be doing!

Hubby had a mad rush of blood to the head on Thursday and, instead of making a Bacon, Mushroom & Sundried Tomato risotto, he opted for a Bacon & Brussels Sprout risotto!  This from the man who professes to abhor Brussels Sprouts!  Is it any wonder I get confused?

I'm afraid that again, this is one which will have to wait until its own blog post to be explained fully.  However, the fact that it is getting its own blog post should tell you that I thought it was remarkably successful.

This evening (Friday), we've just had the Chicken & Tenderstem® Broccoli Casserole with Cheddar Dumplings and it was really lovely.  Well done Jo Pratt for putting together such a yummy casserole dish.  If you're curious ahead of the blog post, you can find its original format on the Tenderstem website here.  You won't be surprised to hear that I tinkered about with the recipe a little bit!


Tomorrow is hubby's first go at a Toad in the Hole.  He's bought some lovely chipolata sausages to have in the Toad, as he has a theory as to the length of time a sausage takes to cook -v- the depth of the Yorkshire pudding batter.  We've even bought a new roasting pan especially for the Toad, such is our dedication to getting it right.


I'm looking forward to this one, as I am completely useless at making Yorkshire Pudding. It will be interesting to see how hubby gets on with it - and fingers crossed that he gets a lovely crispy, risen Toad in the hole.


As I said in my last blog post, I am opting for easier dinners on a Sunday for the foreseeable future.  As such, this Sunday I shall be pot-roasting a gorgeous piece of Gammon, which we'll be having with Baked Gnocchi with Spinach, Tomato and Mozzarella (instead of Mascarpone).  Both are simple "assemble, cook and serve" dishes which should go well together.  Hopefully, I'll be capable of getting from the kitchen to the living room this time!

I'm really looking forward to Monday's dinner.  Not because of the pork, although the BBQ glaze sounds really delicious - and I absolutely adore pork - but because of the baked sweet potatoes.  I'll be making chilli cream to go in them again and just know they'll be utterly gorgeous.


Now, as far as additional bits of cooking are concerned, in the pipeline for this week I have a recipe for a lovely Cream of Celery Soup, using some truly gorgeous Fenland Celery that was sent to me to try.  I find it completely bizarre that you can't get Cream of Celery soup any longer and wonder what the majority of the celery crop gets used for!  It probably gets sent abroad because us Brits are useless at finding uses for it - like so many of our fine produce.


Aside from that, I'm just waiting for Son & heir's birthday cake to be finished, whereupon I'll be making an Avocado Pound Cake.  Hopefully this will happen before the beginning of December, as I want to enter the Avocado Brotherhood's "Blog an Avo" competition!


Oh, and of course, I'm trying to find suitable things to have for breakfast.  Breakfast seems to be the hardest meal to fulfil without using carbohydrates.  After all, we get so used to eating cereal and toast!

Jonty is hopeful of a taste!

So far this week, I've had tinned mackerel & horseradish on one slice of toast - which as I said above, worked out to be a positive IF score even with the one slice of toast.  I also had a fresh orange, which bumped the score up a bit.  A spectacular success was the cherry tomato, parsley and chilli omelette (see above), followed by a Kiwi Fruit, which went down extremely well - although timing helps with that one. I tend to have my breakfast when I return home from taking Son & heir to school - which makes eating things like mackerel and chilli a lot easier.  I couldn't eat any of that, having just got out of bed!  Even a cup of tea is often a challenge, first thing in the morning.

If anyone has any bright ideas as to savoury or fruity (particularly citrus - but not grapefruit) items that don't include carbohydrates that can be eaten for breakfast, I'm all ears!

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