Time It Was And...

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OK - yet another throwaway food post, as I'm completely fashed and this laptop seems to want to keel over at any moment. Pictured is tonight's pork and potato sort of Goan curry. I was going to be creative and do something from scratch, but laziness kicked in and I bought one of those semi-fancy curry kits. Now I have to say that the basic premise of these particular kits is pretty sound: a dry masala to temper in the oil or ghee to produce the bedrock flavours; a base sauce in which to flavour the meat and/or vegetables and a final sauce to complete the cooking with. The issue I've always had with these kits is the instructions, which parallels most of the issues I've had with South Asian cookbook recipes aimed at the British [non-Asian] cook: timings. They, of a piece, try to conflate cooking times to suit a modern, fast-food attitude to producing food. In the case of South Asian food, for the most part, this is almost always a recipe for raw-tasting and frankly disappointing results. This is not a Chinese stir-fry which relies on speed and freshness for success, and in order to get acceptable results from these 'kits' you have to rely on actual cooking experience and exercise a good deal of personal licence in executing them, in order to achieve something halfway decent. As always with so much food, patience and timing are your friends. I'll return to this topic in the future...

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