Sag aloo

There was a bag of spinach in my veg box this week: normally I'm a spinach purist, cooking it down and adding a dusting of nutmeg and some butter. But I'd got some left-over egg and tomato curry, lemon rice and coconut chutney, so I had a hunt among the bookshelves for ideas. Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey came up trumps with a recipe from Bangladesh. I've adapted it a bit, partly because my spinach was definitely the grown-up kind that needed a brief cook before being added to the dish. The mustard notes are very Bengali.

Sag aloo (based on a Rick Stein recipe from Far Eastern Odyssey)

A good glug of mustard oil, or any light oil you have to hand

2 tsp black mustard seeds

1 tsp cumin seeds

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

a knob of ginger, grated

1 green chilli, chopped

1/2 tsp turmeric

1 dried Kashmiri chilli

5 floury potatoes, cut into small chunks

1 leek, finely chopped

1 bag of spinach - or two good handfuls

1/2 tsp garam masala

If your spinach is mature, wash it then cook it briefly in only the remains of the washing water. Remove from the heat as soon as it's wilted down. Add the glug of mustard to a pan, then add the mustard seeds when it's smoking. Clamp on a lid to avoid the risk of being pelted with popping seeds. When the popping has stopped, add the cumin seeds a cook for a minute. Then add the garlic, ginger and chopped green chilli and cook for two minutes. Now add the turmeric and the Kashmiri chilli, followed by the potato chunks. Add about half a wine glass full of water - you don't want much - and a teaspoon full of salt.
Cook gently for around 15 minutes, shaking the pan every now and again to stop the potatoes sticking. Add a bit more water if you need to. Add the chopped leek, and when the pots are nicely soft, add the spinach and heat it through.

Turn off the heat, add the garam masala and gently stir it in.

This turned out very well, and provided a great lunchbox meal too.

Go east with Rick

I've been loving Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey on BBC2, and at the end of last week I got hold of the book. Looking for something tasty that I could make without schlepping over to ThaiSmile in Hammersmith for provisions, I landed on gado gado. I've eaten this before but never made it. The key is the spicy peanut sauce, and I knew I had peanuts, palm sugar and shrimp paste in the larder, so it was out with the pans.

The sauce kicks off with an allotment onion, kashmiri and red chillis, shrimp paste. Then it's in with the sugar, coconut milk, a couple of peeled toms and the blitzed peanuts.

Time to add lime juice. The only ingredient I didn't have was kecap manis - a very sweet and sticky soy sauce. So I substituted ordinary soy and an extra bit of sugar. The sauce is lovely - nutty, salty, sweet and sour from the lime.

Rick recommends that the salad be a mixture of textures: soft and crunchy. For part of the 'soft', I used hard boiled quails eggs. I was delighted to find that Clarence Court do free range quails eggs, and I got hold of some in Waitrose. They are so pretty!

Part of the 'crunch' is my first and wonderfully mis-shapen garden mini cucumber. Home grown is so much better than shop bought with these watery veg.

Another home-grown addition is the first of my potatoes grown in bags - I love the jewel colours of these beauties.

Finally the whole dish came together, with lettuce, a peach left over from the Coronation Chicken, sprouted rocket and coriander from the herb garden. Very tasty indeed. Thanks, Rick!