I haven't really been in the mood to cook nice food for a week or two. Before that I was on an Italian kick (tried making my own tagliatelli, didn't turn out so great), but in the meantime I think we've been surviving on basic, easy (but often tasty) food. I am glad that I can actually rustle up a few basic sauces these days without having to think too much.

Anyway, food has been for stopping the hunger for a while. This week we decided we wanted to try a few things. Well, Sunday night was after climbing, so it was an easy option, turkey fajitas. I now know what spices etc. to put in to make tasty fajitas, although I'm still buying premade salsa. My last attempt was quite evil, and very much to be enjoyed in strict moderation, don't try this at home.

So... We got a (half) shoulder of lamb at the weekend, and I tried some things from Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible. A Sumatran Lamb Curry with a spiced cauliflower thing and thai fragrant rice (out of basmati). Well well well. Hacking up a huge lump of meat on the bone into chunks is fun, but hard work. Particularly with a not overly sharp chef's knife; I think maybe a cleaver could be useful. Or fun.

The lamb curry was basically lamb, coconut milk, onion, garlic, ginger and a bunch of dried spices, particularly coriander and paprika. Fry a spice paste for a while then add cubed lamb, cook for a while then add the coconut milk and simmer for an hour or so. Hence ever so tender lamb. Mmm.

The cauliflower might be worth doing again, although I want to try the other recipe in the book first. It was of course another (generous) bunch of dried spices, including of course the fun of mustard seeds (bang! bang!), and ginger (we used galangal, having finished the ginger in the above), and some tomatoes. Unfortunately the fragrant rice was rather forgotton in all this fun, and I suspect not having being forked at the right time didn't help it's non-fluffy texture. I wonder if fragrant rice is more sensitive to cook.