The well-loved cookbook challenge #3

Curry (or let’s just celebrate Madhur Jaffrey)

If you’ve enjoyed the much-loved cookbook challenges so far, this month’s is curry which seems appropriate for this cooler weather.

We tend to talk about specific regional Indian regional dishes rather than curry these days, but look at most books from the ‘70s and ‘80s and you’ll see it everywhere, differentiated only by descriptors such as ‘hot’ and ‘mild’ 

Go back further still and curry meant anything made with a generic curry powder, gaily advocated by cookery writers and chefs who had probably never been to let along been born in India. Anyone remember curried eggs?

The writer who changed the way we perceive curry and other Indian food was of course Madhur Jaffrey but even she didn’t use the c-word (which loosely applies to any dish, mainly of Indian origin, with a sauce). 

I went back to her marvellous book. Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cookery (which you can buy from World of Books for £3.60), which was published alongside her TV series in 1982.

Flicking through the recipes I thought I’d make the rogan josh* which seemed appropriately retro but the weather was so gorgeous at the weekend I didn’t get round to it. However that’s the plan, along with the Gujarati-style green beans (or an aubergine dish) she recommends to go with it and some rice, of course.

*here she is making it on YouTube

One of the things I like about her recipes and remember being particularly impressed by when I made them back in the ‘80s was the way she whizzed up fresh garlic and ginger with water to make an incredibly tasty paste. It’s a really easy and successful way of adding those ingredients which often don’t reveal their full flavour. (These days you can buy it ready made but it’s never as intense.).

You could of course make a Thai curry - I was amused to find one in Delia’s Winter Collection albeit from the Mandarin Oriental Bangkok - or an Indonesian curry if you can find one in a book that’s over 10 years old. (The main criterion for inclusion on the challenge)

So do have a retro curry night and post the results on Notes or instagram, hashtagging #welllovedcookbookchallenge. Or simply tell us what you’re planning to make in the comments under this post

Do tell us your favourite family curry recipe. Are there old cookery books whose curry recipes you still use? Are you a fellow Madhur Jaffrey fan?

Do you - and I’m sure Cat Phipps would say yes to this - use a pressure cooker to make one?

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