Curry

I have been inspired by Mark’s presence to make a curry.

Mark eats like a person with a tapeworm, the only person of my acquaintance who is more impressively hungry is Number One Son-In-Law, who is a bit like a blue whale in that season where they have to eat continuously and consume at least four tons of food every day or else they die, and who burns it all off running up mountains and climbing up glaciers and has not got a single ounce of useful fat saved for emergencies. Mark is not quite so rapacious, but nevertheless keeping him alive is no small undertaking.

He has been very brave about my eating habits and my reluctance to cook anything more complicated than pasta (with butter and some salt) and when I am on my own it gets eaten out of the pan to save unnecessary washing up but obviously this is less practical now that there are two of us again. However a diet mostly consisting of occasional bits of cheese and dried apricot and a pot of stuffed olives is leaving him famished with hunger to the point where he has practically eaten his own shoes.

He is more than capable of cooking for himself, and indeed does do: he has got a shelf in the fridge full of fat cooked sausages which he uses to fill corners in a desperate moment, since he came back a week ago he has gone through thirty four of them:  but I was feeling kindly and benevolent, also (if I am honest) guilty, because he is very helpful and useful to have about the house and on the whole I am a bit rubbish. Also it is nice to have something to do whilst listening to Woman’s Hour.

Making curry is a jolly major undertaking which involves not just cooking but also substantial amounts of washing up, but I nobly did it for him, and hardly mentioned the effort involved or the sacrifice at all.

It was lovely to do. I lit a joss stick so that the smell of that and also the fenugreek would remind me of India, which almost worked: it wasn’t quite an accurate recollection because we usually flush the loo here: but it was pretty close. I chopped and crushed chilli and garlic and recollected some coriander that I grew in the garden last year and dried in a moment of domesticity: and I still have bay leaves growing so could add them fresh: and stirred in cardamom and yoghurt and banana and coconut and turmeric and fennel and honey. I used a heavy wooden spoon to mix it, and breathed in the lovely spicy smell, like invoking an enchantment: exotic names with echoes of silk and coolies and John Company  and memsahibs in corsets, magical in a Lake District kitchen.

I cooked rice in cumin and garlic and some chicken stock, fried it first in smoking-hot oil and then added the stock so it roared and spat a cloud of boiling steam, which is one of my favourite bits of cooking, you turn the heat down as low as you can then, and jam the lid on tight and it settles down to an almost invisible simmer, then when you open the lid again afterwards the water is all gone and you have got perfect rice, savoury and fluffy and good.

I left it on the stove in big pots, and went off to work. When we came in it was late at night, and we were tired and chilled after taxis and swimming and then more taxis. We opened the door to glorious warmth and the rich smell of spices and woodsmoke and the memory of incense.

It was wonderful. There is enough for several days. We scooped it up with Naan bread, sprinkled with water and warmed in the oven, and poured a glass of wine, and were sleepy and full and contented.

It’s such a pity that it gives Mark wind.