Indian style curry nearly always tastes better after cooking for a long time and developing a more cohesive flavour over night. Nevertheless we cook curry quite regularly on a weeknight as it’s so quick and easy to prepare and still tastes fantastic. We will cook a lot of curries from our own spice mixes but for the purpose of not using the brain to much at a day at the office we have found truly awesome spice mixes at the Fijian market on South King Street in Newtown. We were pointed in the direction of the hottest one by the super helpful staff there. They’ll give you cooking tips if you ask.

This is a recipe for chicken and spinach curry made by my boyfriend so sorry if it’s a bit vague. I’m not exactly sure of the order of everything but you can’t go wrong with this one.

A couple of tbs of Hot spice mix from the Fijian Market
1 clove of garlic
1 onion finely diced
1 chicken breast cubed
1 tin of diced tomatoes
1 tin of coconut milk
1 bunch roughly chopped english spinach or silver beet
1 small tub greek yoghurt
1 tbs mint finely chopped

Sautee onion, garlic and spice mix in heavy based frying pan until tender. Throw in chicken and coat with spices then add tomatoes and coconut cream and simmer for about 10 mintues. Add spinach and simmer for as long as you want. The chicken needs to be cooked before serving but this recipe need not be precise.

Add chopped mint to the yoghurt and serve with basmati rice. You can also accompany with papadams and/or poori bread or naan. No wheat for me so I had a papadam which is made from rice flour. They do contain yeast so should still be avoided if you are coeliac. My bf makes great poori bread which I am currently lamenting my inability to eat.

I tend to stick to buying decent quality tinned tomatoes too. It’s just one of those products that I’ve found not to be as thick and flavoursome in any of the supermarket brand options.

Svādiṣṭ khānā