Hello world

I have so far resisted the urge to write about food and contribute recipes, knowledge and hopefully humour to the blogosphere and confined my posts to Facebook and Twitter (@daffodilsoup). But increasingly I find I have more to share and instead of just greedily "consuming" well-crafted contributions from others I am gonna do this thing! I am concerned about continuity and quality - I have felt the pain of bloggers crippled with writers block or, simply, exhaustion. I have my fingers crossed, so here goes.


I am a trained chef, I cook for a living, I am self-employed and work from my home kitchen mostly, although I do undertake assignments in professional kitchens and so, hopefully, know of which I speak. I also have an Advanced wine qualification from the Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET), and teach wine appreciation and offer food-and-wine tastings as part of Daffodil Soup.

As a former journalist I tend to cast a very critical eye over most things, especially restaurants, and will include those reviews along the way, too.

My other passion is handcrafts (in North America I believe, fibre arts), mainly knitting, with some embroidery projects on the side. Having mostly been a failure at self-taught crochet (and not being a big fan of crocheted items it hasn't been a weakness that has impacted too much on my life up until now), I have signed up for a crochet course at the I Knit London Weekender in September, so that I can put a decent border on the beautiful Lizard Ridge blanket I finished recently (from a pattern by Laura Aylor on Knitty).


So to start the ball rolling, I offer this recipe for Sweet Potato and Cashew Nut Curry, which I made up for a food-with-wine tasting evening I did for the N1 Women's Institute branch in London, of which I am a proud member. I will save other details of that evening for another post, but this was definitely the winning dish. It's vegetarian but you could easily add chicken. My friend Carol says her teenage son who is pathologically opposed to vegetables wolfs this down with gusto! For the tasting I served it with a Pinot Gris from Alsace, a dry white wine with a perfumed, floral nose that is a good match for spicy food.

It's based on the food of Kerala in southwest India, as brought to London by my favourite Indian chef, Das Sreedharan at Rasa (everyone should eat there). I never thought I could be bothered to make up fresh curry pastes but, being determined to recreate his dishes I bought one of his books, and now I now would never consider doing it any other way. I vary the basic recipe depending on what I want to achieve (level of heat, colour, what spices I want to use up etc). My very good friend Alex Benwell, a former colleague who is a fantastic photographer (and jazz musician), took the photo (having made the curry himself). So here it is.



Sweet Potato and Cashew Nut Curry


Feeds 4-6*

1 large white onion, roughly chopped

2 sticks of celery, topped and tailed

1 large clove garlic

2 red chillies (or to taste)

5cm knob of fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped

6 black peppercorns

2tsp ground cinnamon

2tsp ground coriander

1tsp ground cumin

1 tbsp sunflower oil

2 tins coconut milk

1kg sweet potato, peeled and cubed

Salt and pepper

200g cashew nuts

1 big bunch coriander

Make a spice paste by putting the onion, celery, garlic, chillies, ginger, peppercorns and cinnamon in a blender with half the sunflower oil and whiz to a fine mush. In a large saucepan, heat the rest of the sunflower oil and fry the spice paste for two minutes, stirring.

Add the sweet potato and coconut milk and simmer with the lid off for 20-30 minutes, until tender. Heat the oven to 160C (300F), put the cashew nuts on a baking tray and roast for 10-15 minutes. Leave to cool and chop (I put them in a freezer bag and bash with a rolling pin).

Taste the curry to check seasoning. Just before serving, chop the coriander and add, with the nuts, to the curry and stir through. Serve with basmati rice, couscous or Indian bread for dipping.

*To serve 8-10, double up on potato, add another chilli to the spice paste and one more tin coconut milk. If you're adding chicken, you can use less sweet potato, and make sure the chicken simmers for 18-20 minutes and is cooked through.