An hour of prep, a couple of hours on the stove. All that garlic, ginger, shallots and green chillies, all those spices, vinegar and lemon and mustard oil, all the deer meat and tomatoes, basmati rice, coriander, yoghourt and flatbread. Dasniya and I eating the sunny afternoon away.
Spices roasted and ground, spices powdered, curry leaves and a stone of asafoetida
Bare minimum amount of garlic here. Making that deer meat curry again. One day it’ll be with lamb.
Long time ago when I washed dishes for cash, the lunch chef was getting fancy with this beautiful knife, steel handle with black dimples and very sexy curves. She told me it was a Global knife, from Japan, and was cheaper than the usual pro kitchen knives and just as good.
Some years later, in one of those rare I have cash student moments, I bought my first one, I think a G2 cook’s knife, with which I’ve been slicing and dicing for probably twenty years, and occasionally adding chunks of finger and fingernail to whatever I’m mincing. I had some unexpected cash to finish 2020 (thanks pandemic?), and have been going down my list of necessary shit I haven’t had coin for in the last decade, and arrived at, “Buy some new Global knives.” Which I did.
I always wanted a proper blocky vegetable knife for bouncing alongside my safely clawed knuckles over a head of garlic. And having a sleek as little peeling knife to match. And here we are, doubling my collection of those dimple-handled knives. Number four is a 15cm utility knife I bought maybe mid-’00s, which is currently primarily on bread and cheese duty, though I’m very tempted to buy a couple more just for that. Along with one of them magnetic knife racks and a couple of tree stumps worth of chopping boards.
“But habibti, there is only enough here for one month. And why you buy rice in one kilo bag? Wallah! Such disappointment.”
For real, tho, this is what I’m always like. Definitely inherited the ‘casually well-stocked cupboards’ habit. A bit light on the beans though, ’cos people who never normally cook beans fucking panic-skived off with them all. Except chickpeas. Jokes on them, I’m making hummus.
Legit been necking one of these every second evening. Much improved with salt and cardamom. Current one is chilling in fridge for the next 2 1/2 hours.
Entertaining Michael while he queued in Flughafen Schönefeld for an Aeroflot flight via Moscow to Guangzhou. Recently deceased wild deer meat from the Wildfleischhandel in Kreuzberg.
Waking up singing “I was a Teenage Anarchist” and “Gone Mad”, lazy 11am breakfast reading a new book, afternoon of grinding and roasting spices, prepping roe deer meat from the local Wildfleischhandel, shopping for dinner and the week, baking a pile of banana energy bars, murdering up a Baltistan curry while chatting with Gala, eating said curry while returning to book, bit of sci-fi telly with cardamom chocolate, the apartment soaking the whole day in rich scents and cooking, and now all that but 2 hours of the day done. I just want to remember about a perfect a day as I can have.
This has been on my reading list for years. I read about it on a now long-departed blog and somehow imagined it was more cookbook-sized, despite being a history of rather than how to make tome on my favourite nosh. Being somewhat bereft of reading stuff on my return from Vienna, I ordered in a haphazard manner of things I thought could be entertaining, and Lizzie Collingham’s Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors which I’ve looked at on my list every time I wonder what to read next and the pass over this time I decided either I buy it or I delete it.
Mainly it first entered my list because I love curry, especially the northern Baltistan varieties (though an introduction to Afghan wok-style curries in Vienna has me off on another bender),and I also love the history of food. It also has – for a history book – recipes! So I am sincerely hoping it is some euros well-spent and I can cook new things.
