Curry

I made a curry on Sunday night. I won't tell you what I curried as it might offend some of my jewish relatives, but needless to say it was from what some might call a filthy animal.

I am getting back into making a big pot on a Sunday night, so that Monday's dinner is already taken care of. It's a good system and I thoroughly recommend it. Monday's a pretty crappy day, and it's a real lift to the spirits if you know there's a nice curry, maturing in your fridge, just waiting to hit the hob and burst back to life as soon as you get home.

If there's a day that you can't be bothered to cook, Monday is probably second only to Friday. And if there's a day when cooking is a real pleasure, then Sunday definitely tops the list. You can spend the morning shopping for good ingredients (in my case my local farmers market is on a Sunday) then spend the early evening in diligent preparation.

You need a bit of time, because last night reminded me what a time consuming process it is to create a fine curry. Haste is the enemy.

You need to take your time to really make sure those onions turn a nice deep golden brown. This can take absolutely ages, but if you jump the gun you'll only achieve a false start.

Then you have to mess around with all those different spices, fetch them from the dark corners of your larder, realise that they are well past their sell by dates and completely unaromatic and head down to the local indian store. This latter stage can be cut out if you get into a regular curry making habit.

You also have to brown the meat - in batches as ever.

Madhur Jaffrey's recipe (Pork vindaloo - sorry grandma), which I was following last night, recommended drying the meat with kitchen roll before browning. Now this seems like an awful faff, and is something I have never previously given much headance to. As I was particularly unhurried last night, I tried it on my second batch.

What a difference. The meat browned so much better and went a really satisfying golden brown, instead of an anaemic pale. Obviously the moisture on the surface of the meat really does make a difference to the browning. Looks as if I'm tied into this additional hassle from now on.

Another interesting experiment in last night's meal, was that for reasons of avarice, and accuracy of measurement - I ended up with one pack of Waitrose farm assured pork and one pack of Waitrose organic pork. It was interesting to see up close the difference in the two products. You can definitely tell the difference when you handle the two. The organic just felt better quality. It was a more satisfying pink colour, and felt more jelly like and tender. I won't go as far as to say that you could tell which chunk was which after they have been spiced to high heaven in my curry. Curries were invented as a way of using sub-par meat, and using finest organic stuff always feels like an extravagance (not from an ethical perspective I suppose - some pig will have been the benefactor of my extravagance).

The final time consuming part is tidying up. Curries make a mess - all those pastes have to be ground in various contrapations, all of which need washing up. So whilst on one hand it's a nice one-pot dish - the collateral damage can be significant.