Mummy can I have some more reindeer meat?

There are some phrases you never imagine your children will use. "Can I have some more reindeer meat?' is certainly one of them. Which is interesting because that is exactly what Youngest said to me the other day.

 When you've schlepped along to the blue and yellow temple and emptied the contents of your purse into the Ikea tills the least it can do in return is inspire a Travelling Tuesday! And though there is an element of guilt in the recent marked increase in usage of pre-packaged TT fare, at which Ikea excels, I do have to keep reminding myself this is supposed to be a) fun b) kiddie friendly and c) do-able.

I did wonder out loud to the wonderful Annabelle, who joined us for the food, whether or not there was anything remotely authentic about the food you can buy at Ikea. But she reassuringly said that our Swedish friend told her that Ikea food isn't that far off the sort of food you get canteens up and down the country. So, authentic take-away/rubbish food then. Hooray!

THE FOOD
I sneakily began the introduction to Swedish fare in the car on the way home. Nothing like keeping two boys out shopping well past lunchtime to make them pretty much hungry enough to eat anything. And before they knew it they'd nearly finished the packet of dried elk meat sausages that I handed them (Vilt snacks).

The drinks went down a storm - the blueberry drink made lovely purple moustaches and the rhurbarb cordial (Saft Rabarber) is such a fantastic shade of pink that it seems to hardly matter that you can't really taste the rhubarb at all! And the grown ups seemed to manage their apple cider without any complaints.

But the starter didn't exactly have everyone salivating. There is a strong Danish gene pool running through our kids but we have been remiss at training them in the liking of pickled fish or rye bread. Two staples which the Swedes seem to have a penchant for too. Annabelle had even got the kids to make the rye bread (along with picking them up from school, getting them snacks, keeping an eye on her wee babby, making interesting conversation and generally being amazing) but that didn't seem to encourage them to try it even.


The Lovely Josie, who joined us too, was polite and adventurous, declaring 'I am not keen on fish' but getting on with it anyway. But apart from asking for some more reindeer slices my two boys and Mr Els got 'nil points' for their starter!

Starter
Rye bread with a variety of toppings: pickled herring (Sill Dill); salmon (Lax Najad) and sliced, smoked reindeer meat. For the first time in our whole married life there didn't seem to be a half eaten pot of 'rost aloi' (dried onions) or squashed tube of remoulade in our fridge. But we coped without them and downed our sorrows with Aalborg Aquavit (schnaps made with potato).  

Main
Meatballs, 'natch. It always takes me by surprise how tiny the Ikea ones are. Apparently that's common in Sweden. They make them with a combination of pork and beef and I was horrified to see that Skandikitchen says that the Danes tend to use a mix of pork and veal. Ewugh. I bought ready made rosti too. How much of a cheat is that?! Chucked in a few green beans and it was about the easiest Travelling Tuesday to date. The resident veggie got a couple of rosti with some melted ost (cheese) inbetween them.

Pudding
Also grabbed off a shelf in haste, but with enough chocolate to appeal to children, I actually forgot to get them out straight away as there was a lot of coming and going of people. Shame really because they were really not a big hit - overly sweet, pappy, full of fluff and without a grain of 'real' chocolate in sight - and we could have done with having some more people to share them amongst! I guess I shouldn't have been surprised with names like 'Sotsak Skumtopp' and 'Sotsak Kakaboll'. Ewugh.

THE REACTION

The very nice thing about doing Travelling Tuesdays with friends in tow is that there are generally less complaints from the children department. They don't complain about being so hungry so much. They don't complain about the food presented to them so much. This maybe due to the good influence of the Lovely J, but I think they are just generally chatting more and more easily distracted. It's also nice for our kids to have some others to rope into the whole 'making Swedish flags' shennanigans.

THE VERDICT
Mr M: I hated the starter but loved the potato pancake and I like the meat balls with ketchup.
The Lovely J: if you put it (the herring) on the bread with the cheese and meat you can hardly taste it.
Mr K: Guys guys look - I love these (the kakabolls!). They have coconut and mashed up biscuits inside and when we made them at school we made little ones. (Now there's a thing he didn't tell me about school one day. I do wonder what else they get up to!!).

As we were heading out of the door of Ikea, having already paid for our food shopping and balanced not one, not two, but three trolleys between me and the 2 boys, I noticed that they had 'crayfish' decorations. Not one who easily misses clues to a festival I was sorely tempted. But the crayfish themselves were not to be seen in the immediate vicinity and I didn't rate my chances at suggesting we might go hunting for them. Shame in a way - it seems like crayfish parties are big in Sweden in August and September. Hey ho. Maybe we'll do a crayfish party next year. Ikea sponsored, or not.

Cornish fare

How good it is to be on holiday in Cornwall in a summer like this one's been. Actually hot days, swimming in the sea and hardly being rained off from anything. Nothing to beat it!

We felt we should definitely taste the wares and were not disappointed by our wonderful (in absentia) hosts Holly and Rob who left home made scones and Rodda's clotted cream. The combination of that, the perfect retro tea cups and a glorious late afternoon sun drenched garden, made it pretty much my all time top cream tea experience. Even better when two out of three children don't like cream... so much more to go around.

The beer wasn't bad either. Nor the pasties, though I think we didn't really got very near to authenticity with them. Still, they were pretty tasty none the less. A bit like sausages I guess.. you just can't help but like them, but if you ever really did any investigation into the contents you'd never have one again. I read a quote by the comic Milton Jones over the summer. "Christianity is a bit like a Cornish pasty. There's definitely something in it, but sometimes it's difficult to find out what it is."  

The saffron buns looked fun, but weren't really. N and I just about finished them off toasted but the kids weren't interested and I couldn't blame them. Dry, overly yellow, and with a strange taste that, no doubt, was supposed to be saffron, but was almost certainly some dodgy food colouring. I'll stick with scones thanks!

Ramadan Kareem

I think this week might just have been one culinary mash up too far. 

I've been thinking about Ramadan a lot. Always keen to be inspired by ready made festivals its presence in the diary couldnt really be ignored. Especially after last week's 4th July bash and all the excess it seems to represent. It felt nice to try to introduce the concept of fasting even though Ramadan also involves feasting. It began on Wedsnesday which happened to be the day of Eldest's school yr 6 leaving "prom". (Don't get me going on the whole prom thing for 11 year olds. That's for another rant). 

I spent a happy hour or so perusing the Internet and though I was unable to yield any particular ideas for an Iftar (the meal to break the fast) I did happen across the Muslim Council of Great Britain's Meeting the Needs of Muslim Pupils in State Schools.  It's a fascinating read and I learnt loads. Not least that though children are not expected to fast a full day until they reach puberty they often fast from individual meals or do half days to get used to the discipline slowly and to enjoy the sense of community shared with the adults. 

Ramadan fascinates me. I am drawn to and repelled by its severity in equal measure. I feel glad I am part of a religious persuasion that doesn't require of me anything nearly as hard. And yet I feel totally amazed by the  commitment and satisfaction displayed by those who fast for Ramadan. I don't really know if the Council's guide for schools takes in a whole range of Muslim approaches to the month of fasting. Is there, as I suspect, a variety within the community, as there is with so many things which seem monolithic on the outside? The the report seemed to suggest unanimity of approach which I was surprised by. To be honest I was surprised that children fast at all. It mentioned that teachers should be aware that children may be very tired having risen before dawn for the suhoor (pre dawn meal). It suggested children be given something to break their fast even if they are being kept late, ie beyond the time for iftar (the meal at sundown) for detention for instance. And to offer children who have free school meals a packed lunch to take home if they wanted it. It even mentioned that some parents will keep children from swimming lessons in case they swallow water unintentionally (though it did concede that many feel this is unnecessarily strict). 

It made all the chocloate fountain plans for the "prom" seem ridiculously inappropriate for a school with so many Muslim kids in it. I got onto my high horse immediately and emailed the Head to see what was the likely fall-out. Would some kids find it very hard to be surrounded with sweet treats? Would many just not come? I had plans for providing some take-out boxes so kids could at least take some of the party food home if they were not able to enjoy it at the Prom itself. Wednesday was just mad for me and, to my shame, I never made it happen. But the kids seemed mostly to be there, and having a wonderful time, so families just must have made it work somehow. Like they do probably all the time when their particular needs are not catered for.

So, all this lead to me planning a Travelling Tuesday with a difference. I would simply delay our evening meal... I would not give any snacks after school but to talk about fasting, and the particular Islamic approach to it. So that we would feel just a little bit of hunger when so many neighbours are experiencing 18 hours without food. And then to break our (mini) 'fast' with some 'normal' food, knowing that curries and other things that may be gracing the tables of our Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Nigerian neighbours' iftars, would not go down well with the kids. I figured Muslims must break the fast with their 'normal' food so that in the case of British converts could that not be pasta or pizza?

I like to think that the idea, in theory, was a good one. In practice there were a number of definite problems:

1) A friend asked Mr Middle for a play after school and though I said I would pick him up before tea, I knew that he wouldn't arrive having 'fasted' since lunchtime.. that his post-school snacks would be much more impressive than any I usually serve up.

2) As I left with Youngest the long-suffering mum sent one of her many boys after us to see if he would like to join them. So that was two out of three who were not exactly going to know how it felt to be hungry.

3) As soon as I got home the Eldest's friend arrived so I could do the piano-lesson-run. It was a hot day and so I dished out ice creams. For everyone. Me included. It was only later when were half way to piano that I realised that generally ice creams are not allowed if you're fasting! (I was always like this as a youngster when I tried, several years in a row, to give up biscuits for Lent. It would be on about biscuit number 3 of the day, some way part through an evening, that I would remember that I shouldn't be eating them at all!)

4) On our arrival back from the lesson, we were all a bit hot and though I was careful not to fall into the ice cream trap again (!) I was a hairsbreadth away from glugging a pint of water before I realised I shouldn't be drinking either. 

5) When N arrived at about 7pm, relatively late from work, there was a distinct 'Where on earth is tea?' look in his hungry eyes. Hurray I thought - at least someone hasn't eaten since lunch. But he looked distinctly unimpressed when I told him tea would still be quite a while and though I did protest I couldn't quite bring myself to be hardline about the peach.

Except that it's the deciding what to eat part of feeding the family that I find so wearying. Happening upon Marks and Spencers 'Dine in for a tenner' seemed too good a deciding factor to pass up and I thought I could make it stretch to a family of 4 which includes 2 boys who don't eat much and a girl who's a veggie - and it certainly did stretch given that the boys had already had pizza by the time they arrived home! Even with a foreign twist (duck in plum sauce) it was possibly the weirdest iftar ever eaten. I love the idea that traditionally people have broken their fast with dates, so we enjoyed some lovely sticky sugary lozenges (well the kids didn't really enjoy them to be honest. Don't really understand it when they don't like sugary things) but that's probably where any likeness to an itfar meal stopped. We even finished off with profiteroles. I ask you.

I'd like to report that even though the 'travelling' aspect of the food left a lot to be desired all our conversation contributed to a fantastic insight to fasting, Ramadam and the Muslim faith. I wish. You'll have to look elsewhere for that... http://interfaithfriday.wordpress.com/ is a good start.. an interfaith innitiative in London and including a Christian's reflection on how it was to fast with Muslim neighbours for 10 days during Ramadan. There's a lot of inspirational stuff out there. Here? Here it's a bit more mundane! I think for me Ramadan will forever be linked to M&S 'dinner for two' and profiteroles. Just don't ask for any profound theological reflections!

Happy Birthday America!

(Mental note to self: must not use exclamation marks in every post title).

Travelling Tuesday moved last week to a Thursday to encompass and embrace the 4th July and the accompanying celebrations for American Independence Day.

As someone working on Israel/Palestine issues I am only too aware that one set of people's Independence Day can easily be another's catastrophe so it was with some trepidation that I approached 4th July. It helps that the lovely American friends in Hackney we invited to join us are exactly the sort of people who would uphold Native American/Indigenous/American Indian people's rights and claims for justice. And I would have been quite interested in having some conversations around this issue during our soiree. But limited time and other factors conspired against this. To be honest, though it's fun to invite others to share our Travelling Tuesdays, it does rather take away from any intentional conversation around the place/celebration we are sharing and I think it is quite possible that the kids remain as ignorant about what 4th July means to Americans as they did before we enjoyed our BBQ!

I feel like I am getting less and less adventurous with the food bit of this project. But I have to keep telling myself that it a) needs to be sustainable and I shouldn't beat myself up about its purity and b) sometimes the food will take second place to the celebration or festival itself and the religion/country behind it. (I am already planning an iftar for this week... but not one which most Muslims would recognise!)


THE DISH
So, an All American Bar-beeee-que. Hooray for the wonderful BBQ weather we're having at the moment. It would have been a sad state of affairs indeed to have to have eaten indoors!

Burgers - I never buy burgers. But I testify that Sainsbury's Taste the Difference burgers are totally awesome (well probably about as best as you'll get in a supermarket anyway!).
Corn - never quite got it on the BBQ due to lack of space (and a ridiculously mini BBQ which would get laughed out of town in the States!) but never the less it was very good.
Coleslaw - I cheated and bought some but, in homage to Ali Adeney Lawrence who made coleslaw for every single community event she ever went to, I added salted peanuts and raisins. Yum.
Veg skewers - A triumph of red, white and blue even if I say so myself. As I put the mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes and, um, dark blue/black grapes on the skewers I did realise I should have plumped for black olives. But actually they went down a storm. BBQ-ed grapes. A new discovery??
Chicken - marinated in garlic and cider vinegar and lime.
prawns - marinated in sweet chilli dressing and lime. Lots of lime used generally. Such a great ingredient.
Green salad - no great shakes just chucked together what was in the fridge.

Firecracker punch - a mash up of various recipes I found which also seemed to get the thumbs up.
0.5 l ginger ale (or more if you like more kick. And adding ginger wine, of course if you want yours alcoholic)
0.5 l lemonade
a good glug of cranberry juice
a good glug of summer fruits cordial (undiluted - all the recipes I found have some sort of sickly sweet ingredient in there somewhere!)
juice of a couple of limes

I decorated the glasses with cocktail sticks of strawberries, blueberries and marshmallows, and plastered mini star-spangled banners everywhere for good measure!

DESSERT

We were somewhat drowning in berries and ice cream. But I didn't hear anyone complain. The raspberries in our garden are just about ripe too so it felt good to be celebrating the abundance of summer. Kari's mum had worked on blueberry farms in Indiana and I have fantastic memories of strawberry picking as a child. Mental note to self no 2: take kids strawberry picking this holiday.

And watermelon. We had watermelon. It just makes everyone happy. 

THE VERDICT
Unless you abandon your evening's conversation it is pretty difficult gauging exactly what kids eat on an evening like this, let alone gauge their response. It helped that Little Elizabeth (as we call her.. to distinguish her from the Minister!) inhabited the role of 'mum' to her family of 4 kids (most of whom are double her age) and I could happily abdicate responsibility of who was eating what to her. She even got them to wash their hands before dinner. (She can come again!).

But no one went to bed hungry. And we didn't have much left over. And though Justin had never before in his life drunk a Budweiser I don't think we did too badly at good ole U S of A authenticity for such an occasion (though we sort of run out of time for the sparklers I'd bought... though in the broad daylight of a summer evening they might have been a bit odd). And we even got to our second engagement of the evening in time. So all in all another triumph!

 

International Sushi Day

OK so it's more than 2 weeks ago now. Sorry. I am getting slack at this blogging lark. I ought to get back on track otherwise by the time I am writing about the past week I have to be thinking about the next week and that makes for more stress in my life than I like to have.

It was International Sushi Day on 18 June and though I am normally full of disdain for those made up days of celebration I thought it was too much of a gift for inspiration to pass up. 

The only thing is that... sshhhh (don't tell anyone)... well, how to put this? I have never actually had sushi. What a 21st century faux pas! Does it just mean that I am over 40 so naturally slow with new fads? Or is it a stark indication that, after all these years, after 9 months in India that I thought had cured me, after all these Travelling Tuesdays, I am still am an unadventurous, fussy eater at heart? Shock horror.

I have, at least, been lucky enough to have a sumptuous dinner at the best Japanese restaurant in Town - Nobu on Old Park Lane - thanks to Steve and Mel's impeccable taste for their wedding banquet. But little packets of cold rice wrapped in seaweed has just never really yelled 'eat me' loud enough for me to hear.

And friends, I admit it, I projected all my conservatism onto my children, especially as it was while N was in Mozambique and I knew I wasn't going to be able to big it up quite enough to get away with it.

So here is the sorry tale of sushi served up with what could only be described as a ploughman's lunch. Is this a culinary first?

The response, in a nutshell, wasn't great. Mr Middle would barely get it to his mouth. Eldest gave it a good go when she realised one had tuna in the middle but didn't really like it and though I, at least, did eat all of one (is there a singular noun for sushi?) I can't say I'll be queuing up at Yo Sushi! anytime soon. But, in the great way that kids have of blowing away all your preconceptions, Youngest took one look at the neat ball of rice (he's a bit of a rice king) and without a fuss or a negative word, just popped it all in his mouth at once. I nearly fell off my chair. I can't say he loved it, but I think he would try it again, so I guess that's a result.

I did, finally, get to make some elderflower cordial though - yippee.

24 flower heads
1lb sugar
2 lemons
half packet citric acid (round here it's sold as 'lemon salt')
2 1/2 pints water

Boil the water with the sugar, citric acid and grated lemon rind. Leave to cool off a bit. Add lemon juice and flower heads and steep for at least 24hrs, longer if you like. Sieve and strain and bottle.

Not very Japanese though.

Happy St Anthony's day (Portugal)

Today is St Anthony's Day (mmm obscure, I know. I hadn't actually heard of him until some poking around on the wonderful www.somewhereintheworldtoday.com. Maybe it will provide a nice - though tenuous - link to my sister's blog about theological things.. www.parttimepriest.blogspot.com.) It's most celebrated in Portugal, so that's where we head this week on our peripatetic culinary tour. I think I was most drawn to the imagined sun drenched harbour scenes where people grill fish on barbeques and give each other carnations and pots of basil. Why does everything always sound so much better in hot countries?

Jamie Oliver's blog (which seems to have a lot of contributors who are not Jamie Oliver) suggested simply grilled sardines. The only problem was where to get fresh ones, especially after the massive Sainsbury's at Bethnal Green couldn't help. I should have started nearer to home - the rather smelly and sort of dishevelled fish shop, opposite the similarly described Kings Hall swimming baths, came up trumps.

THE DISH

Grilled sardines. (Jamie Oliver's blog version)

•  6 medium sized fresh sardines
•  1/2 handful coarse sea salt
•   2 large potatoes, like russets
•   2 green bell peppers
•   1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus 1/4 cup
•   1/8 cup white wine vinegar
•   1/2 onion, thinly sliced
•   2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
•   Salt and white pepper
•   1 Large tomato
•   Some slices of Cucumber (if you like)

Scale and gut the sardines (you can have your fishmonger do this). Wash the sardines under cold, running water and pat dry with paper towels. Lightly salt the sardines with coarse sea salt and refrigerate. Meanwhile, boil 2 potatoes until a knife is easily inserted. Drain and cool.

Roast 2 green bell peppers over an open flame until charred. Place in a bowl and cover it with plastic to allow it to steam for approximately 20 minutes. Remove the plastic and peel and seed the peppers.

Cut peppers into 3-inch wide strips and combine in bowl with 1/4 cup of olive oil, 1/8 cup white wine vinegar, onion, and garlic. Add tomato (sliced) , onion (sliced) and cucumber. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

Preheat a grill.

Place the sardines on a hot grill. Cut potatoes in half lengthwise and place on the grill. When the sardines are done on first side, flip them over, and give the potatoes a quarter turn to create the grill marks.

Place 3 sardines on each plate with 2 potato halves and some green pepper salad. For decoration and extra flavour, drizzle with remaining olive oil

(I misread the recipe and marinated the sardines with the grilled peppers and garlic/oil/onion mix. But then I just cooked it all in a griddle - hot pepper salad instead of  cold, with tomatoes and cucumber on the side).


Toasted Tuscan bread salad with tomatoes and basil (River Cafe cookbook one)

• 1 ciabatta loaf
• 1kg ripe fresh plum tomatoes (the stronger the flavour the better)
• 2 tablespoons best quality red wine vinegar
• 250ml good quality olive oil (you don't really need anything like as much as this!)
• 2 garlic cloves peeled and crushed with a little sea salt
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• a handful fresh basil leaves
• juice 1/2 lemon

Pre heat the oven to 240C/475F/Gas9 or the highest it will go.
Roughly tear the loaf into eighths and place on a baking tray.
Bake in the oven until dry and toasted on the outside but soft in the centre (no more than 5 minutes).
Place in a bowl.
Take four of the tomatoes and using your hands squeeze them over the toasted bread.
Mix together a dressing using half the olive oil the vinegar crushed garlic and some
salt and pepper.
Pour the dressing over the toasted bread and tomato and toss.
Skin and seed the remaining tomatoes retaining their juices slice lengthways into eigths and add them with the basil to the bread mixture.
Finally add the lemon juice to bring out the flavour of the tomatoes and pour over the remaining olive oil.


Well spotted that this is not a true Portuguese recipe. It's from Tuscany. Really. But it has so much basil in it I thought those Lisbon-ites must use a similar salad if they're going around giving little basil plants to everyone to celebrate the venerable Saint A. Despite the boys helping with the fun messy bit of squeezing the tomatoes with your bear hands they didn't eat any of it after their first taste.

THE REACTION
Mr Middle: "Ugh I don't like fish." This is a boy who regularly says "my favorite food is fish pie". Muted responses to everyone else, apart from the Youngest who, before they were cooked, stroked the sardines as though they were his new pet. He was excited to find their fins still 'worked' ie concertinaed out of their otherwise rather dead backs. N, as always, expressed surprise, delight and general enthusiasm for something that wasn't Toad in the Hole.

THE VERDICT 

To be honest it was quite hard work. I mean I enjoyed it. (Though to be brutally honest I actually preferred the fish on toast the next day with lashings of malt vinegar. They way we used to have them out of the tin for Sunday suppers as a child). The Eldest Pescatarian made a valiant effort. And ate lots of basil leaves, which was pleasing for me if not filling for her. The boys really must have gone to bed pretty hungry. Mr Middle summed it up thus: I hated the fish. I hated the pepper. Even N turned down seconds. Not something I can recall him doing before. Ever.

Thank goodness for random over dinner conversation which, at one point, went like this:

Kaspar: "Do you know what I believe about God? He has an evil brother called Dave."

Must have been all that talk about Saints and things.

THE PUDDING
I have to say that I had my doubts about the pudding. There were a number of variations to the recipe, but I couldn't find any which had anything other than coffee for the biscuit dunking. A bit tirimasu-ish I guess. But coffee and lemon and cream?? I doubt Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall would put them in his new book Three Good Things on a Plate. I doubted it so much I only made about half quantities. Hence the slightly strange shape of mine.

Bolo de Bolacho Maria (from the slightly strangely named fish and vegetarian recipe website)

Ingredients:
500ml whipping cream
250g mascarpone
600g rich tea biscuits
3 Table spoons lemon curd
2 Table spoons black coffee
2 Tables spoon sugar
1 Lemon


Whip cream with mascarpone, 1 tsp lemon juice and sugar until firm.
Add coffee to 500 ml boiling water.
Dip rich a tea biscuit into coffee for 1 second and shake excess coffee before placing on servicing plate.
Repeat until forming the shape desired with 1 layer of biscuits.
Lightly spread mascarpone cream over biscuit layer.
Repeat the process with 8 layers building towers.
Cover the towers with whipped mascarpone cream.
Add 1 layer of lemon curd on top of the cake.
Decorate as desired and put in the fridge for at least 2 hours before serving.

But, I was delighted to find, I was wrong. It actually worked very well. And looked pretty impressive to boot. Maybe we shouldn't have given so much stick to Wills when he requested a biscuit cake (presumably of the tiffin variety rather than this foreign muck) for his wedding cake.  

I planted out the basil a couple of days later so, alongside the carnations I made - because on St Antony's day people also write poems and make carnations to give to each other - perhaps we'll at least have a permanent reminder of the visit to Portugal, even if no one really wants to go back there any time soon! (Apart from me of course. Gimme sardines on toast any day).

Jai ho!

It was with some trepidation that I rolled out 'Indian' this week. There is some history. 21 years ago I went to India having not eaten curry in my life and all too aware of a rather  limited diet spanning a couple of decades of fussy eating. The first thing that happened was a delayed flight dumping me in a posh hotel in Colombo. Posh enough to offer western dishes but hey here I was having fled my safe Surrey home life for 9 months on the Indian subcontinent. I was ready to dive in and that evening ordered a curry at random from the confusing menu. Little did I know that Sri Lankan cuisine leaves Indian looking like an insipid cousin when it comes to heat. The up side was that my culinary experiences after that shock were almost all good and I was a curry convert when I returned to the UK. 

I brought home precious recipes from friends I made there and over the years have made a mean dish or two. But, lets face it, Indian home cuisine has not moved on much from housewives rising at 5am to grind the spices on a stone  in order to marinade the meat in time for supper. I have to admit that the home made curries dwindled and the take-outs increased. 

I know plenty of people who raised their toddlers on left over take-out curries, but I could never do it. That might have been because we always polished ours off the night before while she was in bed, or because our eldest has an extremely sensitive palate and can spot a sprinkling of dried chillies at 20 paces, or that I couldn't quite bring myself to serve the glowing, luminous, red gloop to our precious progeny.

Scroll on nearly a decade and I find myself with 3 kids who all, until recently, declared their hatred of curry. Luckily the Eldest discovered (before her vegetarianism) that her favourite school meal was lamb curry. The younger two seem entrenched in their view but I long to take them, one day, to India and so am pretty keen to educate them.

Enough of the backstory. It was a busy week. We didn't even manage to do it on a Tuesday. And we had several friends round a few day before with a great take out which was not entirely polished off.  So the home made 'proper' Indian will have to wait: this week it was Anglo Asian curry night with kids!

THE DISH

Poppadoms with (home made) raita and mango chutney

Sag aloo (potato and spinach)

Kodu masala (pumpkin)

Special rice (with all those red garnishes gently dying the rice crimson. What is that about? I didn't see rice like that in 9 months of travel)

Bindhi (okra)

Good old Patak's chicken korma with toasted almonds

THE REACTION

I was surprised to find a lack of protests but this maybe because I sneakily called it Chicken Korma and tried to avoid the curry word completely. Sadly we didn't manage any music, dressing up, or other interesting side activity. I feel like its been a little light weight recently. But Mr M did dive in with delight at being able to eat with his fingers!

THE VERDICT

Can't believe it. Indian take away was given thumbs up by my children. Well, to be honest I don't think anyone ate the okra. Or Kodu masala (it is an enduring disappointment that my wonderful vegetarian daughter hasn't quite established a liking, yet, for squash). But the poppadom a were popular. And Eldest even made the raita herself, the brilliant girl.

Mr Middle - I love the rice. I love the chicken. 

Youngest - Let's give a silent cheer for the food (followed by much mouth opening and waving of arms.  Did I mention that I love their school??)

Eldest - I think she was a little disappointed to find that quorn korma isn't on the menu of any curry houses I know. I think we need to work on those root vegetables. Or maybe I should take her to Rasa? She did polish off the raita!

N - Isn't this what we had the other night? (Um. maybe that's why we never ate leftover curry!)

PUDDING

All too late for that even. I said it was a bit light weight. Mind you I had to admit to the kids that in all my travelling I never really found an Indian pudding I liked. All a bit over sweet, gloopy or dripping in ghee. We had chocolate ice cream instead. Its good to condition in a 'reward' for an Indian curry well received!!