The Recycled Cook

Mussaman Curry On a cold autumn evening there is nothing quite as satisfying as a home cooked curry. This is one of my favourites from southern Thailand. As the name suggests this curry is as more Malaysian than Thai, the name actually means Muslim curry. This makes a delicious vegetarian dish or, if preferred you can add meat too, but the flavours are so rich it doesn't really need it. For a really authentic Mussaman curry you should make your own curry past but I do use pre-mixed paste if time is short or I am feeling lazy. Surprising;y you can now find Mussaman curry paste as well as the more common Red and Green Thai curry pastes in several supermarkets. To make the paste from scratch you will need 50g of finely chopped shallots, 3 bay leaves (fresh if available), 3 tablespoons of palm sugar, 3 tablespoons of Thai Fish sauce (Nam Plah), 10 small garlic cloves chopped roughly (I hope you like garlic), 6 small red chillies (deseeded) and chopped roughly, a few white pe

Pickled Quince Two good friends of mine, Ros and Gary, gave me some quinces recently which I have never prepared before although but I have often had quince jelly (known as Membrillo in Spain) which goes particularly well with hard cheese, especially a nice mature Manchego.  I have to say that Ros's quince jelly is as good as any I have tried in Spain. Knowing I couldn't improve on that that I decided to try pickling them instead, something which I have done quite a lot of recently as it is a great way of preserving food and adds an interesting accompaniment to dishes. The first thing to do is to prepare your pickling liquid. In a saucepan pour in some apple cider vinegar, wine vinegar or half and half (allow approximately 3 cups of vinegar per pound of fruit). Add two teaspoons of pink or black pepper corns, a tablespoon of juniper berries and two bay leaves. Bring this to the boil, reduce heat and simmer for a few minutes to infuse the flavours. Take off the heat