I love spicy food, as a child we used to enjoy army curries loaded with sultanas, desiccated coconut and apples in the Officer’s Mess for special Sunday lunches (followed by much pestering for coins to play the fruit machines while the grown ups drank lager and gossiped). As a grown up, I explored the delights of Rusholme’s “Curry Mile”  and later discovered the family of a child I taught owned  the local Indian Take Away – most of the Friday night curry treats I whip up for Mr T are based on this family’s recipes which both husband and wife were happy to pass on. I’ll never forget the day Mrs K showed a class of 8 year olds how to make and cook chappatis – they loved it – and so did I!

Last week I cooked this delicious Lamb Saagwala, a recipe from The Curry Guy. If you haven’t discovered his website yet, please stop reading now and go take a look. It’s stuffed with amazing recipes and written with great style. It’s become my “go to” place for spicy inspiration.

On the subject of blogs, please also pop over to Urvashi’s new blog Gujerati Girl, and say hello. I’m really excited about this new blog which I’m sure will soon be stuffed with fabulous recipes and hints from Urvashi’s kitchen. Most readers will know I had a real soft spot for Urvashi when she appeared on The Great British Bake Off, and we’ve since discovered a shared love of crochet as well as cake!

Back to the lamb … I used my own basic curry sauce instead of Dan’s (and I will post the recipe for that soon – it’s currently scribbled in the back of an old school exercise book – maybe I’ll just post a photo of it, curry stains and all!) We ate it with home made naans courtesy of the bread maker (although I read a great stove top recipe on Dan’s site which I’ll try out next week). It was delicious and filled the kitchen with a rich smell of ginger. The whole family loved it and heated up for lunch the next day, the leftovers tasted even better!