A Curry for my sweetheart.

This morning when I woke the land was damp after the rain that fell during the night, everywhere sodden & refreshed. There was a light pitter patter upon the slowly turning leaves as droplets from the large Oak in the corner of the garden continued to fall.

I'm cooking for my sweetheart tonight & was at a loss as to what to cook her. I pondered on a few ideas but rejected them all & taking my morning coffee out into the garden to ponder some more the answer was about to reveal itself. The path which cuts the garden in two was slippery & I needed to steady myself on the green house at one point, looking like someone who is trying ice skating for the first time. ( Not easy with a mug of coffee in your hand ) My attentions over the last few weeks has not been of whats growing in the green house, instead thinking that my home grown produce was over for another year & I have been doing other things which have diverted my attention from the garden. I peered in & to my surprise there was a small but lovely bounty to be had. Beautiful red & orange striped tomatoes, some small gardeners delight, just a handful & a large shiny courgette, plump with stripes of lime & sap green. With a few of my earlier harvested onions, some garlic, ( whenever I mention garlic I hear my dad wince & see him screw up his face in horror at the very thought of it ) a little Welsh lamb & a small crowd of carefully chosen spices & thats a combo which speaks of a yummy comforting early Autumn curry.

A bounty enough for a curry for two.

 I adore cooking & when i'm not painting or fishing or outdoors enjoying nature, more often than not i'll be cooking. Although I have many cookery books & like to dip into them now & again I almost never follow a recipe, instead I prefer to make the dishes my own or to just be inspired. As in most things I do, I am instinctive in what or how I cook.
Cooking for others, especially for those you love, to seek out the ingredients, prepare them & to make a tasty plate of food to put in front of them after they have had a long hard day at work brings me an awful lot of joy. The bonus of being able to sit with them & eat too cannot be underestimated either.
Cooking for my lady is always a pleasure & never a chore & in turn she loves to cook for me & I love to be cooked for. So all in all we are the perfect culinary couple.

As I type this the Welsh lamb is marinating in a bowl of comforting & warming spices. Cinnamon & ginger, turmeric & black pepper, crushed garlic & some chilli for heat. The little bowl with a crowd of spices is for later, to be added to a quiet sizzle of oil, cumin, clove, cardamon, coriander & mustard seeds. Followed by sliced onions gently fried in the spice infused slick until soft & almost transparent like the flesh of a grape.  In with the lamb & let time do its thing for awhile before more garlic, the bounty from the green house & a half glass of lamb stock. I'll pop a heavy lid on & let the gentle heat work its magic.

A crowd of spices.

Garlic is such a great ingredient & one of the most comforting flavours to be found in the kitchen. A head of garlic round & plump, the papery skins of each clove flushed with pink. I think garlic would be my desert island number one spice to have, no contest really.

My dad may think this is the stuff of nightmares but I love it.

With saffron rice & a simply made flatbread of flour & water & shown a scorching hot pan it will be a fine feast for such an Autumnal day as this. The heavens have opened again & the rain rushes towards  the ground. Soon my sweetheart will be heading home & dinner will be waiting.

Whenever I spend time in the garden my cat, Nutmeg likes to join in with whatever I am doing. Today while taking photos of veg she wanted a close up. I'd better get going or this curry will only exist in a blog.

My cat helping me to photograph.