Revisiting the scenes of my youth

I've lived in London for an astonishing ten years now, so the miserable days when i lived out on the far-off reaches of the Central Line have more or less faded from my mind.
The one aspect of living in Leytonstone that was an unalloyed pleasure was the wonderful, wonderful Singburi Royal Thai Cafe.
Eleven years ago, Tony and Thelma bought a fish fry bar on Leytonstone High Road and started frying fish and chips. Tony, however, loves cooking the food of his native Thailand, so the regulars soon started to spend more on the red Thai curries or the phad thai noodles that were also available than on the boring old fish and chips.
So they ripped out the fry bar (but left the backlit panel on the wall above it, just covering it up with posters from the Thai Ministry of Food), bought some tables and chairs, moved the kitchen into a back room and set up shop as Singburi.
My housemates and I discovered it early and ate there regularly. The menu had all the usual Thai standards, done to an extremely high standard, and on quiet evenings, we would ask if Tony had anything special going on. Usually he would have picked up something interesting at the market and have put together some unexpected dish. Minced quail, sweet-roasted dried beef, massaman curry - even minced frog.
On busy evenings, we stuck to those menu dishes we knew were exceptional: tom kha gai (coconut chicken soup), gang paneang neu (a dry coconut beef curry), roast duck curry, phad thai. And it was never so busy that Thelma couldn't stop to greet us fondly, or come over for a giggly chat at some point. 
After a couple of years, I left Leytonstone, and soon thereafter lost all touch with the people I had known at that time of my life, but I never forgot Tony and Thelma. Every now and then, I would check online to make sure they were still going, and plan to go back there just to see if I had imagined how good it was.
Finally a couple of weeks ago, the Man and I drove over. We pushed open the door to familiar smells and Thelma - six years older but still as smiley - welcoming us in.
It was unchanged!
Ok, I realised on closer inspection that some of the chairs were new and the fish tank near the door has gone, but the weaver birds' nests still hang in the window with little toy koala bears clinging to them, the menu is unchanged (except for the addition of a specials board) and the food is just as good.
As we ordered, I realised Thelma was looking at me carefully - she slowly recognised me despite six years' absence and a lot of changes.
The crowning joy of the evening was that although the back-lit panel has gone, replaced by a wall of photos of jolly meals at Singburi (I even found a few old acquaintances), the very best Ministry of Food poster has been upgraded from blu-tak to frame. It is an artfully lit photo of rambutans with the caption: "Bushy, juicy".

Bland, bland, bland

Although the Kitchen Accomplice loves spicy food, it is never a good idea to try pleasing her with curries, because she just compares it with her grandmother's and dismisses our poor efforts as 'bland, bland, bland'.
This is particularly sad for the Man, who is quite proud of his tarka dal (not in the least bland to my mind).
My plan is that we should have a cook-off - each of us has to produce a dal, to be tasted blind, all at one meal.
Given how competitive I am, it should come as no surprise that I am practising madly. Luckily this is a delicious and healthy meal - although I'm not sure I'd like to eat only this, I'm happy to eat it once a week.
For supper tonight, the Man requested "some green vegetable", a rare request from him. So I went for the greenest I could think of. Baby spinach leaves, washed and dried, then thrown into a hot pan where I had fried grated ginger, mustard seeds and kalonji (onion seeds).
This with basmati rice and tarka dal made an easy, delicious, balanced meal.
Here's the dal recipe I'm currently using - bear in mind that you can alter the spices as much as you like. The amounts given below feed four not very spice-tongued eaters.
PS the 'tarka' is the fried spice mixture that flavours the dal.

300g red lentils (masoor dal)
850ml water or stock
1 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp coriander

30g butter
1/4 tsp cumin seeds
1/4 tsp asafoetida

4 garlic cloves chopped
1 medium onion chopped
2 chillis chopped

2 tomatoes finely chopped
1tsp curry leaves
1/4 tsp chilli powder

1 tbsp garam masala
1 tsp salt
1/2 tbsp fresh coriander for garnish

Method:
1 Bring the water or stock to the boil and add the lentils.

2 Add the turmeric and ground coriander, stir and simmer for 20 minutes or until lentils are soft. Cook until the water is absorbed; if the lentils go dry and are not soft, simply add more water.

3 Add the butter to a large frying pan and cook gently with the cumin seeds and asafoetida for a few seconds, add the chopped onions and garlic and fry until the onions just start to brown. Add the chopped tomatoes, curry leaves and chilli powder and continue cooking for another few minutes. (This is your tarka).

4 Add the dal to the tarka and stir well.

5 Continue cooking and add the garam masala and salt (to taste) and stir in well.

6 The finished tarka dal should be soft and runny - if necessary, add more water.

7 Serve with a few knobs of butter on top of the dal and sprinkle the fresh coriander leaves on top to garnish. Serve with basmati rice or plain naan/chapatti breads.

As well hung for a sheep as for a lamb

There are occasional campaigns to revive the British tradition of eating mutton, but they never seem to get very far. This doesn’t seem too surprising, given that the British seem to value tenderness in lamb far above flavour, although that may also explain why the mutton stalwarts continue to fight the good fight.
Having spent years failing to find lamb in the UK that carries the savoury depth of flavour that a Wicklow sheepfarmer’s daughter considers a prerequisite, I was very open to conviction on the subject of mutton.
My first foray, an attempt at Irish stew, was disastrous. The flavour was no more than ok, and the meat was almost inedibly tough. Given that I was trying out recipes for a buffet, this was an important consideration!
But this week I wandered into überbutcher the Ginger Pig to enquire about their advertised butchery courses (watch this space for further details!), and was tempted by a display of cubed Swaledale mutton, hung for 28 days and advertised as perfect for curry.
I chose a Rajasthan recipe (based on the fact that this was the only recipe I could find for which I had all the ingredients in the kitchen) which involved a teaspoon of whole cloves and a dozen dried chillies.
This ferocious dish cooked for about an hour and a half, reducing the spices to a fabulously rich, thick gravy, and I’m happy to report that mutton was precisely the right meat to stand up to this abusive treatment.
Despite looking worryingly sinewy when it went into the pan, the mutton had turned into tender chunks with a rich meaty flavour that was not overpowered by the curry sauce.
Only the fact that there is something irredeemably wrong with my rice let the meal down. Originally I assumed it was just bad karma that meant my rice wouldn’t cook right, but now I think it’s just too old. I will buy some new rice and report back on whether my karma improves.