When I left FXHOME last month they gave me a year’s subscription to the Spicery as a parting gift. This is my first adventure in spicery recipes, which I’ll be blogging about each month. Theoretically, at least. It started like this:
I tried a single taster month of Hello Fresh a while back and though the results and the process were super easy, I found the Spicery immediately more engaging. It’s. Ore complex, requiring more confident cooking skills, and you still have to go out and do the majority of the ingredient shopping, but the focus on spices ensures a complexity of food that is very appealing.
Before starting on the main meal I got the dessert ready and into the freezer. It was a surprisingly simple kulfi, aka mango ice cream, infused with saffron water. Turns out that all you need is to mix mango, yoghurt and condensed milk and you’re good to go. Into the freezer with that.
So next up I made up a dough for the paratha flatbread, while marinating chicken and prepping potatoes. While the latter had a quick soak in boiling water my dough was left to rest.
I’ve always had problem with making dough. The problem is that I’m crap at it. Handling wet doughs in particular tends to freak me out and I end up in a situation where most of it is stuck on me, rather than forming into any kind of useful substance. Fortunately paratha requires a pretty dry dough and came together pretty well. Into a covered bowl it went to rest:
The potatoes went into oil for a deep fry (this wasn’t the healthiest accompaniment), then the oven for crisping up, while I prepped a green chutney (minty and delicious), a Kashmiri chilli raita (spicy and smokey) and a herby, lemony side salad (red onion on the side due to some intolerances).
Once rolled out the paratha then had to be dry fried, flipped, covered in a glaze of egg, then flipped another couple of times. This resulted in this collection, which were probably not as then as they should have been but still tasted great:
An hour and a half later and it was time to wrap all the bits and pieces up with the chips on the side. It was a considerable amount of effort but was well worth it, and everything tasted superb. The most satisfying aspect is that with the Spicery, while they provide the spice mixes (some of which would be tricky to source otherwise), the rest of the preparation and cooking is entirely down to your own skills.
Due to over-excited filling of the wraps, taking a photo of a properly assembled kathi roll proved to be impossible. Besides, I was far too busy eating it.
The meal was finished off with the mango kulfi, a super creamy, soft ice cream unfused with a hint of saffron and topped off with crushed pistachio nuts.
So: great fun and super tasty. Next month is apparently Nigerian suya kebabs. I can’t wait!
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