I decided to apply my technique of making a thick sauce by hand-blendering potatoes & veg to a curry today, so it’s nice and thick and suitable for eating with a chapati, as we’ve got some of those lying around that I want to use up.

So I start by chopping and microwaving potatoes, as they’ll never cook properly otherwise. Mean I fry up onions, chillies, garlic and coriander stalks, then add the potatoes and curry powder.

After that I add some umami flavour by adding tomato puree and a couple of anchovies (ruining the vegan credentials of the dish). For some liquid I add some passata that was hanging around the fridge threatening to go off, plus the water from the chickpeas.

That all gets blended with the hand blender, and give it a taste. Not bad so far for just curry power, veg and seasoning!

Then I add the chickpeas and mushroom, before remembering I should have taken a picture of the blending… Oops.

That all bubbles away to cook the mushrooms and spread the flavour. Then I give it another taste and decide it needs a little curry depth from garam masala, and heat from cayenne pepper. I then take it off the heat and stir in some white wine vinegar and chopped coriander leaves.

Then I covered it, and went to see Knives Out at the cinema — highly recommend it, really fun and clever film.

Post film we head some intending to have curry with chapatis, with enough left over for tomorrow. An excellent plan with only two problems, there were only six chapatis, not the eight I expected, plus for once I cooked the right amount of food, rather than enough for an army!

Oh well, we’ll just have to have extra chapatis today, and come up with something else for dinner tomorrow!

Serve with the mango chutney and lime pickle hiding at the top of the picture, and hey that tastes pretty good! I always like when I just make flavours up as I go along by tasting things; feel like a real chef!