A curry feast on a weekday night

I decided yesterday that we needed a proper dinner. We're moving house in just under 3 weeks and are generally trying to just use things up in the cupboard so we have less to pack. I'm getting quite good at that game but am sort of sick of cup-a-soup.

I thought that I'd put a bit of effort in and make a curry for us both with a few different elements to it. I put the slow cooker on (I'm obsessed with our slow cooker these days) and filled it with vegetables (onion, carrot, broccoli, cauliflower, aubergine, mushrooms and half a tin of tomatoes from the fridge) with some madras powder. I left it on high from about 2pm and we ate at about 6. Chili sauce was added once the vegetable had cooked down a bit and the sauce was thickened up with some gravy granules (shocking!).


I bought some chicken and plain yogurt from Tesco when I was in town and decided that tandoori chicken was the next thing to make. I love making tandoori chicken because when you use a good curry paste it only has 3 ingredients. I put half a large tub of low fat plain yogurt into a glass bowl, added a generous tablespoon of curry paste and mixed them together. I added two chicken breasts and covered them with the marinade. I covered the bowl with cling film and popped it into the fridge until I was ready to cook them.

I also made some Bombay bhajis from a Slimming World recipe.

Fry Light
1 Onion finely chopped
6oz cooked and chopped potatoes
8oz canned chick peas
1 beaten egg
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp of bombay mixed spice
1 tsp mixed herbs
Salt and Pepper

Using fry light, fry the onion for 5 mins until tender, transfer to a bowl, add the potato and chick peas, mash together, stir in remaining ingredients and form 20 small balls.
Arrange bhajis on a baking tray, bake gas 7 for approx 15 minutes.

They were very easy to make and I used a food processor to combine everything. I also added the spices to the onion when it was frying. I used tinned potatoes as we had some in the cupboard and threw the rest into the veg curry after I'd weighed out what I needed for the bhajis. The only problem I had with these was that they were a bit wet. I think using fresh mashed potatoes and a medium egg (I used a large) would help this problem.

The curry was served with brown rice and hot pitta breads. It was absolutely delicious. There wasn't really a lot of hands on time, maybe about 30 minutes altogether. It was easy to put the chicken into the oven then add the bhajis once the chicken was starting to cook and then chucked the pitta bread in at the last minute. A perfect weekday meal.