To mark 10 years of the Observer Food Monthly Awards, a selection of the best recipes from the magazine over the past decade
• Tomorrow: puddings
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Almond lamb curry: Atul Kochhar

This dish derives its main flavour from a spice blend called vadagam, which can be a little tedious to make. In this recipe, I have simplified the flavours by using whole spices, with equally good results.

Serves 4-6
sunflower oil 2 tbsp
cloves 3
cinnamon sticks 2
green cardamom pods 3
curry leaves 8
onions 2 medium, chopped
tomatoes 2 medium, chopped
ginger-garlic paste 2 tsp (tsp of each, minced)
turmeric powder½ tsp
coriander
powder 3 tsp
red chilli powder 2 tsp
lamb, boneless 400g, chopped into 2cm cubes
potatoes 150g, cut into wedges
blanched almonds 200g, soaked then blended into a paste
poppy seeds 2 tsp, mixed into almond paste
tamarind pulp 1 tsp
coriander leaves 8 sprigs
sliced almonds a small handful, toasted

Heat the oil in a pan, add the whole spices and curry leaves, sauté until the aromas are released and add the chopped onions. Fry gently until the onions are golden brown, add the chopped tomatoes and cook until the sauce is a uniform texture. Stir in the ginger-garlic paste and the powdered spices, add a splash of water, then continue cooking gently for half an hour. Add the diced lamb, the potatoes and 200ml water, then simmer gently until the lamb is nearly tender. Mix in the almond and poppy seed paste and simmer. Add tamarind pulp and continue simmering until the lamb is tender. Add a little more water if the sauce is too thick. Garnish with coriander sprigs and toasted almonds.

Chicken with potatoes: Jill Dupleix

Serves 4
medium all-purpose potatoes 800g
red onion 1, cut into wedges
olive oil 2 tbsp, plus extra to drizzle
dried oregano 1 tsp
thyme leaves 1 tbsp
sea salt and pepper
dry white wine 200ml
poussins (small chickens) 4, about 450g each
cherry tomatoes on the vine 12
oregano and thyme leaves to serve

Heat the oven to 220C/gas mark 7.

Peel the potatoes, halve lengthways and slice thickly. Toss with the onion, olive oil, herbs, sea salt and pepper. Scatter over the base of a large, oiled, roasting pan. Pour over the wine and 200ml water and roast for 20 minutes.

Cut each poussin in half, firmly down on one side of the backbone, with a strong knife. Add them to the roasting pan and drizzle with olive oil. Roast for 20 minutes, shooshing the potatoes around once or twice to prevent them sticking. Add the tomatoes and roast for another 20 minutes. Strew with oregano and thyme leaves and drizzle with the pan juices. Serve with a rocket or watercress salad.

From Lighten Up: Light, Fresh, Modern, Healthy Food by Jill Dupleix (Quadrille, £12.99)

Bacon and egg pie: Margot Henderson

This is an old school pie from New Zealand: you are not a proper mother if you don't pack your kids off with a bacon and egg pie for their sports day. I found it was also very successful on a cold sandy bank in Scotland after the children had spent a night camping. Peas can be added – always good to get a bit of green in.

Serves 9-12
streaky bacon 250g
butter 30g, plus extra for greasing
flour for dusting
frozen puff pastry 375g, defrosted
tomatoes 2
eggs 9
egg yolks 2
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

You will also need
a rectangular baking tray about 30cm long

Preheat the oven to 200C/gas 6. Put the strips of bacon on a baking tray with a few knobs of butter and cook in the preheated oven for 5 minutes or so. Take the bacon out but leave the oven on.

Using a little more butter, grease a rectangular baking tray, 30cm long.

Flour your work surface and roll out the pastry. Cut it in half, then, using a rolling pin, roll out one half until it is large enough to line the baking tray and let the pastry come halfway up the sides of the tray – this is important to prevent the egg leaking out later.

Cover the pastry with the streaky bacon – you may need to break it into strips to make sure that the pastry is evenly covered. Slice the tomatoes and lay them over the bacon. Crack the eggs evenly on top.

Roll out the rest of the pastry, and cut it into thin strips, placing it over the eggs in a lattice pattern.

Beat the egg yolks with a little salt and pepper and glaze the pastry with the mixture, using a pastry brush or your fingers.

Bake in the oven for 30 minutes, until the pastry is golden. Set aside to cool slightly, then cut into pieces and serve with Steinlager.

From You're All Invited by Margot Henderson (Fig Tree, £25). To order a copy for £18 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop

Stir-fried minced beef with chillies and holy basil: David Thompson

The secret to the dish, I think, lies in the tempering of the wok, which imbues this simple stir-fry with a smoky tinge. I find a rather coarse mince yields the best result – ideally done by hand, and using a cut of beef with some fat attached, such as flank, rump or shoulder.

Serves 2
garlic cloves 4, peeled
bird's eye chillies (scuds) 4-10
salt good pinch
vegetable oil 3-4 tbsp
eggs 2
coarsely minced beef 200 g
fish sauce about 2 tbsp
white sugar a large pinch
stock or water 4 tbsp
holy basil leaves 2 large handfuls
chillies in fish sauce (see below) to serve

For the chillies in fish sauce
fish sauce 4 tbsp
bird's eye chillies (scuds) 10-15, finely sliced
garlic cloves (optional but desirable) 2, finely sliced
lime juice (optional) 1 tbsp
chopped coriander good pinch

To make the chillies in fish sauce, combine the fish sauce, chillies and garlic in a bowl and set aside. It keeps for some time – in fact it becomes richer and milder as it settles for a day. Make sure it is covered if you are making it in advance – and if the fish sauce evaporates, add an equivalent amount of water to refresh it. Just before serving, stir through the lime juice and coriander.

To prepare the chilli beef, coarsely chop the garlic with the chillies and salt. Heat a well-seasoned wok over a high heat then turn down the heat and add 2 tablespoons of the oil. Crack in one of the eggs and fry gently, shuffling the egg to prevent it from sticking, until it has cooked to your preference – I like mine with a runny yolk but with crispy, frazzled edges. Spoon some of the hot oil over the egg to ensure the yolk cooks evenly. Carefully lift out the egg with a spatula and place it on a warmed plate, then fry the other egg. Keep the eggs warm while you cook the beef.

Add more oil – you'll need about 4 tablespoons of oil all up in the wok. When the oil is hot, fry the garlic and chillies for a moment, but don't let it colour. Add the beef and continue to stir-fry for a minute until just cooked. Season to taste with the fish sauce and sugar but be careful not to make it too salty.

Add the stock or water and simmer for a moment. Don't let it boil or stew for too long, otherwise the meat will toughen and too much liquid will evaporate – there should be enough to form a sauce. Stir in the holy basil and as soon as it is wilted, remove from the heat. It should taste rich, hot, salty and spicy from the basil. Serve on two plates with plenty of steamed jasmine rice, a fried egg on top and a bowl of chillies in fish sauce on the side.

From Thai Street Food by David Thompson (Conran Octopus, £40). To order a copy for £29 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop

Chicken with morels and sherry sauce: Raymond Blanc

Plan ahead – the dried morels need to be soaked for at least a couple of hours. You can prepare the chicken half an hour in advance and warm it through in the morel sauce to serve.

Serves 4
dried morels 30g, soaked in 250ml water for at least 2 hours
organic/free-range chicken 4 breasts (180g each), skinned
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
unsalted butter 15g
firm button mushrooms 250g, washed quickly, patted dry and quartered
dry sherry or Jura wine 120ml
double cream 400ml

For the leeks
medium leeks 2, trimmed, cut into 2cm pieces and washed
boiling water 200ml
sea salt a pinch
unsalted butter 15g

To prepare the morels, drain them, reserving the soaking liquor, and squeeze to extract as much of the liquor as possible. Rinse the morels, drain and squeeze dry. Cut larger morels into smaller pieces; set aside. Pass the reserved liquor through a muslin-lined sieve to remove any sand or grit and save 100ml.

To cook the chicken, season the breasts with salt and pepper. In a large frying pan, melt the butter over a medium heat until it is foaming. Add the chicken breasts and colour lightly for 3 minutes on each side. Remove from the pan and reserve.

In the fat remaining in the frying pan, soften the soaked morels and button mushrooms together, for 1-2 minutes. Meanwhile, boil the sherry or wine in a small pan for 30 seconds. Add the sherry or wine to the mushrooms with the reserved morel liquor and a pinch of salt. Pour in the cream and bring to the boil.

Place the chicken breasts back in the pan, making sure the sauce covers them. Lower the heat to a gentle simmer and cook for 10 minutes, depending on the size of the chicken breasts, until they are just cooked through.

Meanwhile, put the leeks in a pan, pour on the boiling water and add the salt and butter. Cover and cook at a full boil for 5-10 minutes until tender.

Using a slotted spoon, lift out the chicken breasts and place in a warm dish; keep warm. Boil the sauce rapidly to reduce until it is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Place the chicken breasts back in the sauce to reheat for 2 minutes.

Lift the leeks from their liquor with a slotted spoon and arrange on warmed plates. Sit the chicken breasts on top and pour the morel sauce over and around.

From Kitchen Secrets by Raymond Blanc (Bloomsbury, £25). To order a copy for £12 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop

Mumbai's grand old Parsi cafes are a symbol of the city's diverse cuisine and culture, but on a foodie tour of the city our writer finds out they are a dying breed

I eat the best creme caramel of my life in 26C heat, with life-sized cutouts of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge smiling down at me from the dining room's slightly slanting balcony. A pigeon snoozes on the lone chandelier, dusty beneath peeling turquoise paintwork, and ceiling fans whirr above crowded, chattering tables. I'm sitting in Britannia and Co Restaurant (Wakefield House, 11 Sprott Road), one of the last remaining Parsi cafes in south Mumbai (or south Bombay as the locals so protectively still call it), and I'm full of food.

Opened in the 19th-century by Parsi settlers – Zoroastrians from Iran – these cafes, with their magnificently faded, time-capsule dining rooms and speciality dishes, are a gloriously eccentric part of the fabric of Mumbai. They are also democratic and inclusive places, where people of all backgrounds, classes and sexes meet, so you may find a Sikh next to a Hindu or Zoroastrian or a group of young female students dining alone.

They are also a dying breed. In 1950 there were about 550 of them, many of which grew from humble tea stalls; now only 15 to 20 are still open.

"It's so sad there are so few left," says British restaurateur Kavi Thakrar, who – along with his cousin Shamil and chef Naved Nasir – has created London's Dishoom restaurants in the mould of these cafes. The three are acting as my guides on a food tour of Mumbai, and between them know this city's cuisine inside out: Naved because he lived and cooked here for four years, and the Thakrars because they've spent chunks of time here visiting their grandparents. Shamil was married here in 2006, in a special syndicated ceremony he shared with six couples from the city's slums.

Dishoom's food has been inspired by the varied cuisine of this city – stories from its Parsi cafes have even been baked onto the restaurant's plates – and Shamil hopes to "transport a bit of this vintage Mumbai to London".

"Mumbai is a city of immigrants," he says through mouthfuls of the deep, almost cheesily creamy caramel and sips of fresh lime soda – a quenching mixture of lime juice, salt, sugar and fizzy water that's a must-order here. "It's a huge mix and the cafes are the greatest example of that."

On a wall, cultural tributes preside: a painting of Queen Elizabeth II next to a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi, both hanging beneath a gilt-framed picture of Zarathustra, the Zoroastrian prophet worshiped by the Parsis. This unlikely trio sums up the essence of the cafes: their legacy from the days of the Raj, their tolerance of all religions, and their Zoroastrian roots.

That the Britannia and Co resides in a corner site of the genteel Ballard Estate business district, in a grand, Renaissance-style building designed by Scottish architect George Wittet (famous for the city's Gateway To India monument) is no accident.

"Many of the cafes hold sought-after positions in prime real estate," says Shamil. "Hindus are superstitious about building on street corners, but the Parsis didn't mind. That's why they became such shared spaces and promoted tolerance."

But just as their prime positioning has ensured longevity, so it now threatens their future, since the children of the current proprietors – most of whom took over the cafes from their parents – are more interested in property prices than the 14-hour working days required to run them. It's unlikely, Kavi and Shamil tell me, that most of these cafes will exist long after the current owners pass on.

Britannia and Co is open for lunch only, 12-4pm every day except Sunday, and around us people are tucking into their chicken berry pulaos, this cafe's most famous dish (along with the creme caramel). It's a heavenly, sweet-sour confluence of fragrant pilau rice layered with moist chunks of chicken and a rich, spiced tomato sauce, topped with sour barberries, crunchy cashews and sweet, sticky caramelised onions. It's a recipe that, while recreated across the world (Dishoom has its own version, with cranberries), is a secret fiercely guarded by 91-year-old proprietor Boman Kohinoor, whose wife brought it with her from Iran.

Kohinoor has a keen sense of humour. "Welcome back to the home of your ancestors. They've been here for 300 years and we've all been very happy," he says when we're introduced, before vanishing momentarily, only to reappear with armfuls of laminated photographs, including one of a famous Bollywood actor, which he holds up. "He's a rascal," he says with a waggling finger. "He never brings his wife – always other actresses."

He proudly shows us letters from diners including George Bush Senior, Dick Cheney, and the Pope; one even carries the official letterhead of Windsor Castle. "Please give your Queen my love," he says, "We are very short on space but we'd love to fit her in when she returns to the city."

Born in 1923, the year his father set up the cafe, Kohinoor has worked here for the past 75 years, since he was 16, and he remembers a very different Mumbai from the now rapidly Americanising city: "There used to be 11 million people, now there are about 18 million, and there is so much pollution. Everything has gone up in price. In 1982 the berry pulao was 40 rupees, now it's 400." Which, at around £5 is still quite a steal, I almost point out, before glimpsing a sign above our table that reads, "Please do not argue with the management."

In the days that follow, we probably get through gallons of creamy, unspiced Parsi chai and sample the individual, freshly made food of several more cafes. Each cafe – apart from the touristy Leopold Cafe (near Electric House on Colaba Causeway, leopoldcafe.com), which still bears bullet holes from the 26/11 attacks, and Café Mondegar (Metro House, 5-A Shahid Bhagat Singh Road, Colaba) – is crumbling in its own special way, each tangibly Parsi, with Zarathustra overseeing proceedings.

At Yazdani bakery and cafe (Fountain Akbar Ally, Saint Thomas Cathedral), we taste Mumbai's best brun maska, hot toasted white buns slathered in melted butter with crunchy crusts that we dip into hot chai – the bread melting in the mouth like brioche. Yazdani is known for its baked goods, which it has been making since the early 1950s.

Owner Parvez Irani takes us into the bakery (which is usually strictly off-limits to females). It's a 24-hour operation where a dozen or so bakers live in the rafters above the wood-fired ovens they tend day and night.

Naved says: "It's difficult to choose a favourite cafe because each one is known for its own dishes." But he's particularly enamoured with the deeply savoury, pleasingly fatty kheema pau (spiced minced lamb) at Radio (Building No 10, near Crawford Market), the most dilapidated of the places we visit. It is known to hold favour among the city's gangsters, and eating on its worn, wooden tables, dwarfed by a cavernous, crumbling ceiling in the near darkness, you can sense that it could harbour a certain menace.

"This is the best kheema pau in Mumbai," declares Naved, scooping up the glistening meat with thin slices of red onion and the pau – the white fluffy bread buns found in all Parsi cafes. He has created his own version of this dish.

"They haven't put any tomato in this," he says. "It's rich with ghee, garlic, ginger, coriander powder, chillies, peas and garam masala." From now on the kheema pau at Dishoom will be sans tomatoes.

Kyani and Co (JSS Road, Dhobi Talao, Kalbadevi) is a more convivial set-up, with prettily engraved dark-wood panelling, dappled mirrors, Scandinavian bentwood chairs and chipped mosaic flooring. As well as its confectionary and baked goods – almond sponges, wine-flavoured biscuits and decorative cakes – this place is known for its breakfasts, and has a long, rambling egg repertoire that includes paneer bhurjee (stir-fried eggs), mutton scrambled eggs, and the repellent-sounding "half fry egg".

"There's a tradition of bodybuilding in Parsi culture," says Kavi, "hence all the eggs." Sure enough, on the far wall are some sepia photos of triumphantly muscular Iranians. Amid students and locals we hoover up plates of the akuri, masala scrambled eggs, which are flecked with tomato, onion, turmeric, chilli and coriander, and dip our butter-soft brun maska into the chai.

Owner Farooq Shokri is the third generation of his family to run the cafe, taking over in 2000. He shows us a stained, concise menu from 1975 – pointing out how he's extended it to help cover the steeply rising rents – as well as a remarkable ink drawing of his father by the painter and film director MF Husain: relics that, like the cafe itself, it would be tragic to lose.

"I'm the only one left," says Shokri. "I don't think about what happens after me. I just carry on."

• The trip was provided by Dishoom (dishoom.com). British Airways (0844 493 0787, ba.com) flies from Heathrow to Mumbai from £499 return

Britain's curry houses are feeling the heat from supermarket competition. But can a shop-bought curry ever compete with its takeaway equivalent? To find out, Word of Mouth taste-tested a range of supermarket curries

First it was the pub, now another great British institution, the curry house, is under threat from supermarket competition. A recent report from consumer analysts NPD Group calculates that visits to ethnic restaurants and takeaways dropped by 123m between 2009 and 2012, with curry lovers increasingly turning to supermarkets as a cheap alternative.

"Ethnic food may not be perceived as the everyday good value it once was," concluded NPD's Guy Fielding, with commentators on industry website Big Hospitality suggesting that price isn't the only factor. At the lower end of the market, it is argued, curry houses are coasting, churning out the same oily, interchangeable Anglo-Indian dishes that they were in the 1980s, while the supermarkets have radically improved their product. One observer claimed that shop-bought curries are now "restaurant quality".

Can that be true? We asked several supermarkets to send us samples and put them to the test. These were generally boxed complete meals-for-two (usually comprising tikka masala and korma; which says a lot about what constitutes "curry" for we Brits). At about £6 to £8.50 they are cheap, compared with even bargain basement curry restaurants. But if the price is right, is the spicing? Do they genuinely compare with the bog standard British curry experience?

Tesco Indian Meal For 2 (1.5kg, £6)

This had the highest chicken content – 50% – of those tested, but Tesco's Thai chooks have all the flavour and texture of cotton wool. Studded with cardamom and cumin seeds, the rice is fragrant. The naan seems fluffy, but it's dry and lacks that trademark just-cooked sweetness. The bhajis have a deep-fried savoury edge, plenty of onion and a robust, nondescript spicing, but – and this was a theme – they are weirdly mushy. The chicken in the tikka has been "flame seared" but you would never know. The sauce is ho hum, a warmly spiced tomato concoction. The korma is much better, its rich sauce has a nice, cashew-nut flavour, the ginger and garlic coming through strongly.
4/10 Better than bog standard curry? No.

Marks & Spencer Indian Favourites (1.15kg, £8.49)

M&S use 40% Dutch chicken, which is much firmer. Very slight grilled colour to the meat in the tikka, and its sauce has a creditable spice kick. The flaked almonds in the korma are a nice touch texturally, but the sauce is bland, the use of coconut milk making it taste almost Thai. The naan is best in class: sweetish with a good oven-baked flavour. Its interior springy, its exterior firm, it tastes like something approaching the real deal, as does the pilau rice. Its spicing is rounded and fairly complex. The bhajis are terrible – tiny, miserable little doughy pucks, over-fried and over-spiced (with chilli pepper and jalapeños).
4/10 Better than a bog standard curry? No.

Waitrose Indian Takeaway For Two (1.2kg, £8.49)

Here, the 22% British chicken, while it might be native, is almost as paltry (boom tish!) as Tesco's Thai. The korma is dominated by its (desiccated) coconut flavours, but the spices punch through pleasantly at the end. The tikka is better, less creamy than others, the sauce has an earthy power, with a hint of BBQ in there and a warm, fulsome base spicing, which, thanks to some lemon oil and chopped coriander, tops out in a zesty freshness. I actually ate more of this than I strictly needed to, which speaks volumes. A pot of Bombay potatoes in a mild, fruity tomato sauce was, though not authentic, well-judged and aromatic. Unlike the pilau rice, which was meanly threaded with spices and tasted harsh. Black peppercorns seemed to be the primary seasoning in play. Tiny naans, like children's mittens, had a vinegary smell.
5/10 Better than bog standard Indian? The tikka, yes – marginally.

Assorted Sainsbury's meals

Sainsbury's wasn't able to send over its boxed meals (1.8kg, £10, and Taste The Difference, 1.456kg, £12). Instead, I had to suffer the Indian Snack Selection (£2.50), a collection of dried-out aloo tikka, anaemic, flabby samosa and tough little bhaji balls. The ingredient lists for all three go on for ever, but all I got was acrid chilli heat. Saag paneer (300g, £2) was inconsequential: squeaking, rubbery batons of paneer in a dull tomato-spinach sauce. Two biryanis (500g, £3.50, 23% British chicken) lacked sauce, sophisticated spicing and any of the layered luxury of that dish. Unexpectedly, though, Sainsbury's rogan josh (500g, £3.50) was the stand-out dish in this test. Its tomato sauce is inauthentic, but typical of many curry houses. The New Zealand lamb had real flavour and, despite its sweetness and rather ham-fisted heat, you could discern the cardamom, cloves and ginger doing good things in the background. King prawn makhani (500g, £3.50) was like eating prawns in Heinz tomato soup. Not awful, but not curry either.
4/10 Better than a bog standard curry? Rogan josh on a par, the rest no.

The conclusion? If you shop around (M&S rice and naan; Waitrose chicken tikka; Tesco korma; Sainsbury's rogan josh) you can assemble a serviceable curry, which will have a few notable things – less ghee, the price – going in its favour. There are, however, key items (naan, bhajis) that are never going to taste great out of a box. In general, supermarkets are struggling to keep pace, quality-wise, with even average curry houses.

Ultimately, if you've moved beyond korma, to freshly ground spices, slow-cooked sauces with real depth and differentiated dishes, then these won't cut the mustard (seed). Particularly when, if ordering a takeaway, you can spend a few quid more and eat exponentially better. Double up price-wise, and from Glasgow's Banana Leaf to Wembley's Kahari King via national chain Chennai Dosa, for about £5 to £8 a head, you can take home food of genuine vibrancy, rather than this ersatz Indian.

Do you support your local curry house? Or is the supermarket putting a little spice into your life?

As Singapore prepares to host the first World Street Food Congress – showcasing the best cuisine from trucks, vans and hawker stalls around the globe – we take a look at the finest the city has to offer in affordable dining

Eating out is everyone's favourite pastime in Singapore – one subject that enthusiastically unites the country's diverse population of Chinese, Malays and Indians.

Restaurants are open around the clock, and most of the time are packed to bursting point, serving some of the most delicious and varied cuisines in Asia.

Although this tiny island state now has a host of expensive gourmet venues linked to some of the world's most famous chefs, at its core is a vibrant culture of street food at very affordable prices. Singapore's love affair with hawker cuisine will be celebrated from 31 May to 9 June at the inaugural World Street Food Congress, a 10-day festival where 37 vendors from 10 countries will roll up to serve their dishes at the F1 Pit Building and Paddock, 1 Republic Blvd, at Marina Bay on the south-east of the island – including taco stands from Mexico, food carts from Malaysia, mobile kiosks from India and gourmet food trucks from the US, as well as participants from the host country and elsewhere.

As well as the street chefs and stalls, there will be food writers and street-food specialists, including American TV chef Anthony Bourdain and Claus Meyer, the co-founder of Copenhagen's Noma restaurant, three-time winner of the World's 50 Best Restaurants awards. The event will also host the first World Street Food Awards, intended to raise global awareness of the genre.

To whet your appetite, here's our pick of 10 of the best spots in Singapore to find great affordable food, from the hawker food centres, to the food courts of Chinatown, curry houses of Little India and cafes of Kampong Glam.

328 Katong Laksa

Katong is Singapore's old Peranakan neighbourhood, where the blending of Chinese ingredients with Malay spices and cooking created nyonya cuisine. It also forms part of the name of "328 Katong Laksa". This friendly coffee shop, run by a former beauty queen serves one of the best laksa soups you'll find – a delicious mix of spicy lemak coconut milk, prawns, cockles, tofu, beansprouts and noodles. A bowl costs S$4 (about £2) and hungry customers can also order traditional otak otak, a fish paste steamed in banana leaf, or nasi lemak, rice with crunchy anchovies, peanuts, cucumber and a wicked sambal sauce. There are lots of food shops along the road, selling sticky kueh cakes and barbecued honey-glazed pork.
• 51 East Coast Road, on the junction with Cylon Road, near the Hotel Grand Mercure

Andhra Curry

Little India, to the east of Orchard Road, is one of Singapore's liveliest quarters, with scores of reasonably priced restaurants, cafes and shops selling colourful silks, fragrant incense and glitzy bangles. Andhra stands out because of its psychedelic exterior – a kaleidoscope of garish colours. And though the speciality here is south Indian vegetarian dishes, it is also known for its Hyderabadi biryani, Mysore mutton (cooked with green chillies and coriander), a spicy fish pulusu (baked with tamarind and raw mango), and the great Singaporean favourite – fish-head curry (never a cheap dish, around £11). Main courses and vegetarian set menu from £4.
• 41 Kerbau Road, +65 6293 3935, andhracurrysingapore.com

Azmi Chapatis

The sign outside may read "Thye Chong Restaurant since 1941", but the Chinese owner of this ancient coffee shop has long leased out the premises to Muslim chefs, who make arguably the island's best chapatis. Two aged gentlemen share rolling and cooking duties, turning out a piping hot flatbread every couple of minutes. For chapati-dipping, there are about 20 curries to choose from, including classic mutton masala and the more challenging curried goat brain. Each chapati costs under 50p, with the curries priced from £1.50-£2.50
• 168 Serangoon Road, on the corner with Norris Road, opposite Kansama Restaurant

Tian Tian, Maxwell Food Centre, Chinatown

Everyone in Singapore has their own favourite Hainanese chicken rice stall. It's as close to a national dish as you can come, which is surprising given that it doesn't really come from the Chinese island of Hainan at all, but was invented in colonial Malaya by Hainanese chefs cooking for the British.

The recipe couldn't be simpler: tender steamed chicken, served slightly cooled, fluffy rice, sliced cucumber, coriander – and two key ingredients – a homemade chili sauce and bowl of chicken broth. Chinatown's Maxwell Food Centre, a converted 1950s market, has about a hundred tempting hawker stalls, but the longest queues are at Tian Tian, where a plate of chicken rice goes for less than £2, with some aficionados ordering just wings, claws or whatever goes into what the menu terms "spare parts".
• Stall 10, Maxwell Food Centre,1 Kadayanallur Street, tiantianchickenrice.com

Chinatown Complex Food Court

Signs tell tourists that Smith Street is "food street", and it's true that it's one of the few places where there are still old-fashioned hawker stalls lining the street at night. But for more exciting food, step into the dilapidated Chinatown Complex, which houses a brilliant wet (fresh food) market and buzzing food court upstairs. For once, this isn't sanitised Singapore, and customers take more notice of how delicious the cooking is than the hygiene rating. Satay Bee Hoon can claim to be a genuine Singapore invention, a fusion of Chinese and Malay influences, where delicate rice vermicelli, cuttle fish, cockles, pork and kangkong (water spinach) are smothered in a spicy, crunchy satay sauce, all for £1.50 a portion.
• Stall 02-112, Chinatown Complex food court, 335 Smith Street

Yu Kun Kaya

Singaporeans are big on nostalgia, typified by the crowds that sit out every morning at the shady terrace of the Ya Kun restaurant in the heart of Chinatown. Don't expect a traditional English fry-up on the menu, but a local breakfast that has been served since 1944 – the Kaya Toast set menu. For under £2 you get a plate of toast filled with kaya coconut jam, two very runny eggs (don't even think about asking for them to be more cooked) and a cup a dense coffee, magically filtered through a strange-looking sock device. They like to add a big dose of super-thick condensed milk – delicious but frighteningly sweet.
• 18 China Street, +65 6438 3638, yakun.com

Yum Cha

The narrow streets of Chinatown are crammed with restaurants, coffee shops and hawker stalls, but Yum Cha is hidden away on the first floor of an anonymous budget hotel, so it can come as a shock when you walk into a huge, noisy dining room. Although there is a tempting full menu – chili crabs, salted egg prawns, steamed pomfret – this is the place to come for dim sum. Portions are from £1.50, and the best are the delicate spinach prawn dumpling, beancurd stuffed with fish, "vegetarian" ham in tau pok (fried tofu), and crispy red bean paste with banana. Try to visit at the weekend when the restaurant reverts to the old-fashioned method of service, as waitresses weave between the tables pushing rickety trolleys filled with steamed goodies.
• 20 Trengganu Street, +65 6372 1717, yumcha.com.sg

Sabar Menanti

Kampong Glam is the lively Muslim part of downtown Singapore with everything from Moroccan couscous restaurants to shisha cafes, and even a halal Parisian bistro. But nothing beats this hole in the wall Sumatran eatery serving Indonesian nasi padang. You start off with a heaped plate of rice and then it is self-service, with around 20 Minankabau dishes to choose from – assam fish, sour gourd, smoked beef, jackfruit curry – with the price of your plate increasing depending on how much you heap on. Lunch will cost less than a fiver.
• 48 Kandahar Street, +65 6396 6919,

Annalakshmi

This vegetarian-only Indian restaurant could be the cheapest place in town to eat, because officially, there are no prices. It is a run by a charitable association, Temple of Fine Arts, that finances art, music and dance centres, and clients are asked to make a donation at the end of the meal of what they can afford. In practice, people usually leave S$15 for a generous buffet of gourmet vegetarian delicacies. The waiters and cooks are all volunteers, and their specialities are dosai filled with spiced potatoes and chutney, and oothappam (rice and lentil pancakes), topped with onions, fried cauliflower, chillies and yogurt. It's a very popular venue at the weekend, when a reservation is advised.
• Central Square, 20 Havelock Road, +65 6339 9993, annalakshmi.com.sg

Tiong Bahru Food Court

A short bus ride from the city centre, Tiong Bahru is where the earliest public housing was built in Singapore – very low-rise compared to today's skyscrapers – and the 1950s-style market houses a busy wet market on the ground floor and some of Singapore's best hawker stalls upstairs. This is like a flashback to the past, with a musician entertaining diners on an electric piano, and no one looking stressed or rushed. It is also the place to try a traditional preparation of lor mee, a delicious dish of thick yellow noodles served in a thick gravy, with fish cake, fried wonton, stewed pork and slices of ngor hiang (five-spiced meal roll). In the final moments of the cooking process, vinegar and minced garlic are added, giving a tangy, savoury taste. A bowl will cost less than £1.50 and is only served at breakfast and lunch.
• Stall 02-80, Tiong Bahru Food Court, 30 Seng Poh Road

What gave Rick Stein the idea that he was the man to reclaim Indian curry? And why hasn't he heard of Kolkata?

• Rick Stein's India on iPlayer

Last week, Brian Sewell complained that the BBC's factual programming was all travelogues fronted by celebs. Cue Rick Stein's India (BBC2), which opened with a couple of obligatory elephant shots, before cutting to a luxury houseboat where one servant was performing a headstand while another was playing the flute as the dawn rose on a picture-perfect lagoon. This was Rick's base from which he would explore the country and return to cook some of the dishes he picked up on his travels. Nice work if you can get it. For about the first time ever, I found myself in total agreement with Sewell.

Stein's self-appointed mission was to reclaim the reputation of the Indian curry from all those who thought it was just a prawn vindaloo to be washed down with three pints of lager. I'm not sure if there's much overlap between those who really do think the prawn vindaloo is the be-all-and-end-all of Indian cuisine and Stein's TV audience, but what became less clear the longer the programme went on was why Stein thought he was the right man to do it; he is best known for his seafood restaurants in Padstow and hasn't previously appeared to give India or its food much of a thought before he turned up there with a camera crew. He seemed especially surprised to find that Calcutta was now called Kolkata and that Madras was now Chennai.

"I hope you don't mind if I bring this up," Stein asked one of his food guides in Kolkata, "but do you find it offensive that the British refer to all Indian food as curry?" The guide said he was very glad that Stein had brought this up as Indians did find the generic name a little offensive. Whereupon Stein went on to refer to almost every dish as curry to keep things simple.

This apart, Stein was a hyper-enthusiastic traveller as he sampled both the street and restaurant food with a breathless commentary that included gems such as "plumptious prawns" and "mustard seeds are cases that encase …" He wasn't, though, a particularly challenging observer: neither his statement that "the most interesting thing about India is curry, first, second and last" nor his conclusion that all the poor people in Kolkata looked really happy were opinions that might be universally held.

Nor was he so interested in the cooking styles he learned that he could be bothered to attempt them back on the houseboat. Rather than experimenting with local culinary traditions – the women in the refuge added vinegar to their curry – and exploring different tastes, Stein chose to make his own versions of their recipes. So rather than serve up anything authentically Indian, Stein delivered food that had been adjusted for western tastes and which might be found at an Indian theme night at one of his Cornwall restaurants. Still, neither Sewell nor I can say we weren't warned: the programme was called Rick Stein's India, and that's what we got.

"There's treason afoot. Best keep your eyes open," said an extra employed to cart the most recent mound of stiffs away from the Vatican toward the end of The Borgias (Sky Atlantic), which began its third and final series. The advice was well-meant, but unhelpful. I had my eyes open throughout and I'm still not sure I followed everything that was going on: mainly because almost every scene was filmed in the near dark. This was a more convincing setting than that for Sunday'sThe White Queen (BBC1) – a comic hybrid of a Persil advert and a Vogue photo shoot for Tudor-boho chic, but one more conducive to playing murder in the dark than exposition: there are enough killings in the programme as it is, without having to worry if a character has been whacked by accident.

Still, if you've stayed with The Borgias for this long, you probably aren't too worried about keeping up with the plot as you got the basics long ago. Trust no one. Alliances made one minute can be toast the next, so just enjoy the ride. Last night's season opener took a while to get going as the first 25 minutes was taken up with the non-event of "would Pope Alexander VI [Jeremy Irons] survive the poisoning cliffhanger that ended the second season?" Once Irons had vomited theatrically, the mayhem was free to restart. He might take himself a wee bit seriously and his personal views may be decidedly dodgy, but I'd watch Jeremy in The Borgias rather than his son, Max, in The White Queen any day. Even though I can't always see him.

• Watch this: TV highlights

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There's no need to live on noodles and value-brand beans. Cyrus Todiwala and Tony Singh's recipes will add some heat to your kitchen and help you to cook up a storm on a budget

Tony's tandoori roasted chicken

(Serves 4-6)
6-8 chicken thighs on the bone, skin removed
2 large handfuls of chopped fresh coriander, to garnish
Juice of 1 lemon (optional)

For the first marinade
2 tbsp grated fresh root ginger
1 tbsp garlic puree
1 tbsp rapeseed oil or vegetable oil

For the second marinade
100g (4oz) natural yoghurt
1 tsp ground cardamom
½ tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp garam masala
¼ tsp ground mace
50ml (2fl oz) double cream
½ tsp saffron strands, soaked in 1 tbsp warm milk (optional)
Salt

With a sharp knife or fork, pierce the flesh of the chicken thighs in a few places to help the marinade get into the meat. Mix together the ingredients for the first marinade and rub well into the chicken. Cover and leave to marinate in the fridge for 4-6 hours (but if you are short of time you can proceed with the next step straight away).

In a large bowl, mix together all the ingredients for the second marinade and rub well into the chicken. Cover and leave to marinate in the fridge overnight (or you can proceed with the next step straight away).

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas 4. Put the chicken in a casserole dish and cover with a lid. Cook in the oven for 45 minutes, basting twice with the juices during cooking. Uncover the casserole dish and cook for a further 15 minutes, or until the chicken is tender.

Remove the dish from the oven, season to taste and stir in the coriander, then cover and rest the chicken for 5 minutes. Squeeze over the lemon juice, if using, and serve hot, with a red onion salad and some mint chutney.

Tony's cauliflower and chilli cheese

(Serves 4-6 as a side dish)
1 litre (1¾ pints) milk
2 bay leaves
1 garlic clove, lightly crushed
2 cloves
3cm (1¼in) piece cinnamon stick
1 cauliflower (about 800g/1lb 14oz), cut into florets, leaves and stalks reserved

For the sauce

60g (2½oz) butter
60g (2½oz) plain flour
100ml (3½fl oz) double cream
120g (4½oz) mature cheddar, grated
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the spiced topping
50g (2oz) white breadcrumbs
50g (2oz) mature cheddar, grated
30g (1¼oz) Parmesan, finely grated
25g (1oz) cornflakes
2 mild fresh green chillies, seeds removed if liked, finely chopped
1 tbsp finely chopped fresh coriander
1 tbsp finely chopped fresh mint

Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/gas 6. Pour the milk into a large saucepan, add the bay leaves, garlic, cloves and cinnamon stick, and bring to the boil. Add the cauliflower florets, leaves and stalks, and simmer for 8-10 minutes until tender but still holding together.

Gently lift out the cooked cauliflower with a slotted spoon, removing the bay leaves and cinnamon stick, and set in a colander to drain. Strain the hot milk through a sieve into a jug and reserve.

To make the sauce, melt the butter in a medium-size pan over a low heat, then stir in the flour. Stir continuously over a low heat for 2-3 minutes, then gradually add the reserved hot milk, stirring with a whisk so that the sauce is smooth. Bring to a simmer, reduce the heat to very low, then simmer for 5-10 minutes until the flour is cooked out, whisking occasionally.

Add the cream and heat the mixture through, then remove from the heat, stir in the Cheddar and whisk until all the cheese has melted. Season generously with salt and pepper. Gently stir the cauliflower into the cheese sauce so that all is well covered, and transfer to an ovenproof dish measuring about 30 x 20cm (12 x 8in).

Mix all of the spice topping ingredients together and sprinkle on top of the dish. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes until golden and bubbling. If you like an extra-crispy topping, flash the dish under a preheated grill for a few minutes before serving.

Dad's beef kebabs

(Serves 4)
500g (1lb 2oz) minced beef
1 heaped tbsp finely chopped fresh coriander, including stalks
1 heaped tbsp finely chopped fresh mint leaves
2.5cm fresh root ginger, grated
2 garlic cloves, grated
2 fresh green chillies, chopped
1 tsp lime juice
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp ground cumin
1 heaped tsp ground coriander
1 tsp red chilli powder
½ tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp sunflower oil, rapeseed oil or water, for shaping
Salt
8 skewers, soaked in water for 10 minutes if wooden

Place all of the ingredients, except the oil or water for shaping, in a large bowl, and mix by hand really thoroughly, ensuring all are combined. To check the seasoning, fry a small amount of the mixture until cooked through, taste and adjust if needed.

Cover the uncooked mince mixture and refrigerate for 6-8 hours. Meanwhile, ensure the skewers fit inside your griddle pan; square skewers are best, thin round ones may not hold the weight of the mince.

Take a ball of mince mixture about 5cm (2in) in diameter in one hand and a skewer in the other. Make the meatball as smooth as possible by tossing it like a ball in your hand. Positioning the ball at roughly the middle of the skewer, press around it so that the mince covers all around that part of the skewer.

Now apply a little oil or water to the palm that you have been using for the mince, and gently press the meat in the form of a sausage on the skewer. This takes a bit of practice, and you may find that the mince tends to fall off the skewer as you work. The trick is to form a ring between your forefinger and thumb, and use your other fingers to guide the mince; apply a gentle pressure, and push the mince upwards so that the sausage thins itself out over the skewer. Ideally, the size of the sausage should be around 2.5cm (1in) or a bit less in diameter.

Heat a griddle pan while you continue to form the mince into sausages on the skewers, until you have 8 skewers. Cook in the hot griddle pan for approximately 8-10 minutes, rotating the kebabs as they cook. Take care not to overcook them as this makes them dry and chewy. They should ideally feel spongy but still nice and moist. Serve with fresh green chutney and an onion-based salad, and perhaps rolled into a chapati or a flour tortilla to make a wrap.

The ingredients list for this Indian street food snack may seem daunting, but the chutneys are easily made while the potato mixture is cooling

Of Maharashtrian origin, the vada pav is a very popular Indian street food snack, consisting of spiced, deep-fried potato garnished with various chutneys. The credit for invention often goes to a man named Ashok Vaidy, who slung his wares from a stall outside Dadar station in 1971. Beats a soggy sandwich on the train home from work, huh?

(Makes about 20 balls; serves 5)

For the spiced potato mix
2 fresh green chilies, finely chopped (seeded or not is up to you)
1 garlic clove, crushed
Thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp black mustard seeds
A pinch of asafoetida (optional)
10 (fresh or dried) curry leaves
500g cold mashed potatoes
½ tsp ground turmeric
Sea salt, to taste
4 tbsp fresh coriander leaves, chopped
Vegetable oil, for deep-frying

For the sweet chutney
6 dried dates
½ tsp tamarind puree

For the dry garlic chutney
10 garlic cloves, peeled
1 tbsp peanut (groundnut) oil, plus extra for frying
35g dry unsweetened (desiccated) coconut
1 tsp chilli powder

For the green chutney
A large bunch of fresh coriander
A handful of fresh mint leaves
About 5 fresh green chilies, chopped (seeded or not is up to you)
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tbsp vegetable oil

For the batter
100g chickpea/besan (gram) flour
¼ tsp ground turmeric
A pinch of baking powder
80ml water

5 soft white rolls, split open, to serve
Fried fresh green chilies, to serve (optional)

To make the spiced potato mixture:
Mash together the chillies, garlic and ginger. Heat the vegetable oil in a pan, add the mustard seeds and cook until they pop. Add the asafoetida, if using, and the curry leaves and cook for 10 seconds. Add the chilli/ginger paste and cook for 10 seconds. Add the mashed potatoes, turmeric and salt, then add the coriander and mix well. Remove from the heat and let cool. Meanwhile, make the chutneys.

To make the sweet chutney:
Soak the dates in warm water for about 20 minutes, then remove the stones. Whiz the dates in a blender with the tamarind puree and a splash of water to form a tomato sauce-like consistency. Set aside.

To make the dry garlic chutney:
Gently caramelise the whole garlic cloves in a frying pan with a little peanut oil. Add the coconut, stirring until golden. Blend together with the chilli powder and the remaining tablespoon of peanut oil. Season with salt. Set aside.

To make the green chutney:
Blend the coriander, mint, green chillies and lemon juice with a splash of water. Add the vegetable oil, plus some salt, and blend again. Set aside.

To shape and cook the potato mixture:
Pour vegetable oil for deep-frying into a deep frying pan or an electric deep-fat fryer and heat to 180C. Shape the spiced potato mixture into balls (to make about 20 balls).

To make the batter:
Mix all the batter ingredients together, then dip each potato ball in the batter. Deep-fry the balls in batches for about six minutes, turning occasionally, until golden brown all over. Drain on paper towels. Keep warm while you cook the rest.

Serve the warm potato balls in the white rolls with the chutneys and fried green chilies, if using.

Homemade preserves are a favourite among many cooks around the world. Here are some tasty recipes for kimchi, achar and torshi from Korea, India and Iran

Pickles have a tendency to make our eyes water, and it's not just their sharp taste. For me it's the lemon pickle my grandfather used to make, which brings back memories of family picnics. For Atul Kochhar, chef at London restaurant Benares, it is stuffed chilli pickles that make him go misty eyed. "Our job, as kids, was to help my parents stuff the chillis and put them into sterilised jars," he tells me.

Kochhar says preserves pull on our emotions because of their history of protecting the family's diet through leaner seasons. For the same reason, they are still a mainstay of the home cook. "Homemade pickles taste different because they bring the essence of the person who has made it – who has added the spices they like best. I will always say home cooks are better than chefs at pickles."

The importance of pickles declined when refrigerators became widely available, but there's been a recent resurgence in interest among foodies. But, of course, in some countries pickles have always been central to cooking.

Korea

In Korea, kimchi– fermented vegetables – is the national dish and eaten with every meal. A poor-quality batch can be a social embarrassment, according to cookery teacher Kie-Jo Sarsfield. Family recipes are a closely guarded secret, she tells me. But with so many different ingredients it's impossible to create a uniform taste each time, adding surprise and drama to the process. "It's an excuse for conversation because you say: 'Oh come round for lunch, our kimchi is good this time.' But if your husband brought a guest round unexpectedly you would have to apologise if your kimchi is bad." And what happens when you run out? She looks at me, shocked. "You would never run out of kimchi."

One variety of kimchi is enough to create 10 different meals from soups to salad, she tells me. And although it can be made with different vegetables, most Korean families still make a batch of cabbage kimchi before temperatures drop too far. She is scathing about the modern taste for topping burgers with kimchi. Ham or steak work better, she advises.

Cabbage kimchi (baechoo kimchi)

Korean cabbage is better than the Chinese versions – cut two lengthways (cut the stem and tear the rest) put them in a solution of three cups of salt to 20 cups of water (too much salt and the kimchi will become mushy). Leave this for three hours turning occasionally, until the leaves look slightly wilted.

Rinse under cold water three or four times and drain in a colander until the stuffing is ready.

To make the stuffing peel and trim a Korean radish (if you can't find this try an Indian mooli, which is similar but more watery and less crunchy), slice it into 0.3cm discs and cut it into 5cm strips.

Julienne some spring onions into 5cm strips.

Mix 100g Korean chilli powder, half a cup of salted anchovy sauce (or fish or oyster sauce ), 2tbsp of baby shrimp, one teaspoon of sugar, 3tbsp of crushed or finely chopped garlic, 1.5tbsp of finely chopped ginger in a bowl. Add the mooli and spring onions, and mix well.

Put the salted cabbage into a bowl and pull off a couple of outer leaves, then smear the stuffing in between the layers. Fold over the top of the leaves so you are folding the cabbage in half. Put it in an airtight jar and when the jar is three-quarters full cover with the outer leaves and press them down firmly. Put it in a cool place (such as a garage) for a few days before transferring it to the fridge.

If air gets into the jar, Sarsfield warns, you could end up with "crazy kimchi", which she says "tastes horrible!"

India

"If you took pickles out of Indian society," Kochhar says, "I don't think it would survive." The country has changed dramatically in recent years, with a growing economy and expanding middle class, but some things stay the same. "I would say 90% of people still live the old lifestyles. In old Delhi, for instance, people still have small houses with flat roofs where they dry their pickles." Vinegar, he says, is seldom used. "We generally rely on sunlight, salt and spices," says Kochhar. But that's the only constant – mango and lime achars are the best-known Indian pickles, almost everything can be made into achar, including meat and seafood. "Meat pickles are very important in places like Rajasthan, which is dry and arid, and where they can't grow many things," says Kochhar.

"They have plenty of sun so whatever little produce they get they can pickle it and use it over the months ahead."

Mustard oil, ginger and garlic, and achari masala or panch phoron – literally five spices (fenugreek, mustard, fennel, cumin and black caraway seeds) – are the basis for many north Indian pickles, along with mango powder and chillis. A south Indian lime achar, however, may just involve lime, crushed chilli and coriander – either salted or matured in the sun.

Like all pickles, achar (Indian pickle) has been developed not just to add extra bite and draw out the flavour of particular dishes, but to ensure ingredients only available in one season can be eaten all year round. For those of us not guaranteed weeks of sunshine to dry ingredients out, luckily there are recipes such as this turnip, cauliflower and carrot pickle for instant gratification.

Shalgam, gobhi, gajar ka achar (turnip, cauliflower and carrot pickle)

500g cauliflower
500g turnips
500g carrots
2tbsp mustard powder
½ cup vinegar
250g jaggery/gur/sugar
1 cup mustard oil
3 heaped tbsp ginger paste
3 heaped tbsp garlic paste
Salt and red chilli powder to taste

Wash and peel the vegetables. Cut the carrots and turnips into longish pieces, separate cauliflower into florets. Pat dry on paper towels and leave for few hours to get rid of excess moisture. Heat the mustard oil in a heavy kadhai (wok) till smoking, then let it cool a bit. Fry ginger and garlic until golden, add vinegar, jaggery and the rest of the spices. Add the vegetables and cook for 5mins, toss well, cool and bottle into clean and dry bottles. Your pickle is ready and will last in the fridge for several days.

Iran

In an elegant, light-filled house in Bath, Simi Rezai-Ghassemi has prepared a proper Iranian welcome. Spread out on her table, alongside my delicate cup of amber-coloured tea there are glass bowls filled with preserved mulberries, Iranian dates and some Bath fudge. Her mother, Salehe Salehpour-Oskoui, is visiting from her home in Iran's Azerbaijan region, and it is from her that Simi says she has learned to make some of her favourite pickles. The cooking teacher waxes lyrical as she describes the food of the region, from apricots to tomatoes, which gave her her love of cooking. But Iranian pickles – or torshi – are not, she warns me, for the faint hearted. "They are really strong, they slap you around the face."

"With pickles the emphasis is on sour," explains Simi. "And we use herbs to flavour the vinegar and garlic. We eat pickles with most meals – for example it's particularly popular to have cucumbers in brine with koresh (stew)."

In Azeri cooking, unripe grapes are often used to introduce a sour note to food. And at lunch Simi lets me try a bowl of Aash, Iranian soup, with ghooreh (sour grapes pickled in brine), which add a delicious sour pop to the dish.

And I am soon watching in awe as her mother ignores the cutting board to chop the vegetables in the palm of her hand, and later as they show me how to make pretty aubergine pickles, which are perfect for guests, as well as mixed vegetable torshi, and herb torshi – perfect for anything fried.

Torshi bademjan (aubergine, garlic and mint pickle)

Although Salehe doesn't follow strict recipes or measure anything, Simi carefully weighs out the correct ingredients – but insists anyone trying to make pickles has to use their own judgment to create their own perfect preserve.

Take some small, tasty aubergines of a similar size that will fit into whichever jar you intend to use (about 120g). And add them to a saucepan containing a hot solution of 70ml vinegar and 70ml water. Put the lid on and simmer for 5-10mins until the aubergines are just soft but not cooked. Cider vinegar will give a less strong taste.

When they are ready, take them out and squeeze them gently to remove the water, slice down the middle and stuff them with a mixture of five chopped garlic cloves, 1tbsp dried mint and ¼tsp salt. Next carefully slide the aubergines into the jar you have picked – which will pack them in tightly. Cover them with 125ml fresh cider vinegar and 1tbsp of water (15ml) (boiled and cooled). Secure the jars and leave them in a cool dark place for a month or more. After opening, slice horizontally into discs and serve. Keep the torshi in the fridge once the jar has been opened. It will keep unopened for at least five months.

Can another member of the fritter family beat the onion bhaji, do you eat them as a starter or a snack, and what do you serve with them?

The onion bhaji was probably my first introduction to the joys of Indian food back in the late 80s, so I feel I owe this simple snack a considerable debt of thanks. The word "bhajia" means fritter – in fact, they're just one small part of the wider pakora family, which encompasses all manner of good things (goat brain pakora stands out in my memory) fried in chickpea batter, but in Britain, a land never known for its subtle taste, the pungent onion variety rules supreme.

Usually served as a snack in its homeland, generally with a nice cup of chai, bhajis are the stalwart of the starter selection here: a deep-fried appetite whetter for the myriad joys to come. At their best, they're almost ethereally light and addictively crisp. At their worst, they're stodgy and bland – as chef Cyrus Todiwala observes in his new book, Mr Todiwala's Bombay: "What you see in stores and supermarkets does not always represent the bhajia we Indians know." So just how do you guarantee great results?

Onion

Often lost in mass-produced versions, the bulk of the bhaji should be onion, rather than dough. Most recipes use yellow onion, sliced very thinly so it cooks through quickly, but food writer Simon Majumdar specifies white and Alfred Prasad, executive chef at the Michelin-starred Tamarind, goes for red. I find white too mild, and although I like the sweetness of the red versions, I miss the yellow onion's pungent flavour, so I'm going to stick with that.

Batter

Onions are onions, but where bhaji recipes diverge is in the batter that binds the slices together. Gram, or chickpea flour, is fairly standard, but Prasad and a brilliant little book called Flavours of Gujarat (which has been sitting on my parents' bookshelf for more than 20 years, waiting for this moment) recommend adding rice flour, presumably to make the batter crisper. For me, the difference between a great bhaji and a merely adequate one is in the crunch – as with all deep-fried foods, it should fight back – and Prasad's are particularly fiesty, so I'm going to adopt his 2:1 ratio of gram to rice flour.

Perhaps more important is the liquid used, both in type and quantity. Water is obviously the first choice, but Nikita Gulhane, whose bhaji recipe features in Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Nation, also adds plain yoghurt, and Prasad stirs in a little melted butter. I like the rich tanginess of Gulhane's yoghurt, but I find it makes the batter a bit thick and gloopy, so I'm going to use Prasad's butter, plus Todiwala's lemon juice for flavour.

The batters vary enormously in consistency: Gulhane's is a thick paste, while Majumdar counsels aiming for the texture of double cream. This makes all the difference to the finished result: the two thickest batters, from Gulhane and Flavours of Gujarat, produce rather doughy bhajis that seem to be more about the batter than the onion. They're tasty enough, but I prefer the more delicate coating of Todiwala, Prasad and Majumdar's versions. The guiding principle is that it should be thick enough to cling to the onion, but not firm enough to form clumps of its own.

Majumdar suggests letting the batter rest for an hour before use, much like a yorkshire pudding, presumably to allow the flours to absorb the moisture in the batter. I don't think this is desirable here, though: his coating is tough, but not particularly crisp, and one taster likens it (approvingly, I must add) to a Woolworths onion ring.

Spices

The gram flour gives the batter a subtle nutty flavour, but subtle isn't what we're looking for here. Chillies are a popular addition, with Prasad and Todiwala plumping for fresh green chillies, and Prasad, Todiwala, Majumdar and Flavours of Gujarat sticking in dried chilli powder too. I prefer the cleaner, greener flavour of the fresh variety. Turmeric is also fairly standard, as much for colour as flavour.

Gulhane and Prasad both add garlic and ginger to the batter, which lend it a pleasing and more interesting sweetness than Majumdar's sugar – as do Prasad's unusual, but very welcome, fennel seeds, which I prefer to Todiwala's sharper ajwain, or lovage seeds. I love the earthiness of his cumin seeds with the onion, though. Sesame seeds, as used in Flavours of Gujarat, seem an unnecessary addition.

Fresh coriander, used by everyone but Majumdar, adds an attractive colour and a fresh, clean flavour to the batter, while curry leaves, as used by Prasad and Gulhane, contribute a herbal note. They're only worth buying fresh though, so if you can't find them, leave them out.

Cooking

It is very important to get the temperature of the oil right, as Todiwala explains: "Too hot [and] they will fry too fast and remain raw inside and gooey. Too cold and the results will be oily and soft." The fairly standard 180C seems about right – most recipes suggest dropping a piece of batter in there to test the heat, but if you do have a food thermometer, use it – it is far more reliable than the sizzle test if you're after perfect results.

The perfect onion bhajis

(Makes 8)
60g gram flour
30g rice flour
1 tbsp ghee or butter, melted
Juice of ¼ lemon
½ tsp turmeric
1 tsp cumin seeds, coarsely chopped
¼ tsp fennel seeds
1-2 hot green chillies (to taste), finely minced
2 tsp root ginger, finely grated
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Small bunch of coriander, chopped
2 fresh curry leaves, chopped (optional)
2 onions, halved, core removed and thinly sliced
Vegetable oil, to cook

Sift the flours into a mixing bowl, then stir in the ghee and lemon juice and just enough cold water to bring it to the consistency of double cream. Stir in the spices, aromatics and herbs and add salt to taste. Stir in the onions so they are well coated.

Heat the oil in a deep-fat fryer to 180C, or fill a large pan a third full with oil and heat – a drop of batter should sizzle as it hits the oil, then float. Meanwhile, put a bowl of cold water next to the hob, and a plate lined with kitchen paper. Put the oven on a low heat.

Once the oil is up to temperature, wet your hands and shape tablespoon-sized amounts of the mixture into balls. Drop into the oil, being careful not to overcrowd the pan, then stir carefully to stop them sticking. Cook for about four minutes, turning occasionally, until crisp and golden, then drain on the paper and put in the oven to keep warm while you cook the next batch. Serve with chutney or pickle.

Bhajis – where do you stand: a great curry house starter, or a fabulous teatime treat? Which other members of the pakora family do you rate – and what do you like to serve with them? (For me, aubergine pickle takes some bettering.)

Student cooking doesn't have to be bland - in this video a student shows you how to make a quick and easy lamb biryani. The steps are simple and there's an added bonus: you only need to use one pot so can save on washing up. A really student-friendly recipe

This month, How to Eat fancies a curry. Eat-in or takeaway? Dishes to share or your own main course? Washed down with beer or wine? And does anyone ever have room for dessert?

Loosen your belt, Britain! How to Eat– the blog seeking to establish an informal code of conduct for Britain's favourite dishes – is back, and this month (with apologies to my Word of Mouth colleague Sejal Sukhadwala), we're having a curry.

Of course, "curry" is shorthand for a vast, complex food culture, not a dish per se, but given the unique way it is enjoyed and eaten in Britain, it made sense to cover it as one. Below the line, please keep the chaat civil, the tone korma. Rogan joshing is fine. Gobi argy-bhaji will not be tolerated.*

* Puns writer's own. The Guardian cannot be held responsible for their poori quality.

Choosing a curry house

No, the supermarket won't do. And who among non-Asians has ever cooked a satisfying curry at home? However, identifying a curry house that is cooking fresh, clearly differentiated dishes is difficult. There are no hard and fast rules. These pointers, though, may help.

Encouraging signs:

• It's south Indian. Bad south Indians must exist, but I've yet to eat in one. Instead, the sensitivity of the spicing in most Tamil or Keralan eateries is revelatory. From light, interesting rices cooked with curry leaves, cashew nuts, mustards seed and lentils, to the thali – the ultimate meal for the indecisive diner – you can't go wrong.

• There are women in the kitchen. A sign that you're in good (often Gujarati) hands.

• It is vegetarian and, therefore, will be working that bit harder to maximise flavour.

• It is a basic, no-frills cafe. It will be cheap at least, and with nothing going for it but the food, likely brilliant.

Warning signs:

• There is a waiter outside touting for business.

• No one has bothered to blanch the onions for the "kachumbar", which is just raw onion, ketchup and chilli powder served with thin, cold poppadoms. Conversely, if your poppadoms arrive hot and glossy with a mint chutney, sour with anardana pomegranate powder, you are on to a winner.

• The menu includes innumerable curries both historic (biryani, dopiaza) and bastardised British (korma, tikka masala), with identical descriptions for each. No kitchen is that good; particularly one that sticks king prawns in a rogan josh and chicken in its vindaloo. Everything will arrive in the time it takes to cook some meat and add a jarred sauce.

• XXL naans; hot curry challenges; healthy emphasis on lean chicken breast; monomaniacal ghee reduction: all signs that a venue is – albeit in different ways – pandering to a know-nowt British audience. Give me a gaff cooking scraggy mutton on the bone and chicken thigh in rich gravies enriched with ghee over some modern, halfway (curry)house.

• Also, beware the award-winning Indian restaurant. There seem to be thousands, many touting gongs from unknown bodies, which date back years, if not decades.

Curry house v takeaway

I'm happy to eat in a curry house, of course. But there are significant issues that make takeaway preferable. For instance, there is the ubiquity of crap beers in many Brit curry houses – not just Kingfisher and Cobra, but Tetley Smoothflow too. Also, the bizarre way that, in restaurants that insist on serving everything in dinky metal bowls, you often get a far bigger portion, for lower prices, if you take away.

It is also a matter of comfort. Curry makes pigs of even the most self-disciplined diner. If, by the end of the meal, you still want to walk, rather than have someone cart you out in a wheelbarrow, then you really haven't got involved, have you? Which is why, until curry houses start introducing chaises longues for fattened guests, it will always be preferable to eat at home and – as you scarf the last mouthful of now cold lamb kulcha – flop back on the sofa, sated and burping gently.

Debrett's dictates that a takeaway should be served in china dishes with warmed plates (wide shallow bowls, surely?). But Debrett's can fu … sorry, I'm forgetting my manners. Debrett's can do one. Clearly, the authors of its Guide to Entertaining Etiquette have never had to bath the kids, tidy the lounge, put a load of washing on, phone for the takeaway and pick it up in the 90 minute window before [insert your favourite TV programme] starts. Next they'll be telling me I've got to use napkins, not kitchen roll, and can't start by scooping up bits of curry with a poppadom (it's an Asian taco!).

When to eat it

There is a common misapprehension that the best time to eat a curry is when you're drunk. In fact, the best time to eat a curry is when you're hungover. There are several reasons for this: you can't be arsed to cook; you're craving carbs; the piquant flavours of a good curry will penetrate the muggy fug in your head like few other foods; eating something with a decent chilli heat feels restorative (erroneous endorphin claims or not); and it's a great excuse to crack open what you really want, which is a belated hair-of-the-dog beer. The existential gloom will lift rapidly and (as it's probably Sunday night), an hour later you will be having a heated debate about why are we still watching this bloody nonsense Homeland?

Meal flow

Curry is a two-and-a-half-course meal. Poppadoms, starters, main course, rice, maybe a side daal. But dessert? Who ever has room for dessert? In fact, it's a fascinating chicken and egg: which came first, bloated British curry eaters or the sad pineapple fritters and bought-in ice-creams which, in a curry house, make passing on dessert so easy?

Notwithstanding an early experience with Indian sweets in Rusholme (I'm still recovering from the sugar rush), I am aware there is a fine Indian dessert tradition of semolina puddings, halwa and shrikhand variations. But will I ever forgo that second seekh kebab to make sure I've still got room to try them? Never in a million years.

A note on sharing …

Don't do it. Sounds good in theory – various main courses, so you can all try new dishes – but it never works. First, it leads to a mess of mismatched flavours/textures on your plate. Second, deep down, even supposedly adventurous British curry eaters are pretty conservative. Most people have one or two "safety dishes" that they order habitually and, even when they're meant to be exploring off-piste, people always want a core of those familiar dishes on the table as security.

Those dishes are then hotly fought over as people panic-eat, while the exotic stuff goes cold. Choose your own main, unless you're happy to be left with that paneer and aubergine/one-pot duck/hot'n'sour monkfish curry that no one was quite sure about.

Cost

It is not the case that with curry you get what you pay for. In many "contemporary" Indian restaurants, you're paying for the flashy lighting and high-back leather chairs. Moreover, I have little interest in the polite refinement of, say, Atul Kochhar's Michelin-starred food. But there are serious, authentic Indian restaurants out there where – hold on to your hats! – the food does justify topping £10 for a main course. Good curry is not necessarily the cheapest curry.

Brief menu highlights …

Proper lamb rogan josh in a rich, glossy sauce fit for a Kashmiri prince. Expertly marinated adraki chops and juicy seekh kebabs. Pretty much any use of spinach and kasoori methi. The staggering depth of savoury flavour that a conscientious kitchen can draw out of something as simple as sambar (see also channa masala; various daals, particularly daal makhani; many chicken and lentil curries). Vadai and idli. Masala dosa: pancake of the gods; and its close cousin, topped uthappam. Revitalising rasam. The light, sweet'n'sour, singsong joys of bhelpuri and other Gujarati chaat snacks, such as cinnamon-spiked kachori. Keralan cabbage thoran or "beef chaps". Tawa-fried seabass. Keema curries – go on, admit it: it is the easy, unsophisticated option, but that minced lamb is like filthy, curried crack.

… and the lowlights

Okra: never welcome. Raisin- or date-studded, fruity peshwari naans, an unholy marriage of sweet and savoury. Likewise, rogue pineapple chunks in a dhansak. Dried-out chicken tikka with the obligatory desultory, never eaten side salad. Almost all meek'n'mild, creamily inoffensive curries in the tikka masala, korma and (snigger) nut-sauce field. Biryani: the deluxe curry, supposedly, but there is never quite enough sauce, is there? A handful of Goan restaurants notwithstanding, all those vindaloos that swap garlic and vinegar-based complexity (and pork!) for raw heat.

What to drink

Beer. Nothing too complex, just a proper lager or a pale, dry, crisply hoppy ale. It may be called India Pale Ale, but that big hop-bomb wasn't designed to be drunk with curry. Pineapple juice and tonic's cutting edge works, too. Water. No wine. Lassi I'll take the fifth on. I can't stick yoghurt.

Etiquette

If you've been to India and the food there was just ah-may-zing, and, like, totally different to what we get here, yeah? Please shut up about it.

So, curry: how do you eat yours?

Party season snack tables are rarely a place of plenty if you have a free-from diet – but here's a fresh, winning combo

December is party season, but there's often a frustrating lack of snacks if you can't have pastry or pork products. Indian snacks can be a good option because samosas and bhajis are traditionally made with gram flour, though it is becoming more difficult to find versions that don't also include wheat flour. These bhajis are gluten-free, and when served with the tangy dairy-free mango and mint dip create a compelling party combination, suitable for a host of free-from needs. If you need to save time, everything can be made the day before and the bhajis reheated as necessary.

Makes 15-20
For the bhajis
300g cauliflower
2 medium leeks
1 tbsp olive oil
100g gram (chickpea) flour
1 tsp ground turmeric
½ tsp ground coriander
½ tsp ground cumin
A pinch of salt
80ml water
2 tsp mango chutney
2 tsp tomato puree
Olive oil for drizzling

For the dip
100g plain soya yoghurt
Half a mango
1 tbsp mango chutney
5 fresh mint leaves

1 Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Wash and prepare the cauliflower and leeks. Dice the cauliflower into tiny pieces; cut the leeks lengthwise and then into thin slices. Fry gently in the olive oil for 5 minutes until the vegetables are just soft.

2 Put the gram flour, spices and salt in a bowl. Add the water, chutney and tomato puree and mix to a smooth paste. Add the fried vegetables and stir until everything is well coated.

3 Drizzle olive oil across a baking tray and distribute it evenly across the tray with a spoon. Dollop the bhaji mix on the tray 1 tbsp at a time. Flatten them a little with the back of a spoon. Drizzle a little more oil over the top.

4 Bake for 10-15 minutes until they brown a little. Take the tray from the oven, move the tray from side to side to redistribute the oil, and then flip each bhaji over using a fish slice. Bake for a further 10-15 minutes until well browned and glistening. The bhajis can be eaten hot or cold.

5 Make the dip by placing all the ingredients in a bowl and whizzing with a stick blender. Refrigerate for up to a day before serving, if necessary.

What to watch out for
Some mango chutneys contain malt vinegar, so read the labels carefully before choosing if this is something you need to avoid.

Locating the entrance to Cardiff's Purple Poppadom isn't easy, but it's worth it for food that's always a winner

185a Cowbridge Road East, Cardiff (029 2022 0026). Meal for two: £100

I have seen less promising locations for ambitious restaurants, but not many. The first thing I spot is not the doorway to Cardiff's Purple Poppadom, in the endearingly scuffed Canton district of the city, but the shuttered entrance to Sizzle and Grill, which describes itself as the British "Home of Man v Food". This ain't selling it to me. Man v Food is a foul American TV show in which a bloke called Adam Richman wanders about the US eating burgers the size of his head and saying "Wow" a lot, as if it were insightful. Which, in his case it just may be, his vocabulary not getting far beyond that.

Sizzle and Grill, which has a terrifying number of menus, likes to celebrate the show. Hence one of those menus includes challenges like the 69oz mixed grill for £34.95. (Eat it all within one hour and you get it for free.) There's the Baby Burger, so called because it weighs as much as one, and the Wing King Challenge, which involves eating 75 in 30 minutes. Look, I'm all for greed, but I do think it's much like masturbation. It's not something for public consumption and you shouldn't be able to win prizes for it, however much enthusiasm you display.

The point being that Sizzle and Grill – Oi! Stop Googling it! – is a distraction. Ignore it. Move on. Nothing to see here. It just happens to be located beneath chef Anand George's Indian restaurant. Through the discreet doorway, up the stairs and you are in a wide space with clean, blond-wood panelling and a few bursts of saturated colour on the walls which, despite their brightness, somehow don't make you want to recoil. It's a smart space for what George describes as his "Nouvelle" Indian food. That word, and some of the menu language, is, I grant you, very worrying.

The menu changes with the seasons. The current winter offering contains things like Lapin à Deux, presumably because "rabbit two ways" just isn't trying hard enough. There's Oxtail Odyssey Duo and Scallops Chou-Fleur – which does sound prettier than cauliflower, but is still a bit silly. Try to ignore all this. Take it merely as a statement of intent; that he has ambitions to do more than just serve dun-coloured stews or be constrained by standard repertoire. The language may be on the pretentious side. The cooking really isn't.

A few weeks back, in a review of the marvellous but pricey Mayfair Indian restaurant Gymkhana, I argued that just because food from that part of the world was often sold very cheaply, that didn't mean it all had to be. If French, Italian and Japanese cooking can be expensive so can food from the Indian subcontinent, as long as the quality justifies the cost. Online, an enormous number of people spat out their dummies.

They didn't come up with a counterargument so much as bang the keyboards with their fists. They merely said food from there should be cheap (while also often saying all restaurant food should be cheap). It's hard to argue with people who are trying to win medals at missing the point, so I won't bother – save to say the Purple Poppadom, while not Gymkhana-expensive, also isn't cheap compared to your usual high-street curry house. Then again it isn't a high-street curry house. Starters are around £7, with mains in the teens. If you don't like this, the solution is simple: don't go.

George likes serving his food in partworks. So a crab starter brings a perfectly fried soft-shell crab in the middle of the plate, with a batter carefully hinged between salt and spice. There is a crisp crab croquette and then, at the other end of the plate, a warm tian of crab and sweetcorn, with a gentle heat of both temperature and spice that gives the whole thing a sweet, funky glow.

A non-meat assemblage, influenced by the street food of Mumbai, has a crisp domed puri backfilled with yogurt and chutney to be popped into the mouth in one go so the sauce doesn't dribble down your chin when you bite in. Alongside it is a warm potato cake on a disc of spiced chickpeas and a salad of puffed rice with a sharp tamarind dressing.

Best of all is a pokey duck stew, apparently after a Syrian recipe: a shadow-dark meaty, savoury something, surrounded by a cooling and blindingly white coconut cream sauce with soft rice dumplings. This is food that conversation stops over.

The problem with serving things in threes is that inevitably one becomes the star. So it is with a main course of venison. A punchy curry sealed in a pot by a golden puff pastry top and a venison burger are completely overshadowed by a marinated piece of haunch roasted in the tandoor. The best roasting makes meat taste more of itself. That's what happens here. An Anglo-Indian pork roast brings thick slices of long-cooked pork belly with more of an assumed Asian accent than a real Indian kick. But it was still pork belly and I'm never going to kick a bit of that out of bed.

Of the more basic stews the best is of chicken, cooked on the bone, with burnt garlic. There is nothing acrid here – just a soft, warm pungency. By comparison, a Kashmiri rogan josh of lamb is a little one-note. A yellow dal tadka, thick with garlic and cumin, is a deep, warming lubricant that keeps everything else moving.

Indian desserts tend, for the most part, to be a victory of sugar syrup over good taste. They don't so much drizzle the stuff as hose plates down with it. Here they attempt something else. The sweet, crisp samosa, with a filling of almost liquefied dark chocolate, may not be original but it's bloody good. A crème brûlée flavoured with rose petals surprises me for being light and fragrant rather than tasting like the perfume counter at Debenhams.

From a list that stays almost entirely the right side of £30 we drink an Indian sauvignon blanc from Sula Vineyards, mostly because we can – few places offer Indian wines. It's light and bright, with soft edges, and does the job very nicely indeed. We finish almost everything. No sirens sound. We do not win prizes. This is because we ordered what we wanted to eat, dinner not being a competition. Clearly, when choosing where to go for dinner, we went through the right Cardiff doorway.

Jay's news bites

■ Vineet Bhatia was one of the first chefs from India working in Britain – at Zaika in Kensington - to demonstrate that his homeland's food could be much more than just brown stews. Now he's cooking at Rasoi Vineet Bhatia, located in a smart Chelsea townhouse. Go there for his glorious home-smoked tandoor salmon and for the original chocolate samosa. It isn't cheap, but it is good (rasoi-uk.com).
■ If there's one thing New York knows how to do, it's burgers and lobsters. So let's celebrate the self-confidence of the Goodman steakhouse group, which is to open a branch of its Burger & Lobster chain in Manhattan.
In London the five-strong chain serves either a burger or a lobster, charging £20 for the over-priced burger or the underpriced lobster. In New York it
will be a snip at $20 (burgerandlobster.com).
■ Great Scotland Yard, the original home of the Metropolitan Police, is to be turned into a five-star hotel. The private dining rooms will be in the cells and interrogation units used for prisoners during the First and Second World Wars.

The creamy korma is one of the most popular curry sauces, and with the substitution of cashew butter, need not be a no-go

Korma is a mild, coconut-flavoured curry sauce that is usually made with dairy ingredients, which may include ghee, yoghurt or cream. This version achieves the same consistency, but without any dairy at all. Traditionally almonds are used, but I've opted for cashew butter instead for its natural creaminess. For a nut-free version, replace the cashew butter with 75g sunflower seeds and 1 tbsp olive oil, blended in a food processor to form a paste.

Serves 4
1 tsp coriander seed
3 green cardamom pods, seeds only
½ tsp ground black pepper
¼ tsp ground cloves
3 garlic cloves
1 thumb-sized piece of root ginger
1 small red chilli (optional)
1 medium onion
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp ground turmeric
2 tbsp tomato paste
75g cashew butter
1 x 400ml tin of coconut milk
2 tbsp desiccated coconut
1 tbsp lemon juice
4 chicken breasts

1 Pound the coriander and cardamom in a pestle and mortar, then add the pepper and cloves. Peel the garlic and remove the skin from the ginger. Dice the garlic and chilli. Grate the ginger into the bowl with the spices. Set to one side.

2 Peel and dice the onion. In a large pan, fry the onion gently in the oil until it softens. Stir in the spices, ginger, garlic and chilli. After a minute add the turmeric and stir. Now add the tomato paste. Remove the pan from the heat.

3 Add the cashew butter and coconut milk, then use a stick blender, if you have one, to create a smooth sauce. Stir in the desiccated coconut and lemon juice. Your sauce is ready – if you don't want to cook with it straight away, you could freeze it or pop it in the fridge for up to two days.

4 Remove the skin from the chicken breasts and cut into cubes about 2cm square. Place in a pan with the sauce and allow to simmer gently for half an hour until the chicken is cooked. Serve.

What to watch out for
Because of production methods, some spice products warn of traces of possible allergens on the jar.

Susanna Booth is a food writer and food stylist based in London; widecirclecooking.com

A burger in Brighton is so hot that people have to sign a legal disclaimer before eating it. And a curry in Edinburgh has hospitalised two diners. Here's a roundup of those and other extreme spicy eating challenges

It used to be that just ordering a vindaloo impressed people. Then it had to be a phaal. Then maybe eating a whole scotch bonnet chilli, once you could get them in the supermarkets. Then, around 10 years ago, things really left the rails. Bhut Jolokias and Dorset Nagas became widespread. People started extracting capsaicin, chilli's main active ingredient, to make ever-hotter dishes. Today in Brighton an otherwise unremarkable burger joint is offering customers a sauce with a reputed score of 9m on the Scoville scale. That's about two or three times hotter than police pepper spray. That's ridiculous.

Yet people eat it. Why? You might as well ask why Hillary and Tenzing climbed Everest. Because it's there. Unlike mountains, however, new chilli-eating challenges are appearing all the time.

XXX Hot Chilli Burger, Brighton

The strength of Nick Gambardella's chilli sauce seems to be rising steadily, as does his bewilderment at people eating it. In 2009, reports put the potency at around 6m Scoville units. Now it is up to more than 9m, and has hospitalised several customers. "Why [they] eat it I don't know," Gambardella told the Mail. "I have spoken to people at environmental health but they think it is hilarious." So far around 3,000 people, each signing a legal disclaimer, have tried the burger, but Gambardella isn't one of them. Only 59 have finished it.

The Kismot Killer, Edinburgh

All five of the world's hottest chillies, as rated by the Guinness Book of Records, go into the Kismot restaurant's famous "Kismot Killer". And that's not "famous" in a cute, parochial way, you understand, but nationwide, after the dish hospitalised two people and caused several others to be "very unwell" at a curry eating contest in 2011. It "felt like I was being chainsawed in the stomach with hot sauce on the chainsaw", said Curie Kim, the runner-up and one of the people taken away by paramedics. Afterwards the Scottish Ambulance Service urged organisers "to review the way in which this event is managed".

The Widower, Lincolnshire

While preparing the Widower, a chicken curry at the Bindi Indian restaurant in Grantham, chefs wear goggles and a protective face mask. The ingredients, as displayed on the restaurant's website, include 20 of their own "Infinity" naga chillies, 10 fresh finger chillies, five scotch bonnet chillies, a tablespoon of chilli powder and a drop of chilli extract. Nobody had ever finished a portion until consultant radiologist (and daredevil) Ian Rothwell managed it in January last year. "It took Mr Rothwell just over an hour," said Muhammed Karim, the restaurant's boss, "but that included a 10-minute walk down Grantham High Street when he started hallucinating."

The Fallout Challenge, Bristol

Two competitive eating disciplines come together in the Fallout Challenge at Bristol's Atomic Burger. A triple burger, with triple cheese, sandwiched between two deep-fried pizza slices, with triple fries on the side, would be too much for most people, even without the ghost chilli extract (4.2m Scoville) in the sauce. "What makes our challenge different is it's not just ridiculously hot but it's big too," says co-owner Martin Bunce. What makes it a good idea is vaguer.

Do your kids like milkshakes? Then they'll love lassi. Just start them off with the sweet, fruity version – the salty, spicy one is more of an acquired taste

I can't remember the last time I made a milkshake for my kids – I've got them addicted to lassi, using a mix of plain yoghurt and any soft fruit within a few feet of the blender.

Mango lassi is a favourite, but while we impatiently await the appearance of lovely alphonso mangoes in my local Indian grocers in late April, we're making do with banana.

Lassi can be made sweet or savoury. I developed a taste in India for salty lassi, spiked with a pinch of cumin, but I can't persuade the kids of its merits. Salty yoghurt is not for them.

Fruit it is. The cardamom here is optional, but I think it flatters the banana.

(Makes 1 pint)
200g plain yogurt
2 small bananas
100ml water
2 large ice cubes
4 whole cardamom pods

Put all the ingredients in a blender and blitz until smooth. Pour the lassi through a sieve to extract the cardamom husks. The ice is not essential, but will make the lassi extra-refreshing.

As new editions of her cookbooks are published, Nigella chooses her own favourite dishes from them

Mustard pork chops

I love the old French favourites, the sorts that evoke not the supercilious waiter and theatrically removed silvered dome of the big-name restaurants, but rather the small town bistro, all warm wood and rough red.

This is possibly the easiest route to a proper, filling and yet strangely delicate dinner. The pork is cooked for just enough time to take away any pinkness but ensure tenderness within, and is gloriously scorched without. The mustard, cider and cream add comfort and piquancy.

To soak up the juices, and to act as a fantastically quicktime potato substitute, I serve up gnocchi alongside. You could always add a little lemony fennel, sliced thinly, or a green salad if you're in the mood.

Serves 2
pork chops 2, approx 450g total
garlic oil 2 tsp
cider 125ml
grainy mustard 1 x 15ml tbsp
double cream 75ml

Cut the fat or rind off the chops, and then bash them briefly but brutally with a rolling pin between two pieces of clingfilm to make them thinner.

Heat the oil in a heavy-based pan and cook the pork chops over a moderately high heat for about 5 minutes a side. Remove them to a warmed plate.

Pour the cider into the pan, still over the heat, to deglaze the pan. Let it bubble away for a minute or so, then add the mustard and stir in the cream.

Let the sauce continue cooking for a few minutes before pouring over each plated pork chop. If you're having gnocchi, make sure you turn them in the pan to absorb any spare juices before adding them to your plates.

From Nigella Express

Marinated, butterflied leg of lamb with garlic potatoes

This is one of my most regular regulars. It is the flattened, boned leg which, opened up, makes a vaguely butterfly shape. In summer I cook it on the grill in the garden. I started doing it in winter, as well, in a gas mark 7/210C oven for 45 minutes and it was wonderful. Winter lamb may not be as tender as it is in spring and summer, but the taste is deeper and better, really, and the marinade sees off any potential toughness, despite the unforgiving heat of the oven. I don't serve a sauce with this, except for the deglazed meat juices in the pan.

Go to a butcher to get the lamb butterflied unless you feel able to do it yourself. I've never tried but I keep meaning to learn. The information below is based on a 2.8kg leg of lamb, which leaves you with a butterflied joint of 2.2kg.

Because it takes so little time to cook, it's a very good way of accommodating a joint of lamb into an after-work dinner-party schedule. And think of it more as a steak: the cooking time is more to do with its thickness than its weight.

Serves 6
lamb 1 large leg, butterflied
extra virgin olive oil 300ml
unwaxed lemon zest of 1
garlic 4 cloves, squashed with flat of knife
rosemary sprigs, finely chopped, 2 x 22cm (not that you need to measure)
peppercorns 6
potatoes 2kg

Put the lamb with all the rest of the ingredients in a big plastic bag for up to 30 hours, if you can, turning once or twice. Take it out of the fridge when you get back from work (or mid-afternoon if it's at the weekend and the weather's not too hot) to let the oil in the marinade loosen and warm.

Preheat the oven to gas mark 7/210C. Take the lamb out of the bag and put in a dish. Pour the marinade into 2 baking trays; these are for the potatoes, which need about 1 hour. The lamb takes about 45-50 minutes, but since you need the lamb to rest, put them in at the same time. If you haven't got a double oven, it's a squeeze but not impossible. I cook the lamb in one tray and the potatoes, 1¾ kg of them (that's about 6 large baking potatoes) cut into 1 cm dice, in a couple of others. And you can always cook the lamb first and eat it lukewarm.

Turn the potatoes in the oil marinade in their tins, using your hands to make sure the potatoes are well slicked in the heady oil, and put them in the oven. Transfer the lamb to another tin, reserving the oily juices it leaves behind in the dish, and put that one in the oven, too.

I'm lazy and buy ready-washed watercress, a couple of packets, and slice about 175-200g ordinary button mushrooms thinly. For the dressing I just squeeze some lemon juice into the oily marinade the lamb left in the bowl earlier. If this idea appals you, make any other dressing you want.

From How To Eat

Lemon linguine

According to my paternal grandmother, spring no longer exists, though her lament was as much sartorial as environmental: no more spring coats, you see, because no more spring weather. Actually, I suspect the change is in us rather than the climate: our failure to recognise, let alone celebrate, the advent of spring owes rather more to the fact that we now live in centrally heated homes. The meagre upturn in the weather cannot have quite the impact it must once have had. But I do think there is an idea of spring, culinarily speaking. Of course, seasonal produce has something to do with it, but not everything: for me, that idea is instantly conveyed by this lemony, creamy, tangle of linguine which actually you could cook at any time of the year. It is the easiest thing you could imagine: the sauce requires no cooking, just stirring (and limply at that) and it produces food that is both comforting and uplifting. There must be something about the smell of lemons, so fresh, so hopeful, which makes this instant good-mood food. But it isn't so jaunty and astringent that you need to brace yourself to dive in.

Serves 6
linguine 750g
egg yolks 2
double cream 150ml
parmesan about 50g, freshly grated
unwaxed lemon zest and juice of 1
butter 15g
flat leaf parsley

Fill just about the biggest pot you can hold with water and bring to the boil. When you have friends coming for lunch, get the water heated to boiling point before they arrive, otherwise you end up nervously hanging around waiting for a watched pot to boil while your supposedly quick lunch gets later and later. Bring the water to the boil, cover and turn off the hob.

I tend to leave the addition of salt until the water's come to the boil a second time. But whichever way you do it, add quite a bit of salt – Italians say the water in which pasta cooks should be as salty as the Mediterranean. When the bubbling's encouragingly fierce, tip in the pasta. I often put the lid on for a moment or so just to let the pasta get back to the boil, but don't turn your back on it, and give it a good stir with a pasta fork or whatever to avoid even the suspicion of clagginess, once you've removed the lid.

Then get on with the sauce, making sure you've set your timer for about a minute or so less than the time specified on the packet of pasta.

In a bowl, put the yolks, cream, grated parmesan, zest of the whole lemon and juice of half of it, a pinch of salt and good grating of pepper and beat with a fork. You don't want it fluffy, just combined. Taste. If you want it more lemony, then add more juice.

When the timer goes off, taste to judge how near the pasta is to being ready. I recommend that you hover by the stove so you don't miss that point. Don't be too hasty, though. Everyone is so keen to cook their pasta properly al dente that sometimes the pasta is actually not cooked enough. You want absolutely no chalkiness here. And linguine (or at least I find them so) tend not to run over into soggy overcookedness quite as quickly as other long pasta. This makes sense, of course, since the strands of "little tongues" are denser than the flat ribbon shapes. Good spaghetti or tagliatelle would do if linguine are not to be found.

As soon as the pasta looks ready, hive off a mugful of the cooking liquid, drain the pasta and then, off the heat, toss it back in the pan or put it in an efficiently preheated bowl, throw in the butter and stir and swirl about to make sure the butter's melted and the pasta covered by it all over. Each strand will be only mutely gleaming, since there's not much butter and quite a bit of pasta. If you want to add more, then do: good butter is the best flavouring, best texture, best mood enhancer there is.

When you're satisfied the pasta's covered with its soft slip of butter, then stir in the egg, cream, cheese and lemon mix and turn the pasta well in it, adding some of the cooking liquid if it looks a bit dry (only 2 tbsps or so, you don't want a wet mess, and only after you think the sauce is incorporated). Sprinkle over some just-chopped parsley and serve now, now, now.

From How To Eat

Za'atar chicken with fattoush

This is what I make just about every other time I have friends over in summer, and regularly during the rest of the year too for that matter. It's simple: the chicken deeply spiced with za'atar, that wonderful Middle-Eastern spice blend comprising thyme, sesame seeds and ground sumac, itself a glorious blood-red berry with an intensely astringent lemony tang; the salad a fresh tangle of mint, parsley, cucumber, tomato and spring onions, crumbled with torn shards of toasted pitta and sprinkled, again, with sumac. To be entirely proper, you should throw in some leafy, herbal purslane, too, but unless you happen to live near a Middle-Eastern shop, it's unlikely you'll be able to get your hands on any, so I haven't listed it below.

Know, too, that the za'atar itself is not the recondite ingredient it once would have been; my local supermarket stocks it, and the sumac, regularly. I'm giving the recipe for the fattoush here simply because I've got in the habit of making these together, but this sour, refreshing Middle-Eastern bread salad has every right to an independent life of its own.

Serves 6
for the chicken:
olive oil (not extra virgin) 125ml
chicken 1, approx 2–2.25kg, cut into 8 pieces
za'atar 2 tbsps
Maldon salt
for the fattoush:
pitta breads 2
fat spring onions 3, halved and sliced
cucumber 1, peeled, quartered lengthwise and chopped
tomatoes 3 diced
fresh flat-leaf parsley 1 bunch, chopped
fresh mint 1 bunch, chopped
garlic 1 clove, minced
extra virgin olive oil 6–8 tbsps
lemon juice of 1
Maldon salt
sumac half a tsp

Pour the 125ml oil into a large roasting tin, big enough to fit all the chicken portions in a single layer, and then put in these very chicken portions, rubbing them about in the oil to give them a glossy coating. Sprinkle over the za'atar, and then work into the oily skin of the chicken so that each piece is well covered with the bosky, bark-coloured spices. Leave the meat to marinate for a couple of hours at room temperature.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 220C/gas mark 8 and, when the chicken's had its aromatic steeping time, transfer the tin, making sure all the chicken pieces are skin side up, to the oven. If you've marinated the chicken in a freezer-bag, just tumble them out, pushing them skin side up, into a roasting tin, making absolutely sure you've squeezed over every last drop of the oily spice mixture they've been sitting in.

Roast the chicken portions for about 45 minutes, by which time they should be well cooked, which is how we want them here, and their spice-sprinkled skin burnished and crisp and baked to a fabulous burnt umber. Pile the pieces up, or arrange them as you like on a large flat plate and sprinkle over a little Maldon salt.

When the chicken's nearly cooked, you can get on with the fattoush. So, cut the pitta breads open lengthways so that you have four very thin halves, and lay them on a baking sheet. Toast them in the oven with the chicken for about 5 minutes to give them a bit of crunch then take them out and leave them somewhere to cool.

In a bowl, combine the spring onions, cucumber, tomatoes, parsley and mint and mince in the garlic. With a pair of kitchen scissors, cut the pitta into pieces over the bowl of salad – I tend to snip them into rough triangles – and drop them in, leaving a few back for the top. Toss the salad then dress it with the oil and lemon juice, tossing it again. Add some Maldon salt, and have a quick taste to see if the ratio of oil and lemon is right, adding more of either if necessary. Sprinkle over the reserved toasted pitta triangles and the lovely dark red, deeply bitter sumac, and serve the fattoush right alongside the za'atar chicken.

From Nigella Summer

Keralan fish curry

I'm on dangerous ground. Let me admit this straight away. This recipe is, purportedly, from Kerala – and have I ever been there? Well, I dream. And my excuse is, making this food is my way of dreaming. But even had I been there I wouldn't be making any straight-faced claims for the ensuing recipe's authenticity. One always has to be honest, and I'm never going to be other than a greedy girl with a wide-ranging appetite: what I can never be is Keralan.

But I have eaten Keralan food, cooked by those who actually come from there and, being a complete cookbook junkie, have the titles to slaver over in the comfort of my own home. And I love the food from this region. It is such a refined cuisine, in the best sense: the spices are used delicately to produce food that is aromatic rather than cough-inducingly hot; the scents of coconut, lime, coriander, pervade rather than invade.

This tamarind-tangy curry makes for a perfect dinner on a hot night; light enough not to knock you out, but spiced enough to prompt a heat-drowsy appetite. And it is such gloriously easy food to make.

You can easily use any fish, chopped into meaty chunks for the curry itself (I've even gone hideously inappropriately for salmon in my time), though I tend to use whatever firm white fish I can lay my hands on; or just replace the fish with juicy, peeled uncooked prawns.

I've given a choice of amount for the tamarind paste: go by taste; it's up to you how evocatively pungent you want this. I happen to have a sour, rather than a sweet tooth, and this is where I indulge it. And I always keep a bottle of Benedicta's Touch of Taste fish bouillon concentrate in the house (which I buy from the supermarket, along with the tamarind paste), but you could crumble in half a fish stock cube if you prefer.

Serves 4–6
firm white fish 1.25kg
salt
turmeric 2 tsps
vegetable oil 1 tbsp
medium onions halved and cut into fine half-moons, 2
long red chillies 2
fresh ginger 4cm piece
ground cumin pinch
coconut milk 1 x 400ml tin
concentrated tamarind 1–2 tbsps
liquid fish stock 1 tbsp

Cut the fish into bite-sized chunks, put them into a large bowl, and rub with a little salt and 1 tsp turmeric. Heat the oil in a large, shallow pan and peel and tip in your fine half-moons of onion; sprinkle them with a little salt to stop them browning and then cook, stirring, until they've softened; this should take scarcely 5 minutes.

Cut the whole, unseeded chillies into thin slices across (although if you really don't want this at all hot, you can deseed and then just chop them) and then toss them into the pan of softened onions. Peel the ginger and slice it, then cut the slices into strawlike strips and add them, too, along with the remaining tsp of turmeric and the cumin. Fry them with the onions for a few minutes.

Pour the tin of coconut milk into a measuring jug and add a tbsp of tamarind paste and the fish stock, using boiling water from the kettle to bring the liquid up to the litre mark. Pour it into the pan, stirring it in to make the delicate curry sauce. Taste and add more tamarind paste if you want to. And actually you can do all this hours in advance if it helps.

When you are absolutely ready to eat, add the fish to the hot sauce and heat for a couple of minutes until it's cooked through, but still tender.

From Nigella Summer

London cheesecake

If I had a New York cheesecake, I had to have a London one, and this is surely it. My paternal grandmother instructed me in the art of adding the final layer of sour cream, sugar and vanilla: and it's true, it does complete it.

I cannot tell you how much the velvety smoothness is enhanced by cooking the cheesecake in the water bath. It's not hard, though you really must wrap the tin twice in extra-strength tin foil. Once you've tried it this way, you won't even consider cooking it any other.

Serves 8
for the base:
digestive biscuits 150g
unsalted butter 75g , melted or
very soft
cream cheese 600g
caster sugar 150g
large eggs 3
large egg yolks 3
vanilla extract 1½ tbsps
lemon juice 1½ tbsps
springform tin 20cm
extra-strength tin foil

for the topping:
sour cream 145ml tub
caster sugar 1 tbsp
vanilla extract ½tsp

Process the biscuits until they are like crumbs, then add the butter and pulse again. Line the bottom of the springform tin, pressing the biscuits in with your hands or the back of a spoon. Put the tin in the fridge to set, and preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4.

Beat the cream cheese gently until it's smooth, then add the sugar. Beat in the eggs and egg yolks, then finally the vanilla and lemon juice. Put the kettle on.

Line the outside of the chilled tin with strong foil so that it covers the bottom and sides in one large piece, and then do the same again and put it into a roasting dish. This will protect the cheesecake from the water as it is cooked in its water bath.

Pour the cream-cheese filling into the chilled biscuit base, and then pour hot water from the recently boiled kettle into the roasting tin around the cheesecake. It should come about halfway up; don't overfill as it will be difficult to lift up the tin. Put it into the oven and cook for 50 minutes. It should feel set, but not rigidly so: you just need to feel confident that when you pour the sour cream over, it will sit on the surface and not sink in. Whisk together the sour cream, sugar and vanilla for the topping and pour over the cheesecake. Put it back in the oven for a further 10 minutes.

Take the roasting tin out of the oven, then gingerly remove the springform, unwrap it and stand it on a rack to cool. When it's cooled down completely, put it in the fridge, removing it 20 minutes before eating to take the chill off. Unmould and when you cut into it, plunge a knife in hot water first.

From How To Be a Domestic Goddess

Lily's scones

These are the best scones I've ever eaten, which is quite how it should be since they emanate from one of those old-fashioned cooks who starts a batch the minute the doorbell rings at teatime. Yes, I know they look as if they've got cellulite – it's the cream of tartar, which is also why they have that dreamy lightness.

Makes 12
plain flour 500g
salt 1 tsp
bicarbonate of soda 2 tsps
cream of tartar 4½tsps
unsalted butter 50g , cold, diced
Trex, in teaspooned lumps 25g (or use another 25g butter)
milk 300ml
large egg, 1, beaten, for egg-wash
round cutter 6½cm crinkle-edged
baking tray, 1, lightly greased
Preheat the oven to 2200C/gas mark 7.
Sift the flour, salt, bicarb and cream of tartar into a large bowl. Rub in the fats till it goes like damp sand. Add the milk all at once, mix briefly – briefly being the operative word – and then turn out onto a floured surface and knead lightly to form a dough.

Roll out to about 3cm thickness. Dip the cutter into some flour, then stamp out at least 10 scones. You get 12 in all from this, but may need to reroll for the last 2. Place on the baking tray very close together – the idea is that they bulge and stick together on cooking – then brush the tops with the egg-wash. Put in the oven and cook for 10 minutes or until risen and golden.

Always eat freshly baked, preferably still warm from the oven, with clotted cream and jam or, my favourite, Thunder and Lightning, which is clotted cream and black treacle. Although I often prefer a bastardisation of this and use golden syrup instead.

Variation:
Add 75g of raisins or sultanas for fruit scones. To make cheese scones, add 75g of mature cheddar, grated.

From How To Be a Domestic Goddess

© Nigella Lawson. New editions of Nigella Express and How To Be a Domestic Goddess will be available on 10 April; How To Eat and Nigella Summer on 5 June (all Chatto & Windus, RRP £20). To order for £15 with free UK p&p go to the Guardian Bookshop

Homemade spice blends always beat bought ones. They're also incredibly easy to make, and take next to no time, too

How many of the spices in Chinese five spice can you name? Or in the quatre épices? Would you be able to reach for the right spices to make garam masala or panch phoran? Or baharat, the Arabic spice mix that translates as "spices"? I am never quite certain myself. I mostly blame my patchy memory for that, but also the fact that many of these mixes don't have a definitive list, only versions, each championed by a particular family, restaurant or shop.

That's one reason to buy ready-made blends rather than making your own. Another is to avoid waste: if you can't buy spices in very small quantities, you'll have to put all those half-used jars in the larder, where they'll soon lose their mojo.

Then there's the issue of grinding. Many whole spices – cinnamon, star anise and dried chilli to name only three – just won't process down to a fine powder using pestle and mortar, so you need a spice or coffee grinder, which many people don't have.

In an ideal world, though, I'd want to make my own, in much the same way that I prefer making my own vinaigrette. Mixing and matching to create your own blend is a great way to get to know spices and how they work together; it also ensures freshness. That said, leave it to your mood, means or the equipment and ingredients you have to hand. Garam masala, for instance, is made by whizzing up cinnamon, clove, black pepper, cardamom, coriander and cumin. With panch phoran, you don't need to do even that: just stir together whole fennel, fenugreek, cumin, nigella and mustard seeds. Crushed spice mixes, meanwhile, are best made with a pestle and mortar. Dukkah (the name's from the Arabic verb for "to pound") involves grinding sesame, coriander and cumin seeds, plus chopped hazelnuts and salt and pepper; I often add sunflower, fennel and nigella seeds, too. I sprinkle it on everything from leafy salads and roast veg to legume-based spreads and dips. Wet spice mixes, such as today's salsa, are just as easy, and I can't think of a quicker way to transform everyday cooking. The thing is, for all the bottles and tubes of sriracha and harissa in my fridge, homemade versions are usually far more subtle and better than bought.

Spiced potato and almond koftas

Lemon wedges aside, I also like these with a potent dipping sauce made by blitzing yoghurt with preserved lemon, tahini paste, garlic and fresh herbs. Serves four, as a first course.

450g baking potatoes
30g unsalted butter
10g fresh dill, chopped
15g fresh chives, chopped
10g fresh parsley, chopped
10g fresh coriander, chopped
1 medium green chilli (deseeded if very hot), finely diced
¼ tsp ground turmeric
¼ tsp smoked paprika
75g feta, broken into rough chunks
½ tsp caster sugar
Salt
40g plain flour
1 egg, whisked
90g flaked almonds, chopped
1½ tsp coriander seeds, toasted and gently crushed
¾ tsp cumin seeds
1½ tbsp black sesame seeds (or white, if unavailable)
About 600ml vegetable oil, for frying
1 lemon, quartered, to serve

Heat the oven to 220C/425F/gas mark 7. Prick the spuds a few times with a fork, put on an oven tray and bake for an hour, until cooked. Leave to cool a little, then peel; discard the skins. Put the potato flesh in a bowl and roughly mash with the butter; it should be lumpy, not smooth, so don't over mash. Gently mix in the fresh herbs, chilli, spices, feta, sugar and half a teaspoon of salt, then form into eight koftas of about 60g each, and lay on an oven tray.

Put the flour in one bowl, the egg in another and the nuts and seeds in a third. One by one, gently roll each kofta in flour, dip it in egg, then roll in the seeds and return to the tray.

Pour enough oil into a small sauté pan to come 4cm up the sides. Put the pan on a medium-high flame and, once the oil is hot, carefully lower in two or three koftas. Fry for about a minute, turning once, so the crust turns golden brown and crisp, and the middle is hot but soft. Transfer to a plate lined with kitchen paper and keep somewhere warm while you repeat with with remaining koftas.

Serve two koftas per person, with a wedge of lemon alongside.

Smoky chilli salsa

Serve this versatile salsa over rice or couscous, as a condiment to fried tofu, roast chicken or oily fish, or as a sandwich spread to go with mature cheddar or feta. Don't be alarmed by how long the chillies are on the grill: the skin needs to be totally black and blistered to get the required smoky flavour; your kitchen will also be pretty smoky, even with the extractor on. The salsa keeps in the fridge for several days, and improves over time. Serves four as a condiment.

10 red chillies
10 green chillies
12 large-ish cherry tomatoes
1 garlic clove, crushed
5g coriander leaves, roughly chopped
10g oregano leaves, roughly chopped
2 tsp lemon juice
3 tbsp olive oil
A pinch of caster sugar
½ tsp salt

Put a small, ridged griddle pan on a high heat. When smoking hot, lay in the red chillies and cook for 10 minutes, turning regularly, so the skin is burned all over. Transfer to a bowl, cover with clingfilm and set aside. Repeat with the green chillies, adding them to the same bowl, before covering again. Keeping the pan on a high heat, add the tomatoes and cook for four to eight minutes, turning once or twice, until blackened all over (keep them on as long as you can before they start to mush up). Transfer to a small plate and set aside.

Once everything is cool enough to handle, peel and discard the skins of the chillies and tomatoes. Cut the chillies lengthways down the middle, and discard the stalk and seeds. Cut the flesh into long, 0.5cm-wide strips, and place in a bowl with the tomatoes and all the remaining ingredients. Stir with the back of a wooden spoon, so you gently crush the tomatoes and release their juices. Cover and store in the fridge. Give the salsa plenty of time to get back to room temperature before you serve it.

Urad dal with coconut and coriander

The difference between black and white urad dal (aka black gram or lentil) is that the white one has had its skin removed. I prefer black – the skin helps the dal keep its shape and adds a pleasing bite – but white works just as well (and you don't need to soak it either). Thanks to Aasmah Mir, whom I met on Twitter and whose blog Cracking Curries inspired this dish. Serves four, generously.

250g black urad (or urid) dal, soaked overnight in plenty of water
60g clarified butter or ghee
1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
60g fresh ginger, peeled and coarsely grated (net weight)
1 whole green chilli, finely chopped, seeds and all
1 tbsp garam masala
5 medium tomatoes, peeled and roughly chopped
Salt
120g coconut cream
2 tsp lime juice
1½ tbsp black mustard seeds, toasted

For the toppings
100g fresh coconut, roughly grated
50g crisp fried shallots (homemade or shop-bought)
30g fresh coriander, roughly chopped

Drain the dal, rinse under cold water and set aside. Put the ghee in a large sauté pan on a medium-high heat. When it starts to sizzle, add the onion and fry for 15 minutes, stirring from time to time, until soft and golden-brown. Add the garlic, ginger, chilli and garam masala, fry for two minutes, stirring constantly, then add the tomatoes and cook for four minutes. Add the dahl, a litre of water and a teaspoon of salt, turn the heat to medium and simmer for 40 minutes, stirring every five minutes or so, until the sauce has the consistency of thick soup and the dal is cooked but still holding its shape. Towards the end of cooking, if the sauce is still very liquid, bring to a rapid boil for a few minutes, to reduce. Turn down the heat to low, stir in the coconut cream, lime juice and black mustard seeds, and remove from the heat. Serve with the toppings in separate bowls alongside, for your guests to sprinkle on as they like.

• Yotam Ottolenghi is chef/patron of Ottolenghi and Nopi in London.

Follow Yotam on Twitter.

They spend every waking hour attempting to make the perfect espresso, sourdough or cheddar. Why? Because they have to …

Andy Mahoney realised his habit was getting out of hand a few months ago, during a visit to an old coastal fort on the Hampshire coast. "I saw white mould on the wall, so I put some in my mouth to see if it was any of the moulds I was expecting," he says. "It struck me that maybe I'd gone a bit crazy."

Mahoney's brain had turned, as it often does, to cheese. He has attempted to make every imaginable type of cheese, with all kinds of mould. In the course of his experiments, he has even invented a few franken-cheddars of his own. (He's also poisoned himself a couple of times, but that hasn't stopped him yet.)

Mahoney belongs to a rare sub-species of gastronome: the obsessive. These individuals seek to master one particular foodstuff; they are in pursuit of an elusive Platonic form and will go to extreme lengths to get it. Seldom are they professional chefs – the catering industry lacks the time and nerve for such tunnel vision. In some cases the obsession has led to a relevant job or startup; in others it bunks awkwardly with a pre-existing life. (Mahoney, when he is not cutting curds or nibbling moulds, works as a city trader.) Either way, it's never done for the money. It's done because it has to be done.

Take the case of Andy Forbes, a former typesetter and computer programmer. Over the years bread has pushed everything else out. His Camberwell flat is a shrine: industrial-sized sacks of flour in every room, a homemade mill in his bedroom. Next to his computer sit a pair of bubbling starters that have been around since Margaret Thatcher was in No 10. In the kitchen is an antique 1940s Artofex dough mixer that he won't sell "for any sum".

Then there are the wheats: kernels of 70 heritage strains with names such as Golden Drop, Rouge d'Ecosse, Lambeth Latin, stored in hundreds of Tupperware containers. Forbes, 57, is a "wheat chaser", focused on saving ancient varieties from extinction and, where possible, bringing them back into circulation. "Orange Devon Blue Rough Chaff," he says, pointing to one of the boxes. "We got to that one just in time." Three neat rows of long grass in his garden are purple free-threshing spelt, grown from the "one handful of the seed in the world".

Food obsessives are fond of big talk. Rachna Dheer, chef-owner of Babu, in Glasgow, claims "nobody in Scotland or the north of England" goes to the same effort to make authentic Bombay cuisine. Those efforts grew out of anger at how her home flavours had been "bastardised", at how there wasn't a decent pav bhaji for hundreds of miles. After years perfecting her mother's recipes and travelling the country in search of obscure ingredients, her interest expanded into the restaurant last year.

Yet there's no bragging. Many seem embarrassed by how much time they devote to their calling. Others just want to get on with it. Patrick Quinn, the proprietor of Quinn's Irish pub in Kentish Town, north London, said he was too busy to talk. Nor would he divulge his age, a topic of intense speculation among regulars, though his son Vincent concedes 90 is close to the mark. (The regulars say 100 is closer to the mark, but they would.) Quinn senior still works every day. Beer is what keeps him going – not the consumption of it, but the sourcing and stocking, the careful husbandry of a great variety of pilsners, stouts and ales. Long before the craft beer craze, Quinn was here with his "continental selection". Doesn't he ever think about retirement? "He can't," says Vincent. "He wants the i's dotted. Many is the time he's climbed the stairs at three in the morning."

Such devotion has its price. "I seem to have sacrificed everything else in my life for it," Melody Razak says of baking. The 38-year-old founder of Treacle & Co in Hove talks of months eating nothing but lentils in order to afford cakes from Ladurée, of making the same recipes over and over in her kitchen, year and year. "Rather than seeing it as repetition," she says, "it's about trying to make it more efficient, faster, better." The sentiment echoes the Japanese principle of kaizen, described in the 2012 documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi: to perform one's duties each day better than the last.

Back to Forbes, who knows this state of mind. He has made only one type of bread, a light rye sourdough, for 25 years. But excellence and obsession are not always happy bedfellows. He looks uncomfortable telling the story of Claude Bosi, head chef at the two Michelin-starred restaurant Hibiscus, who tasted his bread in a farmer's market and asked him to be the restaurant's supplier. The problem: Bosi wanted to see the bakery.

"I tried to put him off," says Forbes. "I was in a squatted house that was falling down, with spiders everywhere. At that time I milled in the kitchen and sifted in the front room and baked in a mobile oven in the garden."

But Bosi insisted. The chef spent several hours studying Forbes's Heath Robinson set-up – including a threshing machine made out of BMX bike rims, scooter wheels, a Chinese sewing machine, and a rubber mat used for wiping shoes outside hospitals – and announced he would buy as much bread as Forbes was willing to sell. For about a year, until Forbes and his fellow squatters were evicted, well-heeled diners at Bosi's Mayfair restaurant ate this bread with their foie gras and champagne.

Forbes is still involved in various bakeries, and educational projects such as Brockwell Bake, though the task that consumes his waking hours is his online cereal database, "a website for all the wheat in the world". He has catalogued more than 400,000 varieties on his site. "Every grain has more [genetic] diversity than we do," he says. The world revolves around wheat when you talk to Forbes. The real cold war is in wheat gene taxonomies (Russia uses a different classification system to the US). And to hear him describe the siege of Leningrad, you might think bread was the primary motive for conflict. "The Russians had one of the largest wheat gene banks in the world, but [it] got stuck in the siege," he explains. "The curators starved to death guarding all these seeds. The SS had a special unit to grab it."

Discussing the process of making bread with Forbes can be perplexing. A seemingly straightforward question about wholemeal might be answered with a discourse on the number of chromosomes in a particular strain. Things are never simple. Forbes and his ilk have reached a sort of quantum theory of food: the more they look, the more they see.

"It's never-ending," agrees Mahoney, the cheese devotee. "Trying to control all the variables – the temperature, the milk, the pH, the time you cut the curds – becomes mindboggling. Something people accept as such a basic thing they buy off their supermarket shelf is actually such a difficult problem."

Mahoney's obsession started six years ago, out of a basic curiosity for what made one cheese different from another. Why was Comté hard and Camembert creamy? What gave Stinking Bishop its distinctive scent of something freshly stepped in? Soon the spare room of his south London flat was choked with fridges, cheese presses built from scrap metal, a terrarium pond fogger ("the kind you put in a lizard enclosure"), a bain-marie, and a set of diamond scales accurate to one-thousandth of a gram.

At times his habit has pushed the boundaries of taste. To the chagrin of his wife, Mahoney recently developed an interest in moulds found on the human body. "The reason Époisses and stuff like that exists is because of monastic traditions where the cheese was handled by people who weren't very sanitary," he says. "I thought I'd make a cheese from the moulds that grow on your hands when you sweat. You'd be out in the street and you could smell it. My wife said I couldn't make that cheese again."

Catherine Seay says she has never gone too far in her search for the perfect cup of coffee, though she has flown to Norway to try an espresso, which some might consider excessive. What she seeks is known in coffee circles as "the God shot". "It's beautiful, balanced, with a creamy mouthfeel," she says in tones of rapture. "It's sweet and there's acidity and depth of flavour and it's clean, you drink it and you get the full flavour but there's no lingering aftertaste. That's the dream."

Seay, 27, is an obsessive with a business to match. Three years ago she set up Curator's Coffee in the City of London, where she spends her days texturing milk, experimenting with water pressure, and tasting as much coffee as possible without overdosing on caffeine. She met her husband through coffee (he was a customer, she was the barista) and plans her holidays according to where she'll find a good cup of it (even so, she always packs a coffee grinder, beans, a Chemex flask and a pouring kettle). Despite her years of dedication, Seay does not feel she is even close to mastering coffee. "I feel I don't know a tenth of what there is to know about it," she says.

Even with vast knowledge, the perfect form is elusive. It's the final part of obsession's spell: the sense of something beyond one's control. Religious metaphors are rife in these conversations about bread, cheese and coffee – these everyday items have been elevated to gnostic mysteries. Occasionally, ecstasy is glimpsed. Years ago, cycling in the south of France, Forbes tasted the best bread of his life. "I followed a little track and found a house with an open door," he says. "It was a dark room. In one corner was a big loaf. Eventually an old lady came out and I bought a section. I went away, and then I tasted it and realised ... It was a holy-grail moment. I'll never find that place on the map. Was it really there? Was that little old lady in the dark room with the best loaf in the world? You could search for ever and ever, you'll never find it again."

Serves 6

450g okra
6-8 tbsp sunflower oil
1 medium to large onion, finely sliced lengthwise
1 small bulb garlic, finely chopped or ground
1 tsp red chilli powder
1/2 tsp turmeric
Cumin/jeera seeds, finely ground, to tasteSalt
1 or 2 green chillis, sliced lengthwise