Burns night and curries

The highlight of the weekend was attending a Burns night celebration in a local village hall with our friends on Saturday evening.  The event was a fundraiser for a charity which supports young people with a physical disability to compete in sport at a high level. We attended this event two years ago and the 2016 event was yet again an evening of good traditional Scottish food, i.e. Cock a leekie soup, haggis, bashed neeps and tatties and sherry trifle; music, including a piper; the life and poems of Rabbie himself and traditional dancing, all enhanced by generous amounts of malt whiskey and wine.

As my husband cooked dinner on Friday night and Burns took care of us on Saturday I only cooked the Sunday dinner, a roast leg of lamb, so although I do love to cook (and eat, of course) it was a nice break. Today I decided to spice Monday dinner up by making some curries. I wanted to use the lamb roast leftovers so put together an aubergine, tomato and lamb curry and, to go with it, a chicken jalfrezi, with rice, naan bread, cucumber raita and chutneys. One of the things I realised today was that many of the spices in our cupboards have been there for quite some time, and even longer in some cases, so although most of them are still aromatic, they have certainly lost some of their zing. So I spent a bit of time today stocktaking the spice cupboard and going out to buy some fresh stuff, which I think made a real difference to the flavour of the food and the fantastic smells coming out of the pans while it was cooking.  It was satisfying to spend some time looking at what was there and determining what needed to be renewed. I also made use of the coconut oil I bought last week to pre-fry the ingredients. This oil has been having a good press lately despite the fact that it is high in saturated fats. However, its champions claim that it has many health benefits and its flavour and aroma certainly complemented the curries we ate tonight.