Apricots In Manchester

I decided to make “Curry in a Hurry” which certainly sounded appropriate. I actually wanted to make a prawn and mango curry – I’ve had it before and it’s delicious, however my sons have an irrational dislike of sweet potato and butternut squash which are key ingredients in that recipe, so I tried this one instead.

This is a Thai green curry and is supposed to use chicken. I don’t eat chicken, so I replaced some of it with Quorn chunks, which are OK and at least everyone in the family will eat them. I also used another meat replacement: jackfruit – often used as a vegan alternative to pulled pork. You can’t buy it fresh here, it comes in a tin like this:

I used forks to shred the pieces of fruit and it did vaguely resemble shredded chicken. It doesn’t taste meaty at all, just slightly acidic and salty from the brine it’s canned in, but it soaks up flavours from whatever sauce it’s cooked in.

Apart from the extra task of shredding jackfruit that I gave myself, this recipe is really easy as it uses bought curry paste and frozen vegetables. It’s more of a suggestion than a recipe in fact, but it is still useful to have reminders of shortcuts like using chopped spring onions instead of peeling and chopping a big onion and using wok oil to add extra flavour with no effort.

It was very tasty and the coconut milk made it rich and filling. It went down well and the jackfruit was quite successful with no complaints about the unusual bits in the curry.

Dessert was a cherry clafoutis. I’ve had clafoutis before in restaurants, but never made it myself. It usually takes quite a long time to cook, but this is a shortcut version with a short ingredients list and short cooking time.

All I had to do was mix up a quick batter in the Kenwood Chef and stir in some ready prepared cherries. I added Kirsch as suggested, mainly because I’ve never used it before. Let me know if you have any suggestions for using up the rest of the bottle! It was worth using though, it soaked into the cherries and made the whole dessert taste a bit more luxurious,

• 

• 

I overbaked this a bit. I keep forgetting that I should reduce the temperature for my fan oven and I forgot to check on it while I was cooking the curry. Still, you live and learn, which was one of the aims of this challenge and it tasted good anyway. We had it with single cream, although actually I think creme fraiche would have been better.

(Update: we had the cold leftovers with cream the next day and that tasted even better.)

Not a bad meal at all considering it only took about an hour to make.