A Chunky Chicken and Potatoes Curry Recipe

I thought I’d post a quick chicken and potato curry recipe that we made yesterday, which I thought would be quick and easy to throw together! I’m looking to be more creating with recipes this Ramadan, so will post any new dishes I make!

Ingredients:

• Chicken (we used half a kilo)
• 4-5 potatoes
• 3-4 tomatoes
• 1/4 spoon of chilli powder (use more or less according to your preferences)
• 1/2 spoon of salt (use more or less according to your preferences)
• A pinch of saffron
• Pinch of garam masala
• Pinch of black pepper (optional)
• 3 cardamoms seeds
• 3-4 green chillies
• 1 tsp of mashed garlic paste
• 1 tsp of mashed ginger paste

Method:

• Warm some oil in a pan
• Chop the onions (it’s up to you how big/chunky you prefer them) and cook in the pan until golden brown
• Once they are brown remove from the pan and drain. leave the oil in the pan
• Roast all of the spices together with the garlic and ginger paste and the cardamom seeds in the remaining oil for about 10-15 mins
• Peel and chop the potatoes, wash the chicken pieces and chop the green chilli – we trimmed the chillies at the end and left them as whole pieces
• Chop the tomatoes – again you can keep these chunky or blend these like we did. We also put the onions in with the tomatoes for a smoother sauce, but you can leave them chunky if you want a thicker sauce
• Add the chicken pieces to the spices and cook in the sauce until half-cooked
• Add the green chillies to the pan
• Once the chicken is half-cooked, add the tomatoes and onions mix back to the pan
• Add the chopped potatoes to the pan
• Cook in the sauce for a little while
• Add water to the pan and cook for a few minutes
• Put the lid on the pan and let the steam cook the potatoes
• Once the potatoes begin to go soft (about 15-20 minutes later) the dish is ready
• Serve with rice or with naan/pitta/chappatis and enjoy.

A Mad Hatter-Books-Pastel Themed Tea

I held a tea party for my sisters this weekend, and I’ve finally manage to sit down (and rest!) to post the results, which I was really pleased with. My sisters and I decided that for Eid this year, instead of giving everyone Eid presents we’d do Eid experiences – a day out, a picnic, a tea. I love my afternoon teas so decided to organise a themed afternoon tea for the girls.

I had a little difficulty deciding on a theme because I liked so many, and initially was going to just do a Mad Hatter’s tea party. But I do love my florals and we all love books, so I decided to work these into the look as well, which worked a lot better than I thought it would – I was worried it would look really messy and nonsensical. My eldest sister commented that it also reminded her of a colourful fair or festival, especially with the colourful bunting, and thankfully the guests all loved the results of the tea!

Here’s what the table looked like, and some of the desserts:

My favourite part of the decor and table were these – book-themed toppers for the cupcakes. I picked out a bunch of our childhood books so that we could enjoy a few fond memories of the books we used to love (including our first Urdu learning book!) – these were a hit with the ladies and I was glad I included these!

I had various things scattered around the room  for display to implement all three themes – pastels and florals, book wallpapers, piles of books and a top hat with playing cards to tie the themes together, which I thought went wonderfully together, not to mention the ‘this way’, ‘that way’ and ‘wrong way’ arrows.

My home-made flower wall

Book prints and hanging frames

The Mad Hatter’s Top Hat

I’m sure you can tell that the most obvious theme was the Mad Hatter/Wonderland one – I loved the variety of decor which is out there and took the opportunity to scatter random quotes and prints around the table, as well as ‘drink me’, ‘eat me’ and ‘take me’ tags on the food and goody bags. I also ordered giant playing cards for us to play with, although it was quite funny to see how people would hide their cards!

My mum also lent me this beautiful tea set which was love at first sight for me, and very apt because it’s actually a Harlequin Tea Set! These were beautiful dainty tea cups in bright colours with matching sauces, which I put on display and thought really made the whole table (not to mention actually made the tea party an actual tea party!)

My nieces and nephews probably enjoyed themselves the most (you can see my nieces shouting and giggling through my letterbox below), although my sisters and sister-in-law had a lot of fun looking for the small touches around the room too, and putting on false moustaches, giant glasses and hats!

Nieces shouting through the letter box

Goody bags with ‘open me’ and ‘take me’

In case nobody knew how to open the door

I was really worried about not having enough food on the day, so my menu was a little adventurous, surprisingly I managed to make more than I thought. Even better, the guests all brought some amazing food as well so we were all seriously stuffed and  from red velvet cake, cupcakes, chocolate trifle, sandwiches, pizza, samosas, chicken bites and kebabs, to name but a few of the things we had laid out.

Having said that, my nieces were the first to run to the sweet table and run off giggling with sweets in their hands!

I had

It was an exhausting but fun afternoon, which was made better by the scorching sunny afternoon and the yummy ice-creams we finished off with. We were meant to play games but we felt pretty lazy and the cushions on the floor were pretty useful for us to laze about in!

It was really fun (and a little challenging) planning this tea party by myself, but I had fun doing it and also learned what I can make and what I can’t. I was really happy with the decorations I made, they took me a while (hence being quiet on the blogging front!) but I was really pleased with how it all came together.

So now I’m looking forward to the next Eid experience, and also more tea parties with different themes, which I’m already planning – I just need to recover from this one and I’ll be off again!

Journal Your Ramadan – Day #8: H is for Husband

I feel like I should do this post about my husband, because he‘s been making at least half of our meals these last few days. It’s the first Ramadan with my husband after marriage, and surprisingly it’s been an interesting one because it’s made us want to be more adventurous with our food! We’ve opted out of fried food this year, and have both decided to try more healthy food which is a lot better to have after long hours of fasting.

This is something my husband thew together a couple of days ago –  lots of onions, tomatoes, chillis, peppers and various seasonings sautéed together with chicken pieces for a chicken dish with a juicy sauce.

Watching the magic happen (excuse the poor quality of my camera!)

Mixin’ it up in the sauce pan (which we then left with lid on for about half an hour).

Result – tender chicken and steamed veg which we poured over plain rice. We could have left it cooking a little longer for a drier sauce but decided to keep it quite juicy so that it would mix with the rice well.

 

This was a really filling, yummy dish and didn’t take long at all (the rice only took us about 15 mins to cook) and it reminded us both of a dish we’d had and loved in Turkey called testi kebab, which is more slow-cooked by has a similar idea of cooking meat with veg.

So, credits to the husband for this one (and I’m hoping he reads this and gets all happy and makes me more!)

Journal Your Ramadan – Day #2: B is for Breakfast

Or in the case of Ramadan, our suhoor which we eat in the morning before sunrise. Being so early in the morning, I don’t exactly whip up an English breakfast meal, but it is important to have something filling which will give you enough energy through the rest of the day. These days I’ve been going for a banana and some cereal, otherwise some chicken in a sandwich and plenty of water. I’m trying to build myself up to eating more as the days go on – usually by the end of the month I have a decent appetite for such an early time in the morning!

What have you been eating for breakfast?

That Time I Made Cookies

And they came out perfect. I like doing a little baking every now and then, and usually get the recipes from people I know, like one of my sisters who excels at baking.

These are double chocolate chip cookies that I made a batch of, and which I was pleased with because not only did they only take about 10 minutes to bake, they were beautifully soft and chewy and very chocolatey!

Dough balls ready to cook!

Wait for them to go squishy in the oven

Take out and let them cool!

I’m sure I’ll be making more of these again, they got eaten way too fast (I also took a few into the office, but there wasn’t enough for everybody!) – I’m pretty sure there’s a hijabi Betty Crocker in me somewhere!

How We Spend Our Holidays

Frying up English breakfasts with orange juice, and lazing around watching TV specials. I’ve been a bit pre-occupied lately folks, but hopefully will be posting some new posts very soon – thought I’d do a quick post to ask what you’ve been doing over the Christmas holidays and what you plan on watching/reading/cooking/making?

Our Eid-al-Adha – Flowery dresses, twirling babies and rainbow balloons

We celebrated Eid-al-Adha this weekend, which was a special Eid for me as it was the first one for me after marriage, and meant that I could spend time with the family and also with my husband. We were invited to dinner at my eldest sister’s house, and also for lunch at my mum’s house the next day, so we had a busy dance card!

One of the best things about celebrating Eid is that it’s always a fun day, the family gets together from all over London (and Luton!) and there’s always good food. I love the spirit in the air as well, the younger children are excited about presents, sweets and new clothes, and the bigger kids (i.e. us) are excited about dressing up, good food and seeing all the babies!

Below is just some of the decor from my sister‘s house, which she always makes an effort to put up every year for Eid – I love the fairy lights and the rainbow balloons!

The highlight of the day as usual was the beautifully cooked food, from both my mum and my sister (my husband left both houses rubbing his stomach and eyeing up more helpings he couldn’t fit into his stomach!) My mum makes it a rule to always have a feast for Eid every year, and she didn’t disappoint this year either – there was plenty of variety and plenty of curries, starters and sweet dishes!

And of course, for Eid isn’t complete without some beautiful dresses, which I was spoiled with this year, as my mother-in-law sent me a beautiful set of outfits and my mum bought me a new outfit for Eid. My sisters and sister-in-law looked amazing on the day with their new outfits, and the nieces even more adorable in their party dresses which they spend the day twirling around in (I won’t bother mentioning the dress code of men of the family cos…frankly, we don’t look at what they wear) Here’s a look at some of the beautiful outfits we wore on Eid:

My mother, holding one of her grand-daughters

My husband and I ended Eid day with dinner at his best friend’s house, followed by a sneaky late-night movie at the local cinema (which was actually very good!) The whole day was a warm, low-key gathering which was perfect for us, easy to relax followed by a vain session of taking photos in various angles!
I hope you all had a wonderful Eid and weekend, and if you don’t celebrate Eid then I hope you still see the beauty I do in Eid – not only an opportunity to spend time with friends, family and have good food, but also a chance to reflect on the year to come and to remember how lucky we are.

Blue & White Fluffy Cupcakes

These are more fairy cakes than cupcakes, because they’re tinier and cuter, but hey, as long as they end up in my tummy it’s all good. These are some cakes I made for a candy bar for a good friend of mine, where the theme was blue (for baby boys!) and white.

I didn’t have a lot of time or expertise to make overly detailed cake toppings so I kept it simple with blue icing and vanilla icing alternating, with plenty of funky toppings to finish it off. This is the end result, which looked quite pretty and colourful – I loved the vivid shades of blue with the white icing, although the vanilla icing was a lot more prettier than than the blue was! This was a fun and easy batch to make, and didn’t take long either, although if I had more time I probably would have spent more time experimenting and evening mixing icing colours.

I love the range of toppings available in the supermarkets and shops these days, there’s all different colours, shapes and textures which I have fun buying. I also had a helping hand from my sister who iced the cakes neatly, giving me a chance to let my creative bug out for an hour or two to throw blue sparkles and chocolate sprinkles all over the kitchen and ‘accidently’ into my mouth a few times, until basically we ran out of icing : )

The Yummy Rainbow Cake

My sister-in-law and I made a rainbow cake a few days ago for my brother’s birthday (we made him run out and get some of the ingredients for us, and he never even realised until he saw the cake!) – and he loved it.

Surprisingly, it isn’t that difficult to make this cake, it’s like baking a normal one but takes a little longer because of the layers. We used this BBC recipe to make the cake, although we also took inspiration from this beautiful cake by Hummingbirds too.

This is the end result (which we took nibbly bites out of it at midnight on my brother’s birthday, after we added some sparkly candles.)

This is how we made it, which I’ve made into nice easy steps for you if you decide to pick my wisdom over the BBC recipe. Well, a girl can hope, anyway.

1. Mix the ingredients together, eggsies, flour, butter salt, suger. Magic sprinkles optional.

2. Mix it baby.

3. Dividing the batter into 6 (or 4 if you want less work) portions and add the fool colouring. Watch the magic happen.

4. Do the same for the rest of the batters until you have a rainbow. Licking fingers is optional.

5. Bake in the oven in the baking tins. We used two tins and baked two at a time for 25 mins each. Leave to cool down.

6. Stacky stack. Use butter cream inbetween layers (we made our own buttercream too, cos we’re cool like that).

7. Use the remaining buttercream to cover the outside. Unless you don’t want to, but then it might look weird.

8. Cover it all and decorate as you wish. We stuck my niece’s handprint in the middle and filled it with glittered. Niecey enjoyed this part thoroughly.

9. Stick it in the fridge until it’s ready to each. Watch everyone’s admiring oohs and ahhs when it’s cut!

Also part of this Weekly Challenge – Layers

Journal Your Ramadan – Day #14: Now Playing

I’m not really playing any games at the moment (I do like to play computer games every now and then, or just mobile phone ones), and I’m partial to my board games, but I haven’t really been playing anything recently.

So I thought I would just show a picture of what I would LIKE to be playing, since it’s been years. I used to play chess more often when I was younger (we bought a glass set for my eldest sister years ago because we all played it so much) – I have no idea whether we were playing by the right rules, and we probably cheated a little, but it was still fun.

Oh, and in case you have tuned in recently and weren’t aware of my Lego obsession, I’ve been having a bit of fun with these as well. Here’s a picture of some Lego, seeing as it’s been a while. These are some Star Wars-themed Lego key rings I bought a while ago, the Darth Vader one is the one I carry around at the moment (and has been nibbled on quite a few times by my niece now), and the Darth Maul one I gave to a friend. There’s something very cool about them both, even though they’re only about three inch high, they’re still mean and proud.