Last Friday I made a big pot of dahl (red lentils) for when my uni friends visit next weekend.

My secret ingredients are chipotle chilli (smoky and hot) and pulverised Indian pickle (hot, salty and tangy).

Yesterday I made oxtail stew using the Hairy Bikers oxtail stew recipe Was quite impressed with the result. I’ve made oxtail stew a few times but this is the best recipe yet. The only alteration I made was that I doubled the amount of red wine. But they don’t take all the bones and jellyish stuff out before serving. It’s time consuming to do that but well worth it for ease of eating. Also, they refer to it as an economical cut of meat but I paid £14 for approximately 2.4kg of oxtail (in Waitrose admittedly) and I reckon you lose about 60% in the form of visible fat, bone and jellyish stuff so it’s not that cheap.

3 Oct 2012
I used this stew recipe but substituted ox cheek for oxtail. I also added 1 tbsp mushroom ketchup. It was very good, in fact probably better than oxtail. Not only is the texture better, but you only have to cut off some tendon-y bits at the start; you don’t have to separate the meat from the bones etc after cooking.

7 Dec 2012
I made the oxtail stew but took the temperature down to 125C and cooked for 3.5 hours. Also, the HB recipe is ok for 2 oxtail rather than one.

I’ve found it hard to accurately recreate the food we learned how to cook at the Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School, mainly because it’s difficult and expensive to get hold of galangal, holy basil and the right types of aubergine. I have bought shop bought curry pastes but even the most expensive seem out of balance compared to those we made in Thailand. When I use them I tend to add more garlic and ginger, add less salty flavouring such as soy sauce and I toast and grind some fennel seeds to add aniseed flavour.