On a stay-at-home weekend day, our go-to food would be Indian. Because our pantry isn’t packed with the myriad of spices required for real Indian food, yet we wanted to do it ourselves, we found a decent compromise: Spice Tailor Rogan Josh mix.
Rogan Josh originates from Kashmir, where it was traditionally made simply with oil, spices, yoghurt and very fresh lamb. This Rustic Rogan Josh curry blends together caramelised onions, ginger, garlic, fresh tomatoes and garam masala in a rich savoury sauce. It’s the ultimate lamb curry!
We rarely (if ever!) buy ready-made sauces, but this one seemed worth trying as it didn’t contain any nasty bits other than spices & pastes (see the ingredient list on Okado). And because we were lazy that day!
It comes with a little pouch of spices that you cook in some oil and then two sauces for cooking (don’t ask me why they are not merged into a single pouch, but there must be a good reason). All you need to do is add some pieces of lamb, for example some fantastic organic Welsh lamb (which benefits from EU’s Protected Geographical Indication – PGI, just so you know). Oh and some cilantro on top, so it looks better on pictures.
Watch Anjum cooking it:
We added some sag paneer, brinjal bhaji and rice to it. And, well, a more than decent IPA.
It was actually delicious, much better than an average Indian restaurant! Not really hot, certainly nowhere near “omg, I can’t breathe” hot, you could distinctively taste each flavour and spice. Although I wish it was less oily, it had the perfect amount of acidity that makes you lick your spoon until the last drop. I felt proud of doing such a good dish at home. Ok, fine, the merit is Anjum’s for make it so easy to prepare delicious and authentic Indian food in our homes with such a high quality product.
For all hardcore crafters out there, if you want to do your own from scratch (or if you can’t find this mix where you live), you can follow Anjum’s Mushroom rogan josh recipe. Alternatively, we cannot recommend enough the video of our favourite Indian chef: Harpal Sokhi. Clearly the coolest cook in the world, we have been caught watching his recipe videos for hours at times:
Anyway, we can’t wait to try all other sauces in her collection and we recommend you do so too :)
