Cumin Chicken

I've now lost all hope in surviving the next eight weeks of the husband's diet.  I thought that this low fat curry might be a keeper, but sadly not.  It was the way he looked at it when it was put in front of him that told me I'd wasted my time in the kitchen.  I so nearly gave him a fiver to go and buy his tea from the chippie.

However, I quite enjoyed this dish.  I made a small error by adding yogurt (an optional extra) and this curdled the sauce which slightly detracted from the presentation by putting tiny grainy blobs in the liquid.

It was really quick to cook.  I think I spent more time hunting through the cupboards looking for my chilli powder (didn't find it) than I did actually cooking the dish.

One word of warning - if you make this, take care when frying the mustard seeds.  It said fry them for thirty seconds.  After ten seconds, they were popping and jumping out of the pan and scattered all over the kitchen floor.  It may be to do with the size and shape of the frying pan I used.  But don't do this if you've got exposed skin or small people in the vicinity of the cooker - they fly quite a long way.

The blog I found this recipe from explains variations on the dish and how the author had no yogurt one day and so made the sauce with just a stock-base instead.  I also noted that whilst the recipe states to use  tinned tomatoes, the instructions don't tell you when to put them in.  As I had some fresh toms in, I cut one into large chunks and added it with the veg then threw in the tinned toms after the chicken had fried.

I'm guessing this is why mine looked nothing like the picture on the website (I wasn't really going for outstanding presentation anyway) but the sauce in the picture clearly lacks the tomatoes.  But for the thicker, yogurty sauce, I'm sure they're essential.

http://www.greatcurryrecipes.net/2012/04/30/how-to-make-cumin-chicken/  It was so nice to be able to make a quicky, tasty curry without having to resort to a jar sauce, like I normally would for a curry for the husband.  He's always whining that the Loyd Grossman sauces have changed and have no taste.  So I cook him a tasty curry and he still moans.  http://www.greatcurryrecipes.net/2012/04/30/how-to-make-cumin-chicken/

Not long to go now - less than 90 days and counting!

You can find the recipe here.

Chickpeas with Tomato and Spinach

Today's recipe didn't set my world on fire.  It was a pretty okay store cupboard recipe and would be a good side dish to something more substantial.  It's from BBC Good Food and having now read the reviews, I think it may well have been better made the night before to allow the flavours to develop. Of course if I'd not been a greedy cow and eaten it all, I could've tested this theory tomorrow (I did only make a half-recipe-worth).

I'd probably make it again when I was feeling guilty for not having eaten anything vaguely resembling a vegetable for a few days.  There had to be at least three of my five a day in this one meal.  And served with a Dan Lepard Frying Pan Naan, it's a really filling meal.

I also faced up to me reticence when it comes to fresh tomatoes and cooked and ate those.  Although I guess as they're cooked, they're not far different to using chopped, tinned tomatoes.  Nevertheless, I had to eyeball their slimy innards when I chopped them up - something which is normally enough for me to quietly shuffle them off into the dogs' bowls.

It has green stuff on the top - must be healthy

But it did bring back a memory.  Of making curry in the late eighties.  I can't remember where the recipe first came from, but what a performance it was to make.  In those days, you could only buy Indian spices from specialist shops.  My mum used to go to this tiny health food shop in some back street of Winchester and come home with little white plastic bags containing spoonfuls of turmeric, coriander, cumin and saffron.

They were then consigned to an old ice-cream tub in the back of the cupboard for fear of them making everything else smell of curry.  And when you took the lid off of the box, it immediately just smelled like of curry from the intermingled flavours.  That ice cream tub still lives in the back of the larder at my Grandad's house (I grew up living with my grandparents) and there are still random bags of spices in there.  The smell has dulled over time but it still brings back the memory.

These days, I have a spice rack that is jammed full of pretty much every herb or spice that my local supermarket cares to sell.  In fact, I have so many that they're also randomly scattered across work surfaces (much to the husband's eternal consternation) and stuffed in the back of random cupboards (the husband's reaction to me randomly scattering them across work surfaces).

Of course, the modern glass jars ensure that my kitchen only smells of damp dog (the worst thing about this infernal rain!) and not of curry spices waiting to be used.  But you only get that evocative smell on cooking.  There was something quite comforting about sneaking a sniff from that ice cream box.

Although my Grandma was about as Indian as Birds Custard Powder (now I've said that, someone will go and tell me it was invented in India), the smell of that box reminds me of her because it smells of her curry.  And there are times when I make something with spices that they come together and make that smell.  Sadly, today's recipe wasn't one of them.   I hope that one day when I'm old and decrepit, there will be some smell that Miss A will forever associate with the kitchen of her childhood.  I'm hoping it will be something lovely we've cooked together rather.  And not just the current pong of wet spaniel.

Thai Prawn Curry

Eight years ago today, I took the opportunity of 'Leap Day' to propose to my husband.  As much as I may whine about him, he took the proposal in good humour and didn't immediately reach for his laptop (they didn't have iPads and iPhones back in the dark days) and book himself a one way ticket to Dar es Salaam.

I asked him this morning if, after nine years together, eight years since we got engaged, seven years of marriage, six pets, five cars, four foreign holidays (mini breaks don't count), three different residences, two lost loved ones (my grandma, his mum) and the birth of one child if he would still marry me if I was to propose today.  "That would be bigamy" he said.  I'm sure there's a joke in there, somewhere, but humour isn't me strong point.  Apparently people laugh at me, not with me.  Which is the kind of thing a husband can say to his wife after so long together, without fear of divorce.  Or at least in this house, he manages to get away with that.

He gets away with quite a bit.  Like the way he very rarely makes me a cuppa.  He drinks about twenty cups of coffee a day, but if I want one, I have to ask (sometimes via text!).  I don't get offered.  Or his little habit of how he points out something needs doing so I'll feel guilted into doing it to prove a point, rather than me telling him to just do it himself.  I do, however, draw the line at certain things (re-tiling the roof, laying a patio, cleaning the dogs' bottom glands) and pay people to do things.  If he could find a way to get me to pay him for making me a cuppa, trust me he would.

But tonight, in the spirit of recognising the eight-year anniversary (or is it two because of that whole leap year thing??), he kindly offered me a share of his gravy from his customary chicken-and-Uncle-Bens-Express-Tomato-Rice to go with my dinner.  Then he looked a bit closer.  "That's prawns, right?  You don't really have gravy with prawns, do you?"  At last.  He's learning!  There's hope for his culinary journey yet.

The recipe is from Good Food (again).  Quick, easy and tasty Wednesday night fodder.  I've never had a Thai red curry before so I'm unable to comment on its authenticity.  However, I will say that I found the tomatoes to be overpowering in their acidity and ended up adding a pinch of sugar and a teaspoon of fish sauce to the recipe to try to balance that out.  It was still lacking even after this so I gave it a good squish of lime juice too and, whilst it was tasty, who knows if it was really meant to taste like that?

Not sure Bisto would enhance the flavour...

I suppose to really understand the subtle flavourings, I would need to try it in a proper Thai restaurant.  Pre-baby, we used to frequent a little restaurant called The Thai Barn in Bradford-upon-Avon which does the most amazing Thai food.  Even the husband likes it.  I'm hoping that one day the 'rents might get round to coming down for the weekend and babysitting so the husband and I can finally get a night out together.

In fact, Thai food was another one of the inspirations for this challenge and I'm ashamed that it's taken me this long to try even the simplest of recipes.  One of the things that planted the seed of the idea was watching a challenge on Masterchef where the contestents were asked to make some dish or another with a sweet chilli dipping sauce.  I suddenly realised that whilst I could make a good stab at the main dish, I wouldn't have a clue how to make the sauce - instead relying all the time on Blue Dragon's Sweet Chilli Sauce with Kaffir Lime (I could bathe in that stuff).

So I'll be updating the list of recipes I want to try with a few Thai-inspired ideas and pondering how I'm going to learn what an authentic red curry tastes like in the meantime.  Watch this space.

If you want to try today's recipe, you can find it here.  Do read the comments below the recipe though, I think they really make the difference to the dish.

Cauliflower and Chickpea Curry

They say that dog owners look like their pets.  In our household, we take this one step further and are like our pets in character.  We own, or rather are owned by a cocker spaniel called Dexter and a dachshund called Rolo.  Dexter is my dog, the Doxie belongs to the husband.

Dexter - my 'first born'

Like me, Dexter has long, curly hair (when he's not clipped); he sees the good in everyone - especially if they proffer food; he rolls over and capitulates to anyone who cares to show dominance (not in the S&M way @DickyBundock and @KateSelwood1 if you're reading this!!) and he's generally loving and faithful.

The Doxie is long, slim with a bit of a pot belly at times; she's tenacious, stubborn and feisty; and whilst she's generally tame, God help you if you cross her (we've never tested this theory, but I'm sure if her family were threatened, the threatenee wouldn't escape unscathed).

Another random tale from the house of Lil Ms Squirrel?  Nope, stick with it.  I'm bringing it round to yet another tenuous link.

The similarity between dog and owner was highlighted during this evening's dinner.  I made Cauliflower and Chickpea Curry - recipe courtesy of the lovely Angela Hartnett.  The cauli has been hanging round for nearly two weeks when I originally bought it to make a biryani, but since then I've always had something more interesting to try.  As it was a bit worse for wear, I chopped out the best bits for the curry, and fed the remains to the circling pooches.

Rolo the Doxie 

Dexter, who has no regard for what he eats unless it's a fresh tomato wolfed his down without it touching the sides.  When we used to have parrots, this dog has eaten whole birds eye and scotch bonnet chillis without batting an eyelid.  The Doxie has, like her master, a more discerning palate.  She carried her floret into the lounge like it was the most precious thing ever.  She lay on the green berber rug and proceeded to nibble the floret into tiny pieces before giving it a look of disgust and upping and leaving it for me to untwine from the carpet strands.

I'm sure Dexter would've enjoyed the curry too, but it was pretty good and so I didn't leave any.  He did, however have a little share of poppadom - something the 'other side' of the family don't like because they're too noisy.  It disrupts the football apparently.  Not sure why it offends the Little Dog.

Like many of the other recipes I tried, although it sounded good in principle, I was a little sceptical of the spicing whilst it was cooking.  True, it had all of the key Indian spices in it which were toasted to release their flavour; but tasting it just before serving it seemed lacking.  Then I remembered the very last ingredient was fresh coriander.  I'm becoming a huge fan of the Garden Gourmet fresh herbs now I'm cooking so many different dishes.  It's great having fresh-ish herbs in winter without having to resort to those 'living' pots from the supermarket which, no matter how you try and nurture them, always turn up their toes three days after purchase.

Cauliflower and chickpea curry

What a difference that made.  It went from lacking to tasty with just one teaspoonful.  This is definitely something I will make again.  Low fat and tasty.  The only downside is the amount of washing up it generates.  But I'm sure with practice, I'll find a way to economise on that.

Definitely needs serving on a warmed plate.  I didn't do this and it went cold pretty quickly.

One other top tip.  Make sure, unlike me, that you have the key ingredients to hand.  I could've sworn I had a tin of chickpeas in the cupboard.  Instead I had eleventy million cans of mixed beans so spent a good ten minutes sifting through open tins of them picking out all the chickpeas.  Surely that's dedication to this challenge :)


Ingredients - Serves four to six

• 1 whole cauliflower
• 3 medium onions
• 4 cloves of garlic
• ½ tsp chopped fresh ginger
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• 2 star aniseed
• ½ tsp ground chilli
• 4 curry leaves
• 2 tsp garam masala
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
• 1 tin of chickpeas, drained
• 2 tbsp of chopped fresh coriander

Method 

1. Remove the stalks from the cauliflower and cut into large florets. In a pan of boiling water, add the cauliflower and cook for five minutes. When ready, drain from the water and place back in the pan. Cover so it stays warm.
2. While the cauliflower is cooking, cut the onions into small pieces. Squash the garlic with the back of a knife to make it easier to peel. Chop until nice and fine.
3. In a pan, add a touch of butter, plus the onion, garlic and ginger, and sauté until golden brown.
4. In the same pan, add the dried spices and cook for a further five minutes.
5. Add the tin of tomatoes and chickpeas and stir well. Then add the cooked cauliflower. Top up with 100ml of cold water and bring to a simmer for five to 10 minutes until the cauliflower is cooked.
6. Finish by adding the chopped coriander. Serve on a warm plate.

Curried Potatoes (Aludam)

Continuing the recent theme of my mother not understanding my personal challenge of cooking something new every day for 366 days, this morning I sat down with her for a slightly more frank conversation about food.  Regular readers will know that my mum was a chef until she had me and so a lot of my basic skills have been picked up from her.  And perhaps a bit of natural talent with certain things too.

Before anyone starts nagging me for being an ungrateful daughter, me and my mum love each other dearly.  We just don't always see eye-to-eye.  Take, for example, me mentioning that I eat my breakfast at my desk. "God that irritates me" says my mother. "People stinking the office out with their porridge; they should just stop being so lazy and get up half an hour earlier and eat at home."  So any sympathy I would be looking for from her on how I get up at 4am three days a week to go running; before I drive 45 minutes to work to start by 7am; so I can hopefully get to spend some time with her precious grandchild at the end of a long and stressful day evaporated before I'd even opened my mouth to defend myself.

Apparently, I have no self control either because my mum, who leaves home at 7am after getting up at 5.15 (why, why, why???) and eating her breakfast at 6am, is perfectly able to get through an entire morning of work and not eat anything else until 1pm.  If I eat at 6am, I'm hungry again by 9am.

We meandered on to talking about cook books and food.  I was shocked to discover that she reckons she only owns three cookery books.   Having spent the rest of the day thinking about that statement, I know it's not entirely true.  But if we're talking about ones published in the last twenty years, then the figure is probably quite accurate.

She mentioned she has never cooked anything from any of them aside from the "Hairy Bikers Stollen Doorstop" that she made for Christmas.  "That's exactly why I'm doing this" I said.  "I own over fifty recipe books and whilst the spines are well-cracked, most of them are pristine inside"  I then asked why she's never cooked from them.  The answer included phrases such as "I can't be bothered after a long day at work" and "I can't be bothered at the weekend after I've baked all my bread and rolls for the week" and when I mentioned some of the really easy, healthy and tasty recipes I've tried of late she decried the lack of meat in my diet "I was bought up when you always had meat for every meal and despite it being so expensive, I refuse to believe that a meal is a meal without meat" (she's only 57!!) and then ticked off a long list of things she won't eat including beans (except green ones), pulses, sun-dried tomatoes, anything sweet with meat.....  And she calls me fussy!

It saddened me in a way.  I always had this idea in my head that she enjoyed cooking.  But it seems like she finds it a chore, which is sad when she used to do this for her job.  Then again, I'm sure analysing business practices doesn't have much appeal outside of the workplace.  I suggested she try just one new recipe a week for a year.  "No time"  "One a month then?"  "Can't be bothered.  You won't persuade me".  So I gave up.

Then I realised that despite over the past year, she's tried lots of the things I've made. The summer berry drizzle cake which I packed with the glut of raspberries from my garden last year; the healthy mac and cheese from a few weeks back; the Hummingbird Lemon loaf which is a staple in my cake repertoire when we have visitors; she made some funky baked salmon dish with Hellman's that she'd found a recipe for somewhere or another for tea on Friday night; and she's talking about trying the Lorraine Pascale Fish Cakes I made the other day.  And the whole weekly bread baking ritual.  She only started doing that regularly when I started baking my own bread last year.  Stubborn as a mule, my Gran would've said.  Lovely with it too though.  I'll wear her down one day.  And I've already told her that churros will be on the menu next time we visit.

So in a fit of feeling sorry for her Hairy Bikers' Cookbook which was almost condemned to the bin after the stollen disaster, I copied out a few recipes from there to add to this challenge.  The first of which, I tried tonight.  Having been stuffed to the gills at lunchtime with a turkey roast and the best apple and summer fruit crumble I've ever eaten (she's still got it!), I wanted a light-ish dish I could try this evening.  I'm still trying to find something to wean the husband off of his need to have Sharwoods microwave pouches of Saag Aloo with his Mary Berry's chicken tikka and Dan Lepard Naan Breads and failing miserably.  Until today with this tasty little curry.

Not being able to find the green chilli I knew was lurking in the fridge somewhere, I used a Scotch Bonnet instead.  Thankfully, because I reduced the quantity, I didn't scald my mouth-lining whilst eating it.  However.  Beware.  The book doesn't warn you that when you first add the onion, garlic, ginger and chilli to the smoky hot pan that a) it spits everywhere and you're liable to pick up a war-wound or too if you're stood too close and b) it's likely to scald the lining of your lungs with the hot, pungent, spice it adds to the air in the immediate vicinity.  I sounded like a sixty-a-day-woodbine-smoker by the time I finally got the tomatoes into the pan.  But it was worth it.  A definite keeper dish that I will make for the husband next time I do tikka.  I'll just need to scale back the chilli for him as he's not into hot stuff (goodness knows why he married me then ;o)) but I think that it will hold it's own just as well with less heat.

From the Hairy Bikers 'Mum Knows Best' (I'll admit that sometimes she does - just not on the breakfast at work issue)

Serves 10

• 2kg white potatoes, peeled
• 200g white onions, peeled and sliced
• 50g fresh green chillies, sliced
• 4 garlic cloves
• 50g fresh root ginger
• 50g fresh coriander
• 150ml rapeseed oil, for frying
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground turmeric
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 100g tomato passata
• salt and pepper

Cut the potatoes into small dice (about 1cm) and boil in lightly salted water until partly cooked.  mix the sliced onions with the green chillies.  peel and finely dice the garlic and ginger then add them to the onion and chilli mix.  Was and chop the fresh coriander.

Heat the oil in a large pan until a blue haze appears.  Add the onion, garlic, ginger and chilli mixture.  Fry for a few minutes then add all the remaining spices, tomato passata and a pinch of slat.  Fry for a further five minutes.  Add the potatoes and saute until all the ingredients have combined and the potato is cooked.  Adjust the seasoning to taste and garnish with some fresh coriander.

BBC Good Food: Chicken Bhuna

The conversation went a little bit like this.

"So how was it for you dear?"

"It tastes different.  They've changed the recipe, haven't they?"

"Something like that.  Did you like it?"

"It was palatable but not as good as usual.  Too many onions."

"It's probably a different recipe then.  I know you don't like change."

"I thought Wife made her own curry sauce anyway."

"I did.  But you obviously don't like it.  You just said so."

This point went straight over his head as FC Real Inter Barcelona or whoever was playing football on Sky Sports scored a goal and the husband's attention was lost for the rest of the evening.

Those of you who are regular followers of my blog (I'm very grateful that people take the time to read my ramblings) will know that I've been working on improving the Sunday night curry.  We've introduced Mary Berry's Chicken Tikka, Dan Lepard's Frying Pan Naan, Mango and Apple Chutney and I've finally found a home made Saag Aloo recipe that I like - although the husband didn't like it

The next thing I wanted to tackle was his dependence on Loyd Grossman's Bhuna sauce.  Several years ago, it was Sharwoods Bhuna sauce or nothing.  Then Sharwoods went and changed the recipe and made it too spicy for my husband's delicate palate.  After a lot of searching, I managed to wean him on to Grosman's version.  This too has changed in the past.  We then have a few sulky mealtimes before he announces he won't have it again because it's tasteless or too spicy.  I stop cooking it for a couple of months and then he asks why I've not cooked it since.

I still can't find my copy of The Curry Secret which I bought years ago, specifically to try the Bhuna recipe in that but never got round to it as it required me to first make a vat of generic curry sauce (using about 3kg of onions) which then forms the basis of any other curry you could care to make.  Having looked at lots of other equally faffy recipes, I happened across one on Good Food the other day from Olive Magazine that was really simple, low in fat at just 240 cals per serving (without rice) and only took 40 mins from start to finish.

That sounded like just the recipe as I've noted that the amount of time and effort it takes me to cook something seems to directly correlate with how much my husband is going to not like it.  It also had good reviews and one woman mentioned that her picky husband liked it so much they'd eaten it two times in a week.  Sold.

As always, I cooked half the recipe.  The spices were easy to halve as it's 2 tsp of this and 2 tsp of that.  I really must remember though to measure out my spices before I start cooking as it would make it so much less stressful trying to juggle the recipe, the jar, the spoon and a pan of about-to-burn spices.  After the initial taste test, I felt the ginger flavour didn't come through enough so added a bit more in and also added some Garden Gourmet 'fresh' coriander to get the little herby flecks in it so I could try and pass it off as a shop-bought sauce to get the husband's honest opinion.

Chicken Bhuna and Basmati Rice

I quite liked it.  It's still not in the same class as a really good Bhuna from a really good curry house but in my opinion it tasted better because I knew it was home cooked rather than having been cooked in some vast factory before sitting in an Ocado warehouse for months on end.  I'll be interested if I get a better opinion out of the husband if he ever reads this blog.  But I doubt he'll read his Twitter feed tonight as "it's a good night tonight, there's football on until 1am".  At least I can have a few hours of starfishing in bed before he comes and steals all the covers and wakes me with his snoring!

Back to work tomorrow.  Blogs will become much briefer until next weekend.

Recipe - Serves 4

• sunflower oil
• 2 medium onions , halved and finely sliced
• 4 garlic cloves , finely chopped
• 25g ginger , peeled and finely chopped
• 2 green chillies , finely chopped (take out the seeds if you like)
• 2 heaped tsp cardamom pods , seeds crushed
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp fennel seeds
• juice of ½ lemon
• 4 skinless chicken breasts , cut into pieces
• 400 tin chopped tomatoes

1. Heat 1 tbsp oil in large non-stick frying pan and cook the onion until soft and lightly coloured. Add the garlic, ginger and chilli and cook for 2 minutes more. Sprinkle the spices over and fry for a minute.
2. Stir in the lemon juice and chicken and cook for 2 minutes. Pour the tomatoes into the pan, add 150ml water, a pinch of salt and sugar and bring to a simmer. Cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Serve with steamed basmati rice.

Palak (Saag) Aloo

Somewhere in this house, I've got a copy of 'The Curry Secret' which I bought several years ago when I had an inclination to cook a chicken bhuna totally from scratch.  I didn't because the first instruction was to make about 3 gallons of authentic curry sauce by slicing about 20 kilos of onions.  It seemed a little excessive on the off chance that the husband wouldn't like it.

Palak Aloo

Amongst the recipes was one for saag aloo.  It's something I always order when I have a curry at our local curry house.  Recently, in a moment of madness, I bought a pack of pre-made saag aloo.  The husband loved it.  It was just about passable, but looked more what Popeye squeezes out of his spinach cans than the gloriously green potato dish at the Akash.  And having mastered Chicken Tikka, Mango Chutney and Naan Breads over the past few weeks, I figured that saag aloo should be my next recipe to try.

Not being able to find The Curry Secret anywhere, I resorted to Google.  Oddly, not many recipes came back and the ones that did had quite low ratings.  Then, after a fair bit of reading, I discovered that a) it's one of those dishes that has been created in the UK for the British palate, rather like tikka massala and b) it's correct name is Palak Aloo with people mistakenly interpreting saag to mean spinach (it's in fact a spinach-like mustard leaf).

Sauteed spinach and spices

So searching for palak aloo returned a few more hits.  The best-rated one appeared on Food.com.  I then read all 34 reviews and picked up on some of the advice and hoped that the people who said it was tasteless were wrong.

I used baby new potatoes as I only had rooster potatoes and they were too floury.  And I took the advice of one of the commenters and changed the order I cooked things in.  I also added some chopped tomatoes for authenticity which the original recipe doesn't use.

Despite needing a fair bit of salt to bring out the flavours (this may be just because of this stupid cold ruining my palate at the moment), it was a really lovely, fresh tasting dish and I'd make it again to eat on its own as a main dish with naan.

Of course, the husband didn't like it.  So he can go back to shop bought Popeye Aloo and I'll stick with the vaguely authentic stuff.

The original recipe is here

This is how I made it...


Palak Aloo - serves 4 as a side dish

• 300 g fresh spinach
• 2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• 1 inch fresh ginger, roughly chopped
• 2 onions chopped
• 1-2 chillies chopped with seeds
• 200g waxy potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 4tbsp butter
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tin chopped tomatoes
• salt to taste

1. First saute the garlic, ginger, onions and green chili together till the onion started to brown. 
2. Add the spinach and cook till it wilts and puree. 
3. Par boil the potatoes till almost done  
4. In a deep frying pan fry the cumin seeds for about 20 seconds till they start to lightly brown and then add the turmeric and other powdered spices and fry for about 20 seconds to bring out the flavour. 
5. Add the spinach-onion paste, chopped tomatoes, salt, and potatoes and cook for a few minutes for the flavors to absorb and the potatoes to fully cook.