Not to mention fire-smoked aubergines, chicken livers in cumin butter masala and beetroot and feta samosas. The rice requires some cooking before the biryani is assembled, although cook it completely, as the recipe in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Veg recommends, and it will be overdone in the finished dish. Add a couple of tablespoons of water, cover with the lid and cook for a further 5 minutes, until the potatoes are tender and no longer resist the point of a knife. A day before TMC MP Mahua Moitra appears before the Lok Sabha's Ethics Committee, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee broke her silence on the cash-for-query row.

The cooking vessel should be tightly sealed to prevent the escape of the steam that’s essential for fluffing up the rice in the proper fashion. Traditionally, this dish would be made with a few large slabs of golden butter, but for the sake of decency I’ve toned things down a bit. Several recipes use tamarind and fresh curry leaves which I will have to wait until I go to the city to get these, but most are easily achievable without fancy or hard to find ingredients. Add the salt, chilli and turmeric, mix well, cover with the lid, reduce the heat to low and cook for another 4 minutes, or until the cabbage and black kale have wilted. Sodha, Dishoom and Fearnley-Whittingstall all season their curries with citrus juice, which, in Dishoom’s case, accentuates the tangy flavour of the yoghurt in a very pleasing manner.

With a diverse and vibrant array of dishes, Madhur proves, yet again, how easy it can be to cook authentic Indian food at home.

For example, the local person responsible for regular operation and minor repairs is preferably a woman from the village who will be trained and engaged through deliverable-based payments. The smell of roasted pumpkin, and curry leaves sizzling in coconut oil, is enough to make anyone want to go to Kerala, which is where a variation of this dish, known as “olan”, originates. It was such an easy and delicious midweek dinner – the sauce reminded me a bit of one of my Made in India favourites, the coriander chutney chicken, but with the pleasing addition of a tin of coconut milk.

Then it was just a matter of adding the peas (I used frozen straight from the freezer, I didn’t defrost them first) and frying up some chapattis.