Review: Halal Food Festival

Food shows are big business at the moment, whatever culture or religion you are, and the UK's first Halal Food Festival tapped into that zeitgeist.

Held over three days in an exhibition space in the ExCeL in east London, the festival brought together artisan producers, celebrity chefs and foodies (nicknamed 'haloodies'). I headed down for the second day to check out all the fuss.

The festival hall was packed when we got there just after 2pm, and we got stuck right in, heading round the various stalls, trying out products and purchasing plenty along the way. A highlight was the mango fudge produced by Suffolk-based Yum Yum Tree Fudge, which nearly made me swoon.

At the cooking school area, we watched Glasgow-based chef Ajmal Mushtaq lead six people in making a chicken curry, which smelt delicious and tasted pretty good too (since we all got to try a bit). At the live cookery theatre we watched Aneesh from The Chocolatier put together something truly scrumptious looking that involved lots of chocolate and coconut.

Where the Halal Food Festival fell down, unfortunately, was in the food that you could eat. After a few hours wondering round, there's only so many samples you can eat before you want something substantial. Granted, there were some amazing stalls at the festival, selling burgers, wraps and more. But they weren't very close together, meaning it was hard to compare and contrast and decide what you wanted. A "food village" of sorts, around a seating area, would have been good.

Once you did decide what you wanted, there was the queuing. First, there wasn't really room to queue in the event space, so lines of people stretched out past other stalls, getting in the way. Second, the most popular stand had a queue that people waited in for an hour. That is absolutely ridiculous. Bigger stands, spread out a little more would have been perfect.

Obviously, the festival organisers needed to consider cost, but if I were them I would have cut the festival down to two days (yesterday's opening day was a wash, according to many stallholders I spoke to), and then spent the money saved on hiring a bigger space.

Still, this is the first time this festival has been held. With a few lessons from this year, next year's event has the potential to be bigger, and much better.

Food review: Rustic Indian curry sauces

Being of Pakistani origin, I've made one or two curries in my life. 

Some of the recipes I use are ones my mother taught me, others are from the "add a little of this and a little of that and see what happens" school of cooking. 

Whichever method I choose, my curries generally tend to take a while to make, since the flavours of the sauce have to meld together perfectly.

So it was with more than a little scepticism that I read Rustic Indian curry sauces could give you a great curry in as little as 10 minutes. Seriously?

Created by husband and wife team Bal and Vini, the range came about when the couple decided to recreate the recipes passed down through their families for the mass market.

The four sauces in the range - Tharka, Jeera, Shahi and Fiery Mirchi - can all be used for vegetable, meat or fish curries, are chilled, use fresh, natural ingredients and have a shelf life of 12 weeks.

I started with Tharka, and decided to make a chickpea and black-eyed bean curry. The sauce went in a pan, as did a 400g tin of chickpeas and another of black-eyed beans. Sure enough, 10 minutes later, after letting the sauce simmer for a while and stirring occasionally, I had what looked like a great curry. It tasted pretty good as well, although there was something in there I couldn't quite place that I don't usually use in my curries - maybe the fenugreek?

For my second go, I made a lamb curry using Fiery Mirchi, which is the spiciest of the sauces in the range. I decided to tenderise the lamb first, cooking it in stock with some garlic for a while, before drying out the liquid and adding the Fiery Mirchi sauce. Because it was meat, I decided to simmer the whole thing on the hob for aorund half an hour, adding a bit of water as I deemed necessary.

Again, the curry looked good, and it was tasty as well, although not quite as spicy as the packaging led me to believe. Still, I can take a little more chilli than most people I know, and someone who doesn't eat much spicy food would definitely have found the curry pleasantly hot. The flavours of the Fiery Mirchi sauce were much closer to the curries I usually cook myself, and I found myself really enjoying the whole meal.

There are two other flavours in the range which I haven't had the chance to try out yet, but which I will definitely be using. While there's nothing quite like making your own curry, if you're short of time then Rustic Indian curry sauces are close enough to home-cooked curries to be a satisfying substitute. They're easy to use, take away the most time-consuming bit of making a curry (creating the right sauce), are fresh, you can whip up a meal in minutes with them, and most importantly, they're tasty.

Recipe: Roasted butternut squash soup

A few days ago I acquired a copy of Mary McCartney's Food, and a combination of the cold weather we've been having and the fact that butternut squash was on offer in my local supermarket made me decide to make her roasted butternut squash and rosemary soup. I knew I didn't have rosemary at home, but I thought what the heck, I'll try it anyway. Only when I got back armed with the butternut squash, I also discovered I didn't have three other key ingredients - celery, carrots and creme fraiche/sour cream. Still, I decided to plow on, and my adaptation turned out to be pretty flipping delicious. Here's my recipe, with notes about McCartney's below.

1. Cut the butternut squash in half, take out the seeds, drizzle with olive oil and put in an oven at 170 degrees C for around 45 minutes. Once done, leave to cool slightly, then scoop out the insides.

2. Finely dice two medium onions and crush a clove of garlic and saute for about five minutes in olive oil. Add the butternut squash you've scooped out, half a tsp of chilli flakes and 800ml of vegetable stock. Simmer for 15 minutes.

3. Add salt and black pepper to taste and take off the heat. Leave to cool, then add two tbsps of Greek yoghurt and blend the mixture until smooth. Reheat to piping and serve.

McCartney's recipe involved laying rosemary sprigs in the hollow part of each squash before roasting, which could be discarded after. She also advised on peeling the skin off the squash and cutting it into pieces after taking it out of the oven, but I found this too fiddly so just went with the scooping method. Her recipe called for sauteing a carrot and two sticks of celery with the onion, and she didn't use garlic. And McCartney's recipe uses two tablespoons of creme fraiche or soured cream where I used Greek yoghurt.

Recipe: Spicy prawn and tomato curry

I've never made a prawn curry before, and my first attempt turned out pretty well, thanks to the great recipe I used by Meena Pathak - who with her husband set up the Patak's brand of curry sauces. I used a recipe from Pathak's book Flavours of India, which was published in 2002, but it's got some great recipes in it so well worth buying even though it's more than a decade old. I made a few tiny changes to the recipe, outlined below, but have given Pathak's instructions as well, so you can choose what you want to do.

1. Heat three tbsp of oil in a wok, and add a tsp of cumin seeds. When they start crackling add 200g of chopped onions (roughly three small onions). Cook for 10 minutes, lid off, stirring occasionally.

2. Add a tsp each of fresh crushed garlic and fresh crushed ginger (Pathak recommends using pastes), and fry for a minute.

3. Add 250g of fresh, chopped tomatoes (roughly four good sized tomatoes), and half a tsp each of red chilli powder and turmeric. Cook for 10 minutes, lid on, stirring occasionally.

4. When the oil starts separating from the sauce add 250g of king prawns (Pathak's recipe uses 400g of large prawns, which will make the recipe a little less spicy), and a little salt to taste. I used frozen prawns. Pathak also uses a pinch of sugar, but I don't like using sugar in savoury recipes. Cook for 10 minutes, lid off, stirring occasionally, until the prawns turn pink.

5. Add half a tsp each of crushed red chillis, crushed black peppercorns, crushed fennel seeds and crushed coriander seeds. Pathak uses fennel powder, but I only had seeds handy, so just crushed everything bar the chillis together in a pestle and mortar myself.

6. Cook for about two minutes, and it's ready. If you have it handy, Pathak recommends stirring in some fresh coriander just before taking it off the heat, and sprinkling some on top as well. I served the dish with chapattis and Greek yoghurt.

Enjoy!

Cooking with Sarah: Mexican-style soup

This soup is really easy to make and is great as a light lunch, starter or even a main meal if served with bread and salad. It's got a kick to it, so make sure to have a glass of milk nearby if you're not so good with hot dishes. This recipe makes enough for four people and should only take around 35 minutes.

1. Heat 2tbsp of olive oil in a large saucepan, then add one finely chopped red onion.
2. When the onion is starting to go soft, add 1-2 finely chopped fresh green chillies (deseeded), two finely chopped garlic cloves, half a tsp of dried oregano, 1tsp of ground cumin and a pinch of cayenne pepper or red chilli powder. If you don't want it too hot, stick with one fresh green chilli, and don't use the cayenne/red chilli powder.
3. Stir in a 400g tin of chopped tomatoes and 650ml of hot vegetable stock. Bring gently to the boil, then lower the heat and let it simmer gently for 15 minutes.
4. Add in a 400g tin of black eyed beans (drained and rinsed) and 5tbsp of tinned or frozen sweetcorn. Simmer for five minutes.
5. Add in a splash of lemon or lime juice, and some coriander. Season with salt, black pepper and a pinch of sugar to taste.
6. Serve with a dollop of Greek yoghurt or soured cream on top, with toasted pitta bread or any other bread of your choice.

Baking with Sarah(!): Chocolate biscuits, fudge and cupcakes

Yes, I know not all the things I've spent today making are baked, but just go with the title. Here are the recipes I used.

Fudge
This is, hands down, the easiest sweet dish I've ever made (excluding scooping ice cream out of a tub etc).
1. Put 400g of chocolate (milk or dark) in a non-stick pan with a 397g of condensed milk (a normal sized can) and 25g of butter. Melt over a gentle heat, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is completely smooth. 
2. Sift in 100g of icing sugar. My tip is to sift a little of the icing sugar at a time, then mix, then sift some more, then mix etc. 
3. Once the mixture is completely smooth again pour out into a tin (I found something that was about an inch thick) lined with greaseproof paper, leave to cool then stick in the fridge for an hour or so. Once it's set you can chop it up and tuck in. 

Mini cupcakes
1. Cream 100g of butter with 100g of sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy. 
2. Mix in two eggs, one at a time, making sure the first egg is completely incorporated before you add the next. 
3. Sift in 100g of flour and fold. Make sure to fold, not mix, as this will keep the mixture light. It may look like the flour won't mix if you fold, but it will, don't worry. 
4. Separate mixture into cupcake cases. This recipe makes 12 regular sized cupcakes, but I used tiny cupcake cases around the width of a 50p piece, and made around 30 cupcakes.
5. Bake at 190C for 10 minutes (mini cupcakes) or 15 minutes (larger). Check they're cooked by putting a toothpick in, if it comes out clean you're fine, otherwise give it a few more minutes. 

Chocolate biscuits
1. Put 100g butter, 175g soft brown sugar and 75g golden syrup in a non-stick pan and heat, stirring gently, until all the sugar is completely dissolved. 
2. Take off the heat and mix in 1tsp of bicarbonate of soda. 
3. In a separate bowl mix 350g of plain flour and 2tbsp of cocoa powder. Put half this mix in the sugar mixture, along with one lightly beaten egg, and stir in. Then add the rest of the flour and stir until a soft dough is made. Spread onto a foil-lined baking sheet and put in the fridge for a few hours, until it's firm. 
4. Roll out the dough (you may have to split it up) until it's 4-5mm thick, then use a cookie cutter (whatever shape you want) to cut the dough. 
5. Place on a baking sheet and cook at 190C for around 10 minutes if you want crunchy biscuits, and maybe 8-9minutes if you want them slightly softer. 
6. Cool and eat.