Date Steak Sauce

Just a quick, slightly hungover update: Nigella's "Date Steak" sauce from Kitchen is awesome and so easy to make. All you have to do is mix quantities of vinegar, mustard, soy sauce, sugar, ginger and some kind of berry jelly (I used the cranberry sauce I made for Christmas) in a pan until everything gets bubbly and then remove from the heat to cool. We ate this with steak, mashed potatoes and salad leaves and the sauce went just as well with the mash and lettuce as the steak, to my surprise.

 Date Steak Sauce

Indian Roast Potatoes

Indian Roast Potatoes

I received Nigella Kitchen as a gift in a round-about kind of way and have been trying to make some recipes I have marked off in it during the last few weeks. A few days ago I made Indian Roast Potatoes from Kitchen. I'm not normally a huge fan of roast potatoes but these were something I would happily make again and try different spice combinations. My Dad found them too spicy, but he doesn't have much tolerance for spicy food.

INDIAN ROAST POTATOES
from Nigella Kitchen (slightly adapted)

5-7 potatoes, depending on size and number of people who will share the dish
2 tablespoons of oil (I used Prenzel Garlic Oil)
2 teaspoons turmeric powder
1 teaspoon fennel seeds (these give a licorice flavour)
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon poppy seeds
1/2 teaspoon chilli powder
1 bulb of garlic

1 red onion chopped finely
juice of 1 lime
fresh parsley

Preheat oven to 200 degrees celcius. Cut potatoes into cubes (approximately the size of an O you can make with your thumb and first finger) and put them into a clean plastic bag (I used the bag the carrots came in from the supermarket). Dump all the spices and oil in to the bag too and shake everything around until the potatoes are thoroughly coated. They will be a yellow colour because of the turmeric and studded with black dots from the poppy seeds. Place the potatoes into a roasting dish, trying to spread them so they make one layer of cubes without sitting on top of each other. Place unpeeled garlic cloves randomly amongst the potatoes. Cook for one hour.

While the potatoes are in the oven, finely dice the onion. The recipe called for only 1/2 an onion but I used a whole one and I'm glad I did because I liked the sweetness of the onion contrasted with the potatoes. Put the diced onion in a small bowl and squeeze the juice of a lime into the bowl. Leave the onion to sit while the potatoes cook and it will "macerate", a term I hadn't heard before but apparently just means to soften in liquid. I found the lime juice made the onion taste sweeter.

macerated onion

When the potatoes are out of the oven, spread the sweet onion dice through the potatoes along with some chopped fresh parsley.