Foodie share

V now has a favourite Asian curry....better even than the standard red, green and yellows of Thailand.

As a base she used an Indonesian Padang Rendang paste containing shallots, ginger, galangal, dessicated coconut, turmeric, coriander seeds, candle nut, chiles and lemongrass, as well as sugar and salt, which ought to be relatively easy to reproduce without the head start provided by the Dancing Chef paste I'd picked up in Singapore.

She then added a few extra ingredients such as coconut milk, chopped cabbage, lime leaves from the rough land next to our house, and Japanese yaki nori (roasted seaweed).

We used beef, but chicken and lamb are also permitted, I read on the back of the little packet.

The end result was, I believe, a little more liquid than the version one tends to encounter in Padang. And completely delicious.

The rice was prepared with more kaffir lime leaves, carrots, peas, green tea, sultanas and saffron.