Anyway, glad to be here and delighted to have access again the one of the most amazing Indian food resources on the net

Welcome back   I only joined a few days ago, but I've found it to be an absolute treasure trove of recipes, tips and advice.

I do like a good saag aloo, but it seems to be one of those dishes that a lot of restaurants don't get quite right for my tastes.  The only reason I don't add potatoes to my version is that it has a lot of butter in in and I think I would be comatose after eating it if it had potatoes in it too!

This is one of the few curry dishes I don't use my standard base sauce for; it doesn't start with spices fried in ghee but instead the chillies and onions are boiled with the green veg (spring greens+broccoli+spinach) and the garlic and ginger are added at the end after being separately tempered.  I think it is the mix of veg that makes most restaurant saag taste odd to me; I think they probably use much more spinach and less (if any) broccoli.

This chicken curry was made for friends that were a bit apprehensive about chilli/spices, so I dialled up the tomatoes and switched to a milder chilli than I would normally use.

Thank you for sharing a quick version!  As you say, there are several recipes for paranthas and I have found all of them to be delicious!  My method of cooking paranthas is below:

I make them by starting with a basic roti dough (a rested chakki flour + water based dough), rolling it into a small circle.  I then add a filling, which is usually a spiced crushed potato (and sometimes pea) mixture into the middle of the circle.  I then fold each side towards the middle and roll out the resulting square to a larger size, rounding out the edges.

This is then placed on a tawa and cooked on one side and flipped.  The cooked side is brushed with ghee and the parantha flipped again and the other side similarly coated. One last flip to cook the second coated side a bit more then it is done.

Best eaten immediately after cooking; my family prefer to eat it with plain yoghurt or a dahl.

Thank you for the welcome Phil   I cook big batches at a time, but there is often a gap between them and I find that any open puree tubes don't do so well in my fridge.  This may be more to them lying forgotten at the back of the shelf though!  Because I cook mainly for my elderly parents, I am extra cautious about using opened tubes past their recommended few days.  If I know it's just for me and my husband, all such caution is thrown to the winds

This is my "homely" Punjabi tadka sauce recipe - it is definitely not a BIR curry sauce, but this is a base tadka that I've used many times at home.

Most of my curry cooking at the moment is for my parents' freezer, so all my recipes are centred on minimising water content and scaled to batch in convenient ratios for me.  If you do try any of them, I won't be at all offended if you don't abide by these two restrictions!  Feedback is always welcome

This recipe has been scaled to achieve zero waste on left over shorter life ingredients, which in this case is the tube of tomato puree and to minimise water content to be freezer efficient.  The recipe has been adapted from a family recipe handed down by my mother.  I have used frozen or store cupboard ingredients for this version, to illustrate that you can achieve a decent sauce without spending hours preparing the ingredients.


Ingredients
Approx. 10 wooden spoons ghee