Curry Palooza

I was inspired by SarahA's 'Take Away Excitement' post, to share my own euphoria at not having to cook for one night.

Neighbours had told us that our local Indian was doing take out (sorry, I've become really North American - it's a survival mechanism, and they wouldn't know what I meant if I reverted to the preferred Scots 'carry out'.). Any hoo we decided that a curry Cooked By Someone Else was in our future.

They don't deliver, but they've got a pretty good set up for phoning in orders and pick up (you phone when you get there and they come out and put your order on a chair by the door. They have another chair six feet away with the machine on for payment, as they haven't quite sussed out the whole paying on the phone thing).

So the husband went to pick up our order. The car park was empty and just as he was about to get out of the car to pick up the order, another car swept in, with 5 adults in it, all the windows down and proceeded to park about a foot away from our car - in an empty car park. Sigh....

Anyway, stupid people aside, we got our order - Large Basmati Rice, Prawn Masala, Vegetable Jalfrezi, Chicken Karahi, Garlic Nan and Veggie Pakora.

I know it looks like a lot for two, but I know from experience, I'll get a stir fry out of the remaining rice, the remaining prawn sauce will form the basis of a fish curry, and any left over jalfrezi will do a side dish and/or lunch. There are a couple of chicken pieces left which will make good sandwiches, so we'll get a lot of eating out of one curry order.

It was the pakora that really confused me. We ordered two - each order gives you two, so that would be four in total, but I get the feeling we got someone else's order because when we opened the container there was definitely more than two, even with them cut in half. I think they'll provide us with good nibbling for the rest of the weekend. The beer did not come with the order!

The pakora got a bit scorched as I put everything in the oven to keep warm while I sat outside in the sunshine with a glass of wine enjoying the concept of dinner being ready without me cooking. My excuse is that it was a big glass of wine. I hadn't covered the pakora as I didn't want them to steam in the oven, and they still tasted great even if they got a little charred around the edges.

I see our local pub has also started doing take out, so I think that will be our next exploration into this brave new world of vaguely unconfined eating.