Summer curry joy

I needed a bit of spice. It's often the way in summer, I default to cold meals, or asparagus, cheese, things that are very nice in themselves but don't layer up flavour. But equally, I'm not in the mood for stodge. So this (New Kitchen Basics *again*) was perfect: pure tomato curry, with little stirring. It does start with a dreaded onion, but otherwise it's 5 minutes of prep and then 20 minutes of waiting with the lid on. Entirely bearable June cookery.

We're approaching a hot week, when I'm not going to want to boil anything - you can see from the room thermostat that boiling something for 15 mins in my kitchen raises the temperature in my living room by a degree or two, which is hideous when you've got nowhere else to go. A lot of cold ham in my future.

But until then: Take plenty of mustard seeds and cook them in oil for a minute or so till popping, in a frying pan you have a lid for. Along with this you want nigella (if you're not allergic; I eschewed), and a few curry leaves if you have them. Which, after some scuffling through my spice drawer, it turns out I do. Add a large, thinly sliced onion to this. Let it cook well - 10 minutes or so, till properly slippery. There's nowhere to hide the onion in this dish, so make sure it's not going to be depressing.

While the onion sorts itself out, assemble the rest:

- Lots of grated ginger

- Lots of crushed garlic

- A cinnamon stick

- 2 tsps of curry powder (see note)

- Lots of halved cherry tomatoes

- Salt and water

Add them in about that order, frying off the spices till they are fragrant, then adding in the tomatoes and stirring through. Add a decent splash of water and 1 tsp salt if you're following the recipe. Bring to the boil, turn down, cover, simmer.

About 15-20 minutes, says the recipe - I did more like 25, I suspect partly as it was on a smaller burner to avoid burning. It doesn't need a lot of watching, but if you've been sparing with the water, make sure it doesn't burn. The tomatoes will cook down a bit, but try not to stir too much - it's nice to keep the shapes and colours distinct.

It was vegan until this point, but while the tomatoes are cooking, you can make a seasoned yoghurt by adding salt and lemon to a good few spoonfuls of natural yoghurt.

I thought this all worked really well, but with yoghurt and the juicy tomatoes, it's quite a wet dish, which wasn't ideal for pita bread leftovers. Will do it with rice tonight, which will work much better. A cheering dish.

Note (belatedly, oops): I know saying just curry powder isn't all that helpful, but... that's the recipe, which notes you can add hot or subtle as you like. I have some freshish Madras mix from the supermarket *over there*, which serves a Tooting-adjacent audience and has interesting spice and international tinned offerings (as opposed to the supermarket *over there* which serves Wimbledon tennisy places and has truffled brie and fresh seafood - same chain, veeeeery different demographic profiling by the marketing folk). This one worked well, so I think the tomatoes will probably be fine if you've got a mix you like.