I like cooking curries from scratch. I’m no expert though so I just make it up as I go along. I like vegetable curry so I’ll use butternut squash as a basic ingredient.

You have to take off the skin and deseed the squash. Then chop it into cubes. Meanwhile I put some oil in a pan and gently fry my spices. Mild curry powder, some crushed garlic, a bit of chilli (dried or powdered) and a bit of cinnamon or garam masala to give the curry a richer flavour. Sometimes I add this later so the taste is more noticeable.

Then I sautée (add a small amount of water to the oil) some chopped onion in the curry mix together with the squash. This takes a while to soften so I cook it on a low heat with a lid on.

As it softens I add other vegetables, like pak choi, mushrooms, beans, a bit of broccoli or some cabbage. I might add some potato chopped up. I keep an eye on the water content so it doesn’t dry out. I will also add tinned tomatos or tomato paste. As I say I just add in what is available at the time.

Before it’s fully cooked I usually do a small amount of boiled rice (brown or white) and serve the curry and rice with plain yoghurt.

I hope this makes sense, it’s not a recipe as such.

I always season with salt at the end, I don’t cook with it, as it gets absorbed into the food, and you can’t taste it as much but it can raise your blood pressure.