Harvest, Cook and Eat - Indian!

Today was our first Harvest, Cook and Eat session of the year, and went really well. Our expert chef for the day was Jas Rayatt of Red Hot Cuisine, who came to help us prepare a feast of Indian food. Jas rose to the challenge of working in the outdoor kitchen, and was happy to believe Tracey when she told him that the rain would stop about half an hour before we were due to start cooking, and not come back until around 4pm (we should add that she's not claiming any magical powers, just a husband sending reports using a live-feed rain-radar app!)

Jas shows Rosy how to mix up pakora batter

The sous-chefs get to work

Lo and behold, the rain stopped at 11.30am, and we were in business, although we already had a marquee up to make sure we had a dry space to prepare in. The volunteers started the ball rolling, picking and preparing potatoes and coriander from our plot, and then other guests came, mainly from the Acorn Day Centre, and the volunteers helped them to pick mint and harvest onions ready for our food.

The Acorn group pick mint for the dish.

Harvesting onions for the curry

We ran the rocket stove, which performed really well, getting oil hot enough to cook pakoras. We made several batches of these, with different veg, including onion and potato, onion and cauliflower and onion, aubergine and peas. They went down a storm. 

Dan and Ellis perfect the art of pakora making

Mark enjoys the finished article

We also did a chicken curry, and Jas got lots of us involved in making chapatis which were really easy, as long as no-one was marking us on how round and thin we got them!

Jas helps Mohammed create the chicken curry

Steven brought along chana dhal, which was delicious, and got snapped up.

Steven gets his curry ready for the group

Our visitors Tammy and Tonya try the curry with chapatis

Are there any seconds?

New volunteer Edith gets stuck in with the
washing up.  

A great day, and thanks to all the volunteers who did a brilliant job as sous-chefs.