Oddball Curries (by G)

For some reason (I don't recall why), I decided I wanted to make a selection of curries for dinner tonight.  I was searching on the web and came across an Egg Curry recipe which looked pretty interesting (and I think eggs complete a meal) so I decided to look for another oddball curry. Crab Meat curry - check.  I thought I should also do a starch - not rice - as filler so decided on devilled potatoes.

The Egg Curry was the easiest.  Boiled eggs with a curry sauce of onion, commercial curry paste, tomato, peas and yoghurt. Easy-peasy - oddly sweet given the ingredients.

The devilled potatoes were a variation on something I've cooked a couple of times before - boiled potatoes fried in ghee with red onion, green chilli, mustard seeds, garlic, chilli flakes, Maldive fish, turmeric and tomato. That was the plan anyway but I couldn't find curry leaves, I was going to substitute the Maldive fish (which I believe is dried tuna) with shrimp paste but forgot, I also forgot the turmeric and garlic and added some left over coriander - it was pretty good regardless.

The Crab curry was a bit more involved - not too much - the sauce was a mix of fennel seeds, mustard seeds, cardamom, cumin seeds, ginger, garlic (I remembered for this one), red chilli, turmeric (remembered), lemon juice, coriander and coconut milk. That is then simmered with the dark crab meat. Five minutes from the end the white crab meat is added... the crab bit is a bit theoretical because I couldn't find any fresh crab so I got the tinned stuff.  It was not too bad, it would have been handy if I'd also bought a can opener because I broke our only one a couple of weeks ago trying to open my money box - a couple of forceful knife jabs to the top did the trick though.  This was my favourite of the curries. I didn't tell Biggs what it was until after she'd tried it - from out of the corner of my eye I could see she was pretty suspicious while eating it - like I might have cooked up her 'My Little Pony' collection and fed it to her.