Jac made a chicken and vegetable (green beans, carrots and broccoli) balti curry last weekend, which she served with mini pappadams. I love this kind of curry sauce, with an oniony and tomatoey base. It’s fragrant and spicy without blowing your head off (though of course if you wanted it super hot you could simply add more chilli). Here’s the recipe, which came from one of Jac’s cookbooks – 100 Best Balti Curries: Authentic Dishes from the Baltihouses by Diane Lowe and Mike Davidson, published by Pavilion Books, London 1994, pp.24-25.

We grabbed a takeaway lunch from Spencer Village on the long weekend Monday. This was nasi lemak, which came wrapped in brown paper from Sarindo, the Indonesian stall. For a measly AU$3.30, you get some really tasty coconut rice, ikan bilis with peanuts, cucumber, fried egg, chilli sambal and a chunky piece of fried fish. I can’t believe I’ve been going to Spencer’s all this time and never ate this! It was great! Nothing fancy, but a really tasty cheap savoury feed. I’ll definitely have it again.