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I cooked another dinner for the Estonian gang last week here in Edinburgh. Introducing them to the local cuisine, we feasted upon brinjal masala, chicken korma, gobi matar, strawberry shrikhard, and masala chai . Indian food is extremely popular in Scotland, and here's my version of a home-cooked Indian feast. All cooked from scratch, not a ready made curry paste or sauce on sight, although I did use a shop bought curry powder for the korma. And it was all on the table within an hour. Not bad, I think, for my first full Indian feast..Brinjal Masala or deep fried aubergines/eggplants.(Praetud pommuviilud)The recipe for deep fried aubergines is from the October 2000 issue of Waitrose Food Illustrated, and I modified it only slightly. Instead of 2 large aubergines I used 6 baby aubergines...

My dad celebrated his birthday on Saturday, and my mum had asked us to bring a cake (K. made a rather wonderful tiramisu to feed 16 guests), and a salad. Any self-respecting Estonian birthday party has a large bowl of kartulisalat or potato salad (known as Russian salad in many places, which is a version of the famous Salad Olivier), so I didn't bother to do that, as my mum would make one anyway. Instead I offered to make something more exotic - a mayonnaise and sour cream based salad of rice and curried chicken. The offer was kindly accepted (and the salad quickly eaten, I'm happy to report).In order to make that salad, however, I needed half of a curry-roasted chicken. That's why we had roasted chicken with curry rub for dinner on Friday night. Easy-peasy..Roasted chicken with curry...