Looking into the old biscuit tin where I had been dropping my spare change over the last year or two, I figured there was probably 15 dollars in. Alasdair took a look – “Naw, I bet there might even be 20.” It was Sunday. The night after New Model Army rocked Portland (More on that and photos to come). Ally had come for the show and then been put to work cooking curry for the masses along with myself. We needed to fund our curry night and the old tin of spare change seemed like just the ticket to get us started. Off we were then to Fred Myer on Hawthorne and their large, odd, green “Coin-Star-O-Matic”. We dumped the biscuit tin and watched the little screen flick numbers as the machine counted nickels, dimes, quarters, and pennies. “Blimey! I think were going to hit 40 bucks!” Ally was right but it kept on going higher. “Fuckin hell, 50 dollars was in that tin!” “Ooo, coming up on 62 dollars!” This went on and kept going all the way to 74 dollars and sixteen cents. We were like little kids having scored free money and were totally on for curry. First stop: India 4 You down the way on Hawthorne, then back to Fred Myers for more supplies, then back to my new house to get cooking. By the end of the evening we had cooked for 18 people and Carla's small dog. Ally covered with a chicken Korma, and a mushroom bahji. I made a basic veggie curry and another rich chicken and tomatoes curry. What killed us though was this dodgy experiment with some odd stuffed Nan bread. It set us back to a standstill. Something about making the dough was beyond our means. The cooking we had down – no troubles. Baking though. That was another matter all together. Somehow for the need of one pound of dough we ended up using about two and a half pounds of flour, then added mashed potatoes and shredded cauliflower and ended up with the biggest stickiest mess. This lump was supposed to be cut into quarters, rolled out flat, the veggie curry added on top, then folded back up again and fried. We had it stuck to the cutting board, our fingers, the pan, the wall, all over the place. It fell apart. It cooked unevenly. Like a mess of hash browns that won’t cook and you keep thinking to yourself “there’s a secret here…I just don’t know what it is…” I’m not sure what quite it was supposed to be, but in the end we all decided that what ever it was, it was pretty good. All in all another top night! The troops did their part too in the bringing of the beverages. Spencer brought chocolate bars, and we all lived it large on a biscuit tin - a quarter full of spare change.
Here is the dough that gave us such a dodgy start. The finished bits are on the plates behind.
The table after the troops had savaged it. The odd stuffed nan, yoghurt and rice, a pan where the mushroom curry used to be. The pan where the chicken korma used to be. Very little tomato and chicken curry left, and a small pot of veggie curry.
The light was low so photos were a little bit tricky.
Our guest chef Ally with the funny yellow glasses that everybody tried on.
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