Fond- [of]-ue 💕

Cheap cheese fondue and crudities <3

 Valentine's Day has been and gone but whether you were spending it with a significant other, on your own, or with friends, a fondue can be suprisingly cheap, a romantic centrepiece, and even a way to get folks talking as well as eating together.

Normally a fondue pot is heated over a candle flame or small burner but I thought "Why not adapt this to the SupermarketValueKitchen® ?  The recipe and prep are simple!"  I was lucky enough to have a load of cheese left over plus some budget mozzarella I picked up

Ingredients (for 2)

• 1/2 a bottle of cheap white wine. 
• About 1kg of cheese, grated.  Cheese is not cheap though.  Ideally it should be Emmental or Gruyere, but any hard cheese will work.  I adapted and used some of the leftovers I had from Xmas, not ideal but we'll see how it tastes...
• Red Leicester
•  Mozzarella (which I got in a Reduced salad pack with some sun dried tomatoes) [PIC]
•  Curry Sauce flavour cheddar (don't ask...) [PIC]
• Manchego (probably the nearest I got to hard cheese) [PIC]
•  A dusting of Parmesan for flavour. 
• Half a small onion or a shallot, finely chopped.  I used a couple of chopped scallions, reduced, (as featured in our curry) 
• 1 large tsp cornflour, slaked in some water.  
• Herbs
• Rosemary and floral Boquet Garni type herbs like parsley, thyme, bay and tarragon (I think) work the best to flavour the wine but you shouldn't need much.
• 1 clove of garlic, smashed up with salt but still intact 
• A little vegetable oil
• Salt and pepper, to taste

 

Method

Rub your saucepan or fondue pot with the oil and the smashed garlic clove, just enough to season it a little.
Boil the wine, herbs, and chopped onions in the pot until the alcohol's gone and then reduce to a low simmer.  This will take a while depending on whether you're using a fondue set or a saucepan, so pay attention to how it smells.

Filter out the bay leaf or boquet garni if you used one, and gradually whisk in the cornflour.
Now *very slowly* add the grated cheese into the pot and allow to melt, constantly stirring all the while.  DON'T let it burn or sit for too long if you're making this on a stove, as I found out...  Keep the heat REALLY low and slow.  Watch the texture, you want runny but not liquid, and definitley not sticky, as when the sauce cools it'll harden too much.

 To Serve
The whole point of a fondue is that it is a centrepiece and you constantly go back to it to cook your food slightly in the mixture, then come back again, so choose lots of small things.  My favourite things to put in cheese fondue are:
 - Radishes.
 - Green beans.
 - Carrots, cut into batons.
 - Celery sticks with a little salt and chilli / curry powder on them.
 - Any other vegetables you like that eat well raw or slightly cooked - cauliflower, maybe?
 
 - Flatbreads or pittas, warmed and cut into strips.
 - Toasted slices of garlic baguette.
 - New potatoes, boiled

 - Cooked chicken and a dash of hot sauce on the side.
 -  Very rare strips of steak, which can cook through more in the pot if you leave them in.
 - Chorizo or other spicy sausages would work.  A good way to use up leftover salami from Xmas...
 - Sun dried tomatoes.  Maybe you got these in a Reduced salad pack with some mozarella...

You could also do nachos or just breadsticks - everything tastes better in fondue.

*munch*

Mine came out a bit burnt at the bottom, I think I turned the heat up a little too much and the wrong sort of cheese doesn't help, but this was an exceptionally good way to use up a lot of leftover dairy (yes, I know, I'm lucky that was the case, cheese doesn't normally last a day in my home...)  Gooey, fun, and made everything I/we dunked in it taste amazing.


The leftover sauce also makes a very nice Welsh Rarebit mixture if you add a large spoon of English mustard (or two of American/French) and 2 tbsps Worcester sauce to it.  Grab a couple of slices of toasted bread, spread the mixture on top,  put it under the grill for a few minutes and you have some delicious leftovers.

Result <3

Quick spinach & chorizo soup

Spinach & chorizo soup

I know I said I was bored of soups but this was the only way I could use up some spinach and pasta quickly.  I had thought of a vegetable lasagna but this did me well for another workday lunch and supper.

So I haven't been feeling too well and have been a little run down, so I thought, a bit of vitamin B and Iron is what I need.  And of course, you think iron, you think spinach!

I had planned  to make a lasagna as I said, but I had some old elbow macaroni to use up and fancied a soup.  The addition of a little chorizo was, if I may say so, inspired.

Ingredients (for 2)

about 400g-500g spinach (or 2 small bags like I used)
1 chorizo, skinned and sliced finely.
1 small slug of orange juice*
1 small handful of random pasta shapes (cooked)
1 pot of boiling water
1 stock cube (I used chicken)

salt (but not too much) and pepper to taste
2 tbsps (approx) fresh cream to finish

Method

 Couldn't be easier.

• Boil the water and add the stock in a pot.  Stir.
• Drop the chopped chorizo in. 
• Wash the spinach and pop it into the pot.  By the way, did you know if you are cooking fresh spinach, you only really need to rinse it and drop the damp leaves into a hot pan until it wilts?  Now you do.
• Turn the heat down and blend
• Allow to cool and serve with a little cream

Tastes as good cold as it does warm. 

* The orange juice helps release the iron from the spinach.

Pictures to follow, was just keen to get back posting.  Easter and spring recipes to follow, as well as those other recipes I said I'd try.

Chicken 3 ways concludes! 4.5 /3 - Chicken Dopiaza

At last! Chicken Dopiaza

This is a restauarant made dopiaza but I thought I'd add a nice picture to kick things off...

Hurrah!  Happy February!  I have finally had a few spare hours to type up what was one of the best curries I have ever made for myself, and all using cheap or local ingredients (bar the spices of course...)

This recipe can easily be extended to feed 4, or 8, but this is for one hungry dude.

The original recipe this is based on comes from the fantastic Loving Bangladeshi Kitchen blog but I have modified it slightly to my own ends.

First of all though, by way of a bonus, since this has taken so long, I did a compare and contrast exercise (albeit a restaurant and vegetable based one) with a dopiaza I had from my favourite Indian restauarant in Belfast as shown above.

*munch* - Good large slices of onion, but maybe not enough (as I shall show you why below ...) and beautiful par-boiled potatoes and peas, with crunchy red and green peppers, all garnished with coriander.  The real hero is the sauce - have a look at the clarified butter (ghee) used to give the sauce some real taste and richness, as well as stop the whole thing burning.  Great spice to it as well.  A benchmark has been set.

That yellow liquid on the right of the spoon is ghee (clarified butter) used to make the sauce rich.  Curry translates as "gravy" or "sauce"  a good rich sauce is the cornerstone of any "curry".

 

So on to the main event - my chicken dopiaza, with thanks to the LBK blog.

Ingredients

• 1 500g pack of value grade pre-sliced onions or 2 large onions, or 4 small ones.  Dopiaza means "double onions" so use lots.  Here's some I bought earlier...

• 1 portion of chicken.  I have gone for a chicken quarter (breast and drumstick) from my local butcher - saving money on transport to the ValueSupermarket® but I can recommend thigh as being tasty as well as cheap; maybe more authentic too...
• 2 tomatoes.  Normally I don't think tomatoes belong in a curry but I'm experimenting.

Now on to the spices for the sauce:

• 2 cloves of garlic, smashed into a paste with some salt
• 1 large tsp. ginger, either from a jar or, ideally, grated from fresh
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1tsp coriander powder, or, as I did, use half a bunch fresh for garnish
• 1 tsp turmeric.  I used fresh but ground is also good, and won't stain your fingers when you grate it ...
• 1 tsp ground cardamon or 2 or 3 pods of the seeds, slightly ground, smashed up a bit if you will
• 1/2 stick of cinnamon or 1 large tsp of cinnamon powder
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 tbsps oil.  Plus some.  Don't worry if that seems like a lot, as I will explain...
• 1 tbsp butter, or ghee (clarified butter) if you have it.  I don't normally mind using ordinary butter in cooking as I am careful not to burn the solids, but you don't need to worry about that with ghee.  To make clarified butter all you do is melt some butter and pour off and reserve the clear liquid; this is your ghee. 
• 1 tsp chilli powder or half a rocket finger chilli and 1 dried regular SupermarketValue® chilli.  Nice fresh chillis to give this some punch, but as always, make this as hot or as mild as you prefer.  Dopiazas are usually mild-ish but I'm going all in, without scorpionizing my mouth...

Method

Step 1. - Sauce

Prepare all the spices by dry-frying the dry ingredients.  

When they start to smell a little, add the oil and some of the onions, mix well, and allow the onions to caramelise.  Start to get a nice char on them, but don't burn them... 

Add the garlic when the onions start to turn translucent, then add the rest of the onions and a little more oil and the ghee, and cook them until just before the garlic burns but the first batch of onions look really soft or burnt - (Pay attention!  Don't burn the garlic!  The onions will survive a good fry, the garlic will not!)   If you like, hold some of the onions back and add them when the main pan looks cooked through, just to warm them and add some bite. 

The point of this two or three step onion frying process is to get a contrasting texture.  Normally a restaurant dopiaza will have all the onions sweated through and cooked evenly - I want most of them to be cooked and sweet, but I want some of them to taste burnt and sugary, and some just a little bit on the raw side for texture (this is how mine were from the restaurant, cooked but still crunchy)  This was tricky, but worth the effort.

 Now I baked this sauce, drained of the oil but reserving some of it for future recipes (see what I did there?) in a balti pan with the whole tomatoes, split with a knife, for a while, in a low oven.  20 minutes in a hot oven if you prefer, but I left this to simmer for a couple of hours.  I like slow food...   

That's after we fried the onions and spice in oil, drained it, added more spice to taste, but before baking it.

Recall I saved heat by cooking my prepped veg, dopiaza and roasted my chillies at the same time.

Step 2  - Chicken prep

Rub the chicken with a mixture of salt and oil, but if you marinaded it in a spice mix, similar for a tandoori chicken, it would really work as well.  But just not today...  Just a simple rub of oil and salt while the sauce is simmering.

If you're cooking the chicken whole I recommend about half an hour to 40 minutes in the oven, followed by a good grilling to crisp the skin up and finish it off.  

If you're using chopped chicken then I'd say 15-20 minutes in a hot oven, in a dish or in foil, followed by 5-10 minutes in the sauce.  Or 7-8 minutes in a hot pan followed by a quick 5 minute roasting (220°) in the sauce to finish.  Your call...

Chop it up and add to the sauce, or if using a chicken quarter, just serve the sauce on the side, with your choice of basmati rice, naan, flatbreads, roti, or saag aloo (*mental note*, make discount saag aloo...)

*munch*

After a long bake in the oven, the onions, tomatoes and extra spice just need mixed, and wow, did they taste good...

 I can report that, asides from the year my brother bought me a vindaloo kit (which I might try and recreate some time, *mental note*)  this is the best curry I have made myself.   

If was to change one thing I'd omit tomato and use a few teaspoons of tomato puree or tablespoons of passata -  the sauce is too wet but I remedied that with an extra tablespoon of garam masala to bind it.  

There's a lovely sweetness from the cinnamon, a nice bitterness from the clove, and background heat from the chillies.  I got it just right - hot but not overpowering, more of a front on the fresh ones and a back of the mouth on the dried.  Pleasantly fiery but not uncomfortable.


But the star are the double cooked onions, soft and sweet but their crunchier counterparts give it great texture.  They make the dish what's great about it, which is the whole point of the dopiaza style.  

What else can I say, if you haven't made your own curry from scratch with value for money and local ingredients, you will never want to get a take-away again!  Definitely one for sharing.

  
In the forthcoming weeks, since I have moved into a new house (hence the delay in posting)  - the SupermarketValueKitchen® will now no longer be plagued by overactive smoke alarms and defective freezers.  I have a few plans including a late Burns Night supper on the cheap, plus a few more quick store cupboard favourites.  Heck, I might do a late Valentine's supper as well - no reason not to be romantic all year round, even if it is a little thrifty <3

Bonus Post: When things go wrong...

Whuh-oh... Pierogi soup and what not to do...

Not every recipe on the SupermarketValueFood® blog is a success, so I thought I would share with you one recipe that didn't quite make the grade...

Not quite as bad as LSD in the marinara sauce, but still, this pierogi in broth recipe wasn't good.  Thanks to Google Deep Dream for the image.  What is it with it and dogs...?

It started out with good intentions.  I picked up a bag of frozen pierogi from one of your favourite cheap Eastern European supermarkets that has four letters in its name.  £1.99 for a kilo of meat-filled dumplings.  Hurrah!  Or so I thought...

So I went about making a nice broth to go with these.

Ingredients (per person)

1 large handful of pierogi

1 chicken stock cube

500mls boiling water

1/2 a celery stalk

1 medium sized carrot

1/2 small onion

1/2 a clove of garlic, smashed with salt then finely chopped into a near paste

1 tsp paprika

1tsp vegetable oil

To garnish

--

1 tablespoon of pickled cabbage

1 dollop of sour cream

salt / pepper / etc, to taste

Method

In a small saucepan, sweat the chopped vegetables and spices in a little oil for 8 minutes or so, until the onion turns translucent.  Add the boiling water, stock, and spices to brew up for 10 minutes.  Now add the pierogi and bring to the boil for about 7 minutes from frozen.  Serve and dollop some sour cream and pickled cabbage over the top of the dish.  Taste and season.

*munch*

The broth is good and the sharpness and contrast of the pickeld cabbage with the veg and the sour cream is lovely, but there's no getting away from the fact that these frozen pierogi are a travesty.  *Urgh!*  The texture is awful and the filling is not to be spoken of.  Well, I can't expect to improve every budget food I buy...

  I shall be attempting to rescue this packet I bought somehow, but for the time being, can I suggest you visit your nearest Polish deli and buy fresh pierogi, as they are infinitely better.     

A more successful cheap recipe in the next post...

Festive Intermission

Festive Intermission - baked ham

I keep promising to post that dopiaza I made and I will, it's just that I've had to work up until yesterday.  Sometimes these spur of the moment posts are better and allow me to tell a story quickly... So in the spirit of the season...

Midwinter in coastal Belfast.  Cold but happy times...

On the poor farms of Britain and Ireland there wasn't a lot of land available to the peasants.  So the most useful and economical animal to raise and eventually eat was a pig.  A baked ham was something special to have, at special events.

Fast forward many years.  My grandfather's baked ham at Christmas became something for our family, friends and neighbours to enjoy for days, it being the size of a Lancashire prop-forward's thigh.  His custom treatment in mustard and cloves gave it a great bite and taste but kept it very juicy.

Fast forward another 20 years.  CB* reveals her family secret - marinade the ham in Cola first.  Bless you always Papa, but I think CB* is on to something...

So, using some cut price ingredients, I have made enough ham for 4 using only a small joint (£3) that will do several stragglers for leftovers, blending two different family recipes.

Ingredients

1 ham - whatever size you like.  I used a small one.  About 1lb.

2 litres Cola - the SuperMarketValueFood® cheap type ;-)
Spices: (per lb.)
 - half a nutmeg, 1tsp of powder or grated is better.  
 - enough cloves to make the ham look like it's wearing studded leather armour, so say 20 for a small joint.
 - 2 tsp cinnamon

Now then...

Enough mustard powder or regular English mustard to coat that ham all over.  Say half a jar of wet prepared mustard or 4 tablespoons of dry.  

Method

Add about half of the quantity of spices into the cola and marinade the ham in as much of it as it takes to cover it in your largest oven dish / container.  Refrigerate overnight.

Take the ham, drain it, and rub it with the rest of the spices, poking the cloves as far in as you can get them.  Now add your mustard all over.  This is messy if you use pre-prepared mustard, easier and better if you use dry.   

Marinade your ham in cheap cola first.., 

Then give it a good old rub with lots of mustard, spices and cloves shoved in there...

I've 1-UP's the tradition and wrapped it in foil, but you can use a casserole dish or whatever.  Now bake for several hours at about 160 - 180 degrees C.  

I also experimented with putting the marinade cola in an oven dish under the meat, to get a bit of steam and moisture going.  This may not make for a good crust but I'm hoping it will keep the ham fairly tender.   

I shall tell you how it tastes when it's ready.  It's already looking and smelling pretty rocking after 2 hours, so it'll be very nice come dinner time.  

Merry festive season all. SupermarketValueFoodBlog® out.  

EDIT / UPDATE:  My good grief that ham was tasty.  A little salty, but the cloves and seasoning gave it little flavour pops in every bite, and I think the steam method worked well to keep it from drying out.  The cola worked its magic and made it sweet.  If anything, I didn't add enough mustard to keep it traditional enough (!)  Next time I might try a treacle / mustard glaze and finish it under the grill after baking.  But yes.  Happy New Year!  

Spicy Oriental-style veggie stir-fry

Oriental Vegetable stir-fry

I've been super-busy with the run up to the end of the year, so here's an old post I had in the bank from last year, for just such an occasion.  Curry post will follow.  Two in fact...

 Having a fridge clear out recently , I spied a reduced pack of steamable broccoli and cauliflower  It turned out I already had some broccoli spears and cauli cous-cous in the fridge and so...

Starting to think about adding Thai, pepper and soy flavours...

You've seen these mild peppers before.  This is where they were first tried out.  Some char-siu pork on the side...

Remembering I had most of the two ingredients I was about to buy, I went for some small red and yellow peppers instead.  I had some other veg to use up, plus I got a portion of five-spice pork (which you can of course omit)
This is a remarkably simple and fast recipe, but we're going to try making our own Chinese sauce to go with it.

Here's our ingredients for today:

90% reduction for some great onion.

Today's new ingredient - cauliflower "cous-cous", above some tender stem broccoli that have seen better days, but won't be wasted.

 

 Ingredients (per person)

1 handful cauliflower cous-cous, or 1/3 a cauliflower head, de-stalked
1-2 handfuls of tender-stem broccoli with the stalks chopped off
1 bag of stir-fry mix.  Typically this contains:
 - Cabbage (or Chinese leaf if you have it, or kale, or whatever...) , shredded.
 - Beansprouts.
 - Carrots, finely shredded.
 - Red onion.  Red onion is one of the few foods that disagrees with me so I usually add...

One large white onion, finely chopped, as well / instead, to my stir fries.

1 red pepper, or 2 or 3 mild sweet peppers.
1/3* chili pepper (note the original recipe called for 1/2 but I decided this was a liiitle too spicy...)
2 tbsps. oil.  This may seem like a lot but you can drain it off.  Just keep your pan / wok hot.
1 clove chopped garlic

For the sauce 

1 large tbsp hoi sin sauce
1 tsp thai green chilli paste
2 tbsp light soy
2 tbsp dark soy
1/2 tsp chinese 5-spice powder 
1 tsp (approx) grated ginger

Method

Heat the oil as hot as your smoke alarms will allow.  Add the onions, chili and all vegetables first, except the cauliflower (on the first run it burnt a little easily)  Stir fry for 3 minutes, add the garlic and cauliflower, and fry for another 3 minutes, stirring continuously. 

Cauli, broccoli, sweet peppers, stir-fry mix

 Finally add the sauce and let it coat the veg.  Allow to cool and serve.


*munch*

Perhaps not the prettiest or best stir fry ever, but one great way to use up some cauliflower and broccoli.

Yes!  As I said, maybe half a chili AND a tsp of green Thai curry paste was maybe a bit much for this dish (don't worry, I'm doing a curry with Trinidadian scorpion chilies in it soon) but the crunchy veg and thick tasty sauce made this a fast, healthy, cheap supper, full of flavour.  The cauliflower couscous has made me love that so misaligned vegetable again.  Also, some Chinese shiaxing wine, or sherry, would cut through the sauce a little, had I had anything like that.  But hey.  The Chinese five spice pork was added as an afterthought, and was very nice, but to be honest, this dish didn't need it.  You could use mushrooms and they would work as well , or better, for a full veggie option.  

Another winner dinner, cooked in 10 minutes from prep to plate, for under a quid. 

Value meal rescue mission 1 - Chicken Jalfrezi++ / Proper Curry prep / Face The Pain

 Value Jalfreizi /

Chicken 3 ways 3.5/3 - Dopiaza Preparation &

Insane Chilli tasting

Back in the cheap food game, folks...

I had promised to do a chicken dopiaza back last year  So now's the time to prepare, thanks to a lot of hints and ideas I've adapted from this incredible recipe from the Loving Bangladesh Kitchen blog, which you will have adapted for you in the next post.  Meanwhile, today it's preparation and adaptation of a frozen jalfreizi. 

Jalfrezi vs Dopiaza

A  jalfrezi and a dopiaza, are very different, but they both use cardamon, ginger, garlic, onion, tomato, bay leaf, cumin, and whatever other spices you have to hand.  Although as we'll see, a jalfreizi should be a dry curry too...  But this one was reduced from the T.

Behold, supermarket spicy foodgoodness.

The unboxed Tesco Chicken Jalfreizi, about to be heated.

I think this cost 80p.  The sticker wore off in the freezer, but it's around £2 - £2.50 normally.  You get some basmati rice with it and ... well, we'll see how it tastes on its own first.

While the oven is on (saving electricity and heat) I am also going to finish my onions and spice mix for the dopiaza, so all I need to do is add my chicken, any sides ( gobi aloo or spicy rice and ratia spring to mind) then heat, and add the sauce   

As well as the scary part.  Let's talk chilli tasting.


I am a chillihead for sure, but I have limits.  I once went to a chilli festival.  On sale was this Dorset Naga sauce.  It clocks in at about 1 to 2 million times hotter than a bell pepper (rated 1 on the Scoville scale) and still about 10,000 times hotter than the rocket chilli.  So, pretty much intense pain in fruit form.


I don't really remember what happened for about 30 seconds in between sampling a small drop, saying "Wow!  You can really taste the pineapple!...aaaaAAAAGH"  and then finding myself in my seat , tears streaming down my flaming face, begging, "Yoghurt!  Yoghurt!!  Aagh!  Can I borrow a fiver for that Naga sauce?  It's like CS gas, but ...aaagh...with fruity...aaagh...pineapple!"


So caution is the watchword but this is preparation.  You can't cook good value food if you don't know how to improve it.  And to improve it we must experiment to see what works.  Which means tasting.



Below you'll see a sweet pepper, which I used in the chackchouka I made, next to a regular chilli I picked up a bag for for about 30p, which was pretty fiery.  

Common or garden supermarket small bell pepper

Next, I found a massive bag of "rocket chillis" from Gambia, which are less than a penny a gram, and shall be pickeled.  Finally...

The rocket finger chillis on the left are hot.  The Trinidad Scorpions on the right are just evil...

... the last time I was in Dublin, I bought some Trinidadian Scorpion chillis, which, frankly, I am scared of.  But at €1 for around 25-30 of the things, it was only stupid to try and eat them all at once, just not to sample them before ruining a perfectly good dopiaza first! 

Tonight I'll be tasting a ready meal, plus 4 kinds of chilli, to see what will give my dopiaza the right level of heat.  

Method

Chillis
 - I added a little oil to the bottom of a casserole dish to bake and intensify the flavours.

I just looked up the Scoville rating for the scorpion chilli and it rates between 800,000 and 2 million.  Whuh-oh. 

Jalfreizi ready meal

"Remove cardboard sleeve.  Punch holes in film.  Add to a preheated oven" 

I cooked it from frozen for about 45 minutes at 150° instead of the recommended instructions - I think this has given the rice time to reheat properly rather than burn or dry out, but the sauce may have suffered the freezing process...  

Four Chilis in order of heat, small bell pepper, regular, green finger chili and scorpion chili...

First impressions of the jalfreizi au naturel, plus chillis #1 and #3:

*munch*
Yep, the sauce is wet; not very thick, but the rice has come out well.  One of the hazards with trying to cook two different ingredients the same way where they could be better prepapred separaertly, as well as freezing certain types of food. 

But tastewise...

Yum!  Quite fragrant, not overly spicy (yet...)  - the chicken is breast meat and comes in quite large chunks, which makes up for it being pretty poor quality chicken.  Despite the sauce being too runny and too based on tomatoes, there's a nice after kick to this, plus some layering of spices (I swear I could taste the bay leaf and cardamon).  I quite recommend this if you like hot but not insane ready Indian meals.  On its own this is a fine supper for 80p.

Now for chilli number 1 - sweet pepper, baked in a little oil.

As expected, it's almost sugary, and has zero heat.  A nice addition to any meal - would barbeque well, oven roast well, or ... go with anything really. Pickled with salt?  A bit of fish and sea veg?  Roasted peppers - lovely.


Now for the Gambian rocket chilli, also baked in some oil.

Ha-HA!  This hits like a drunk baritone opera singer at a karaoke night.  Not much front of mouth, all chest and back of the throat, loud, and lingers too long!  BUT... I think this chilli is the perfect accompaniment for a *really* hot jalfreizi, if you like your gums to water for a few minutes afterwards.  One of these would *really* fire up that ready meal.  I'm going to call perfect ingredient for jazzing up your supermarket Indian.   

 I *did* make the error of leaving the seeds and pith in, which, if you want control over heat (or not) you should carefully remove with a knife and use hand protection.  But after a slug of cream to let the dairy fat absord the capsaicin, I was fine.

I shall try chillis #2 (the normal T red chilli) and #4 (the "sorry boss, need to go home sick, can't see the computer screen for tears, also best no-one touches me." Trinidad Scorpion tomorrow for lunch with the remaining jalfreizi as leftovers.

Yum yum - not a bad and spicy improvement to a 60p frozen curry

 So far the dopiaza is going to have half a Ghanaian rocket and half a regular T chilli, in addition to the spice blend I prepared and baked with the sauce earlier, but more details follow next time.

Update

I ate the red T-chilli for breakfast (not as hot as I remember but still a good kick) and then...

For lunch I polished off the rest of the jalfreizi, plus... the scorpion chilli.

The first half was lovely, so much so I ate the second half too.  After about twenty seconds I got a nice fruity tang and then... well... it was a good job I remembered to bring yoghurt and cream with me.  Any oil will help absorb capsaicin.  Not the hottest I've ever eaten and to be honest, not a lot of flavour but oh the burn after about 30 seconds...

Thank-you cream, thank-you yoghurt, thank-you Pepto-Bismol® Phew!

I think these bad gals and guys are going to be preserved and turned into a fruity insanity sauce with pineapple and herbs.  Not for the dopiaza.

So there you are - 
1.  Can recommend the T's Hot Jalfreizi if reduced, and especially if you want to kick it up, with a halft of Ghanaian rocket chilli (finger chilli also would work)  Of course pickles, naan, extra sauce can all be added to strecth this.
2.  I'll be sticking mainly to the recipe I linked to in the opening paragraph next week, but using a regular and rocket chilli for heat.
3.  The scorpion chillis deserve their own post and Health and Safety regulation.  I'll deal with them at a later date.