Halloween curry night

We had some friends over on Saturday for curry. I carved a pumpkin, as it was Halloween, but I didn't use the flesh for curry. I've frozen it to use for something else.

The curries were good but I didn't manage to get photographs in time. I will include some recipes anyway and you'll have to imagine what they may have looked like before they were half eaten! Clockwise from top right: Shakeel's amazing yellow split pea dhal; aloo saag; Maddhur Jaffrey's south Indian cabbage; rice with peas, ginger and cinnamon; and seitan vindaloo in the middle.

The star of the show was the seitan vindaloo. Not only does it sound mean but it tasted wicked too. I adapted it from this recipe. I subbed seitan instead of meat and left out the fennel because I didn't have any. I halved the amount of garlic and doubled the number of chillies.

The photo below shows the rice with a piece of Maddhur Jaffrey's mung bean pancakes. These pancakes are fab. The texture is chewy, almost like fried egg and they're really tasty. I'll include the recipe here because it's already on the internet elsewhere. It's from Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian Cookbook which is a really lovely book full of brilliant stuff.

Maddhur Jaffrey's mung bean pancakes

1 cup mung beans

1/2 tsp cayenne

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp whole cumin seeds

2 spring onions, finely chopped

1 medium tomato, chopped

2 tbsp chopped fresh coriander

1/2 cup water, plus soaking water

Soak the mung beans overnight. Drain and rinse.

Blend all the ingredients except the spring onions, tomato and coriander in a blender until smooth.

Stir in spring onions, tomato and coriander.

Add a little oil to a large, lidded frying pan and place over a medium heat. When hot, pour about 1/3 cup of the batter into pan. Spread out with a spoon to form a pancake. Put the lid on the pan and let it cook for a couple of minutes antil the top seems cooked. Turn the pancake over (the underside should be a reddish colour) and cook the other side for a minute of so.

The rice recipe is one of my favourite ways to cook rice. If you look at the link, it says it serves 4 but actually it's more like 6-8. I use oil instead of butter or ghee.

For afters we had blueberry cheesecake which is my sister's recipe and is just the most amazing thing ever. I love it to bits and whenever I make it I want to make it again straight away!

My sister's most amazing cheesecake

For the base:

10 digestive biscuits

1 tbsp margarine, melted

For the middle:

1 tub Tofutti cream cheese (original, not garlic, duh)

1/2 cup soya milk

1/2 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp maple syrup

1 tsp vanilla essense

For the topping:

blueberry jam

blueberries

Crush the biscuits, mix with the melted margarine and press into a loose bottomed cake tin. Blend all the ingredients for the middle and pour over the base. Bake at 170c (~350F) for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and cool well before covering in jam and blueberries. Chill before serving.

I sometimes double the amount of the filling to make a lovely deep cheesecake but I forgot this time. Either way this cheesecake is still one of my favourite things in the wholewideworld.