Orange-pepper beef with cashews

This lovely recipe has its origins in southern India – Madras to be precise. My husband (who’s originally from that region) and I have made our own tweaks and modifications to the dish in the time we’ve been making it. It’s traditionally made with lamb, but beef also works well. Also you can either make it with coconut milk or orange juice, but here we use both.

We chose a lean cut of beef (we used topside, cut it into large cubes and pre-cooked it in a pressure cooker for around 30 minutes to tenderise). There’s also no reason why you can’t make this in your slow cooker (crockpot, for my US readers), using a cheaper cut of meat like brisket, and come home to a lovely, warming meal in the evening.

Lush red beetroot pachadi

Aside from being a beautiful, vibrant shade of red, this beetroot dish from Kerala, south India, is so easy to make. Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of the ingredients – it’s full of flavour and so creamy and moreish that I could probably polish off the whole lot in one go.

A pachadi is a vegetable side dish cooked with coconut or yoghurt and topped with tempered spices (usually chilli, mustards seeds, curry leaves and ginger). However, there’s no reason why this can’t be a light, healthy veggie lunch in itself.

You can make all kinds of pachadi (carrot or pineapple, for example) but here the combination of the sweet beetroot with the yoghurt and spice just creates something quite special. Looks impressive as a side serving at a dinner party too.