AS the chilly nights draw in there are few dishes more comforting than a rich and spicy curry.

But for many people the long list of ingredients is enough to put them off cooking Indian food.

People always worry that cooking a curry must involve shopping at specialist markets, and then pouring over a cookery book for days.

But the alternative of buying a sauce in a jar is cheating, isn’t it? These days, cooking dishes from scratch is not only trendy, but a matter of pride.

If it’s not fresh from the farmers’ market or picked from your carefully nurtured garden, amateur chefs can feel that they’re letting the side down.

But visiting Munish Manocha’s workshop at food manufacturer Premier Foods makes you realise how wrong your assumptions can be.

Munish is one of the creative brains behind Sharwoods cooking sauces.

He regularly travels across India to discover and source new spices for the UK range.

Interstingly, Munish says that more than 80 per cent of curry houses in the country are run by Bangladeshi chefs, whose cuisine is very different to that in India.

“For a start, dishes like balti don’t exist in India,” he says. “It literally translates as ‘bucket’ – commonly associated with toilets. You’d get some funny looks if you ordered a balti in India,” he smiles wryly.

Similarly, chicken tikka massala literally translates as chicken off the bone, in a gravy.

“When we created the Sharwoods sauce for tikka massala, we knew we couldn’t look to India for inspiration,” he says. “We went off to its real birthplace – the curry houses of Birmingham.”

RECIPE: Tomato and Cumin Navrattan Biryani

Navrattan means nine jewels.

The biryani uses a total of nine different vegetables, nuts and dried fruits.

Ingredients

50g green beans cut in half and blanched
50g carrots cut into 15mm cubes and blanched
50g cauliflower cut into florets and blanched
20g frozen garden peas
1 potato boiled and quartered
50g paneer cheese cut into 15mm cubes and fried until golden
15-20 unsalted cashew nuts
10-15 raisins/sultanas
A few toasted flaked almonds
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 Jar Sharwood’s Tomato and Cumin Biryani 2 step sauce
150g basmati rice
150ml water

Method

Heat oil in a non-stick pan and add all the ingredients except the toasted flaked almonds.

Add the spice blend from the topper and mix gently.

Pour in the jar of sauce and mix again, making sure the vegetables don’t break up.

Sprinkle the rice on top, followed by the water.

Make sure all the rice grains are immersed in the water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to minimum, cover the pan and simmer for 20 minutes without disturbing the dish.

Remove from heat after 20 minutes and rest the pan covered for 10 minutes.

Mix the dish gently in the pan and remove to a serving bowl.

Sprinkle the toasted flaked almonds on top as garnish and serve hot with yogurt.