Don't Sweat the Aubergine

wheat flour to thicken the liquid – that really would give the curry an inauthentic quality. If you want a thickener, and can find chickpea flour (besan flour), try that. At the end of cooking, reduce the liquid if you want – you might need to concentrate the flavour. But don’t skim off the fat. Count the calories elsewhere; this is too flavourful to waste.
    For a Thai-style curry, use 2 tbsp of a paste consisting of chopped lemon grass, green chillies, shallots, lime leaves (if you can find them; or use some lime zest), coriander leaves and stems, garlic, and ginger or galangal (the latter, again not easy to find, is preferable).
    This is a fresh-tasting mixture that benefits from shorter cooking. One possibility: fry the paste for a minute, add cubed chicken breast, and pour over a tin of coconut milk, or a carton of coconut cream. Add a little salt. Simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally; the chicken may be cooked through in 10 minutes. If the liquid is too thin, boil it hard (with the chicken removed) to reduce it, and return the chicken to warm through again. Add coriander leaves at the end.
    Note: use asafoetida powder sparingly. Even 1/6 tsp will exert an influence, both earthy and zesty, on your dish. Its pungent odour will linger, too. I love it.
Mince
    Among the most unrealistic of all recipe book instructions are the ones that tell you to fry some onions, then add mince to the pan and brown it. At this medium temperature, water gushes out of beef, pork or lamb mince, but does not vaporize; it floods the pan, stewing rather than frying the meat. If you turn up the heat to evaporate the liquid and hasten the browning reactions, you’ll find that, once the mince and onions start to fry, they catch and burn.
    There are three techniques that will work. The first is to evaporate the liquid at high heat, and then to turn the dial right down, allowing the mince to brown gradually. The second is to keep the heat low throughout, waiting patiently for evaporation and the browning reactions to take place – the process takes 45 to 50 minutes, in my experience. The third is to form the mince into patties, oil them lightly, and sear them as you would the cubes of meat in a stew ( see here ). You are browning only the portion of meat on the surfaces of the patties, of course. When you incorporate them in the dish, you break them up with a wooden spoon.
    Even the best pre-prepared mince will be nowhere near as good as mince the butcher prepares for you. Ask for coarsely ground chuck or stewing steak, or shoulder of lamb, or belly pork. Don’t stew lean mince; it’s no more suitable for long cooking than is fillet or sirloin steak. Use it for hamburgers.
    The meat in a ragu alla Bolognese (Bolognese sauce) is usually beef, or a mixture of beef and pork, and is not browned, according to several authorities, Anna del Conte among them. The meat in a shepherd’s pie is lamb; make it with beef, or beef and pork, and you’ve got a cottage pie.
    I use fresh or tinned tomatoes and/or tomato paste in a ragu, but prefer the sweetness of ketchup in a shepherd’s pie, offsetting it with the rich saltiness of Worcester or soy sauce.
RAGU ALLA BOLOGNESE
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HOW TO MAKE IT
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    For 4
    Olive oil
    100g pancetta or streaky bacon, preferably unsmoked, finely chopped
    1 onion, chopped
    1 celery stick, chopped
    2 garlic cloves, chopped
    350g beef mince, or mix of beef and pork mince
    100ml white or red wine
    1/2 400g tin of tomatoes, or 4 fresh ones, skinned and chopped
    1 dstsp tomato paste
    Chicken stock
    Salt
    Put a little oil (about 1 dstsp) in a heavy saucepan or casserole, and fry the bacon gently; it will release its own fat. After about 5 minutes, add the onion, celery and garlic; you probably won’t need any more oil. Allow them to soften and go golden for 10 minutes or so, stirring regularly. Turn the heat right down, and add the mince, breaking it up with a wooden spoon. When it has separated (as I say above, you don’t need to brown it), pour in the wine; give the alcohol time to simmer and reduce a little before adding the tomatoes and tomato paste, with enough stock to come up to the surface of the meat. Season, and bring the sauce very slowly to a simmer, uncovered, on the hob. Continue to simmer, at the lowest heat possible (with a heat disperser under the pot if necessary) and stirring from time to time, for about 2 hours, until the sauce has reduced and the meat is tender.
    You could include 100ml double