The most useful curry recipe ever

According to Google, one of the top ten most searched-for recipes in the UK last year was Indian, something called a Daag.

A browse through curry queenCamelliaPanjabi’s book 50 Great Curries of India, which has sold more than a million copies, revealed that all those searches were on to something.

“What many Indian working women do nowadays is to make fried onion, ginger, garlic, tomato and spice masala mixture (daag) to keep in the fridge for up to two weeks, or longer in the freezer,” she writes.

“Whenever they want a curry they heat a few spoonfuls of it with some oil, add some meat, chicken, fish or vegetables… and with no further effort they have a curry.”

According to Maunika, a mumbai born cook, a slender 37-year-old with a film-star smile and hair that Cheryl Fernandez-Versini would trade a tattoo for, there’s a simple reason that labour-intensive recipes are so common in Indian cuisine.

“Even middle-class Indian households will often have help in the kitchen, and recipes reflect that,” she told me as we sliced onions in her neat Newcastle kitchen.

“So when I was growing up, my mother would cook, but the preparation, the making of pastes and chopping of vegetables, would have been done for her.”

Maunika has evolved a repertoire that doesn’t demand staff or hours in the kitchen.

Her soon-to-be-published book, Indian Kitchen, is full of ideas for making Indian cooking easier, such as puréeing ginger in bulk and freezing it in ice cube trays.

Another top tip is to freeze bags of fresh spinach. “It’s much better than the ready frozen stuff, and instead of chopping it you can just squeeze the bag to crush the frozen leaves.”

“Daag,” Maunika explained as we sipped mugs of chai(spiced, milky Indian tea) and waited for the onions to fry to a deep brown, not a step that can be hurried, “is essentially a brown onion masala.

"Masala can mean dry spice mixtures and sauces, and here means a spice paste.”

We added spice and tomatoes to the meltingly soft onions and cooked them down to a tawny, savoury-smelling squelch, before adding chicken legs to braise in the thick gunk.

This, Maunika explained, is a technique originated by the Sindhi community from the area that is now Pakistan, many of whom migrated to India after partition.

They are famed for the Seyal cuisine, which involves slow cooking without adding water, so “the flavours are stronger and you get a thicker masala [sauce]”, explained Maunika. “It’s a practical measure. In hot weather, with no refrigerator, food cooked like this would keep a bit longer.”

Maunika served up the curry, remarking: “It’s not such a bad thing if it sticks a little, that’s what lends the caramelly brown flavour.”