The Spice Tailor curry sauces from Anjum Anand - a review

I'm ashamed to say that National Curry Week passed me by last week, without me hearing anything about it, so this week I'm making up for it by cooking three different vegetarian curries using three of the new curry sauces from The Spice Tailor. I regularly cook curries from scratch, so I was surprised to read that a recent survey by The Spice Tailor, found that despite tikka masala being Britain's favourite curry, only 25% of us have ever tried cooking it at home.

Celebrity chef Anjum Anand has develop her own range of sauces which makes cooking a curry at home, faster than ordering one from the take-away! There are seven sauces in the range, most of which come with a sachet of dried spices, a base sauce and a curry sauce. Recipe tips and suggestions for extra ingredients are included, but basically you fry the dried spices (with or without the optional dried chilli) in a drop of vegetable oil, then add your choice of paneer, pulses and/or vegetables (or meat/fish, if you're not vegetarian!), followed by the base sauce. After a couple of minutes, you add the curry sauce and leave to simmer for about 8 minutes.

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I tried out three of the sauces: the Tikka Masala (which I added paneer and mushrooms to), the Punjabi Tomato (with added chickpeas and aubergine) and finally the Spiced Spinach (with added potatoes and green pepper). I pre-cooked all of the vegetables, except the mushrooms, before adding them to the curry sauces, as I knew that they wouldn't cook through in 8 minutes, however paneer, tinned pulses and meat substitutes such as Quorn would all work well and cook in the stated time if you were in a hurry. I added the whole chilli to all of my curries and fished it out before serving...we're all used to eating medium curries and I would say, even with the added chilli, all of the curries were on the milder side of medium. Some of the other whole spices needed removing before serving too, such as the whole cardamom pods and the curry leaf. You could, of course, leave them in and play 'find the spices' at the dinner table with the family!

Each of the curries looked and tasted very different from each other and the smell in my house was amazing! We all like the flavour of the Punjabi Tomato curry best, followed by the Tikka Masala. A word of warning though...the Tikka Masala didn't taste anything like a British restaurant tikka massala; it tasted strongly of cardamom and wasn't sweet and creamy. Not a criticism, as it tasted very aromatic, just not how I expected it to taste! The Spiced Spinach curry was our least favourite as it tasted a little bitter and the spinach flavour dominated the dish. I would have preferred to add fresh spinach instead. I found the sauces very simple to use, and good value for money. Although each sauce was supposed to serve two, I found that by adding extra vegetables and pulses, each one made a curry big enough to feed my family of four.

If you want more tips on cooking curries at home, tune in to Cookalong with Anjum on ‘Spice Nights’, when Anjum will be showing how to cook simple and delicious Indian dishes in just 15 minutes, using some cheats and lots of scratch cooking.  Spice Nights airs weekly on Tuesday evenings at 7.30 pm from now until 6th November. Register to watch at www.thespicetailor.com.

The Spice Tailor range is now available to buy online at www.thespicetailor.com and in Waitrose stores.

Integrity Statement
I received 3 Spice Tailor curry sauces to review and 3 to give away on my blog. I did not receive payment, and the views expressed are genuinely those of myself and my family. Pack images courtesy of The Spice Tailor.

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