Thug Kitchen Party Grub - Curry Hand Pies with Cilantro-Mint Sauce

This was another dish that sprang out at me when first reading this cookbook - I love Indian flavours and I love pies....so what's not to love, right?

I'm not really sure what I had expected in my mind, but only after I had made them did I realise they're basically baked samosas!  Obvious really but I just hadn't twigged.  D'oh!

Well, I cocked up on a couple of things - firstly, I ran out of carrots, but that's not really a big deal (but they would have been nice in there).  Secondly, I accidentally cooked my yellow split peas until they were a complete mush - although that ended up working well in this recipe, I think they were not supposed to be like that based on the picture in the book.

I enjoyed the flavour, but did find them to be a little bland....next time I'd probably double all the spices, as they are only in the recipe in small amounts (e.g. 1/4 teaspoon for the whole recipe!).

What I really liked was the dough - easy to make and very easy to work with.  But again, I found probably not enough curry powder as they didn't really taste curry-ish.

I ended up making a few larger pies than the 16 small pies the recipe calls for, as we were just having them for dinner.  I made a half recipe and made 4 larger pies, so I can easily see how the whole recipe would make 16 small hand pies.

As mentioned in the book, I did find it a bit difficult to tell when they were done because of the yellow colour of the dough (due to the curry powder), and just waited until the edges were obvioulsy browned - and I probably had over cooked them slightly.

Soi what did we make of the pies - I enjoyed them and would probably make them again.  They didn't wow me, but they were good.  Niall seemed to enjoy them too.

The sauce however, not a fan!  It tasted really bitter and raw (which I guess it is) but not in a nice way.  I definitely wouldn't make the sauce again.

Final verdict: a good pie with great dough, but terrible sauce.
Final score: 2 out of 5 (pies were generally ok, but bland and definitely losing points for the sauce)