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)

Thug Kitchen Party Grub - Bake Ziti

I just bought Thug Kitchen Party Grub this weekend when a friend told me it was only $1.99 on Kindle!! Yus!  Straight away this recipe popped out at me as something I wanted to try - not sure why, it just did!

For me it was reasonably spendy, with artichoke hearts, a whole tub of silken tofu and fresh basil but I realllly wanted to try it.  To counteract the spendyness it does make a lot - for us we got 6 BIG portions out of it (I think the recipe says 8, but we didn't serve it with any sides).

The recipe does use a lot of pans and takes quite a bit of time, but a lot of that time is passive whilst it bakes and it was actually pretty easy to make.  This was including the Blender Marinara (another recipe in this book).

I had a portion the first night and was really underwhelmed by it and found it bland. It maybe needed more salt, which is something I didn't expect as I usually find recipes in American cookbooks to be overly salty.  I think some of this was the fact that the marinara sauce was pretty basic and just tomatoes and a few herbs.  I added way less nooch as it hurts Niall's stomach, so that could have been an issue too.  I was also disappointed that I couldn't tell that there was expensive artichoke hearts in there! 

After being underwhelmed we had some leftovers tonight for dinner and it was much better!  I did add a bit of homemade aquafaba mozzarella to the top of my portion but that's a little bland too so I'm not sure if that was entirely responsible for it being much better.  I think maybe the day sitting meant the flavours melded together more.  However, for the time and cost I don't think the improvement the day after making justified it all.

Final verdict: an ok dish but one I won't bother making again

Final score: 2 out of 5 (a pretty average dish losing half a point for not showing off the artichoke hearts)