Last night's dinner

I got home from work last night with a head ache that I'd had all day and though HELL NO I am not cooking! SO we ordered a takeaway from the new Keralan/Goan takeaway that recently opened in Chatham - Coco Diner. 45 minutes later an intriguing smelling bag came through the front door ~

As a main course we ordered Kozhi Ishtew - tender chicken breast with vegetables in a coconut broth ... could have been hotter - and Attu Thakali Kari - slow cooked lamb with fennel and turmeric which was probably (along with the rice - how did it taste so good??) the star dish. The lamb was moist & tender and even with the over-laying flavour of the smoky spices and turmeric tasted of lamb.

Excitingly, the Coco Diner serves Dosa - paper thin rice or semolina pancakes sandwiched around a spicy potato filling, so we had one of those ... which came with 3 little pots of sauce - a spicy ketchupy mixture, a fermented prawn paste and something that looked like taramasalata kept 3 weeks too long. To round off the bread selection we also asked for a roti and a poori and 2 side dishes some batat keerai soung aka potato and spinach and some of the best raitha I've tasted in a long time.

Well ... what do I say? I eat a lot of northern Indian food, have my own masala dabba and always cook curries from scratch - thanks to cookery lessons from Shisho and Harpreet - this was unlike any curry I'd ever tasted. There were delicious flavours - the fennel with the spiced smoky lamb was genius BUT where was the heat and intensity? Where was the creaminess that coconut should impart? And finally the crispness was missing from the spiced, battered aubergine and king prawns we ordered to start. So, whilst I was incredibly glad that someone else did the cooking I don't think I shall be calling on the Coco Diner again anytime soon.

p.s. my saag aloo is better than theirs!!