Minced Beef Mild Curry like Gran used to make

[yoshiLunk]

It was yummy and I've been trying to replicate it but not sure if I've quite got it right.

It was in the mid to late 1970's and we used to walk to her place after school on a Wednesday, and the smell as we walked down the corridor towards her flat.. mmmm...

Anyway... anyone got the actual recipe? Ring any bells with you from that era? I'm hoping she got from somewhere and didn't just make it up.

I know it contained mince beef, onions, peas, raisins, curry powder,

I think it had apple sauce, worcestershire sauce

and I've tried adding HP sauce and Branston Pickle

[GetOrfMoiCase]

[yoshiLunk]

Ooh and I seem to remember her calling it "Savoury Mince" - but I'm not sure if that was just to avoid saying 'curry' so we wouldn't turn our noses up

[BrokenBananaTantrum]

what did you have with it?

[GetOrfMoiCase]

I can give you the recipe for my gran's curry.

Cooked chicken or cubes of SPAM.
Homepride curry sauce
Raisins
Bananas

Served with rice which had been on the boil since the start of the Boer war.

[GetOrfMoiCase]

I don't think grans should have been allowed to make curry

[motherinferior]

Thank heavens my grandmother (and grandfather, and mother and so on) were Indian.

[yoshiLunk]

thank you GetOrf, very helpful

[yoshiLunk]

ok I know it's not proper curry, and probably improper use of curry powder - but it was so good,

my own mother couldn't cook a thing so Gran's cooking was always a treat.

[GwendolineMaryLacey]

Come to think of it, my mother made a spag bol that bore no relation to anything that had left Italian shores (no tomatoes, garlic, herbs for a start). But it was delish. I keep asking her to make it for me because it was so nice. It was what I grew up thinking spag bol should be.

[yoshiLunk]

brokenbanana We had plain white rice with it which of course was pushed into a ring around the edge of the plate and the 'curry' neatly in the middle.



I do miss Gran.

[yoshiLunk]

My mum used to make lovely spag bol and ravioli - both by opening the respective tin of Heinz.



I've also just remembered something called tinner dinners

It's a wonder we didn't all have rickets.

[GetOrfMoiCase]

yoshi

My gran's spaghetti bolognese - we didn't discover pasta in Gateways in Ilfracombe until probably 1993. Before then it was about a yard long wrapped in blue paper and classed as exotic and forrin. So her spag bol was minced beef boiled for about an hour in its own scum, dolmio pasta sauce, and spaghetti snapped into 10cm long pieces to fit in the saucepan.

Her best recipe was fish stew. She bought 50p bags of fish oddments from the fishmonger - it was called 'eyes and backs' and was meant to be fed to cats. Gran boiled it in milk and salt and served it with lumpy mashed potato . Still not that keen on fish to this day.

[aquavit]

pmsl at "on the boil since the start of the Boer war"

I hope you get answers to this yoshi because it sounds very like something I used to have which was delicious, but I don't know any special secrets. Reckon you need Aitch to come along, doesn't she have some wicked ways with savoury mince?

[aquavit]

oh inspiration has just hit though, I bet it had OXO in it

it's one of the few ways to add delicious MSG to food still widely available these days

[MadameCastafiore]

We used to have this at school with mashed potato on top - was glorious and would love to be able to make it for the DCs - DH would barf but hey he nows where the kitchen is.

[GetOrfMoiCase]

Actually, I love making curries and your gran basically cooked a keema. lol though at apple sauce and branston.

The worcester sauce isn't so insane as one of the ingredients is tamarind, which features heavily in southern indian cooking.

have a google for keema recipes, and add a slug of brown sauce in addition to the other ingredients.

[GetOrfMoiCase]

Ooh yes Oxo, you probably do remember the taste of MSG.

Another widely available source (don't shoot me) which is DP's guilty pleasure to put on his chips, is some strange powder called Aromat.

I can't stand the stuff but sends DP off into paroxysms of joyful remembrance of 70s food.

[bibbitybobbityhat]

My mums version had a cooking apple cooked in with it.

If I were to try and re-create it now, I would fry an onion (no garlic! oh no, far too exotic), add the mince and brown it, then add medium curry powder and fry that up with the onions and mince for a few minutes, then beef oxo and a sliced up cooking apple and a handful of raisins. Cook for about an hour?

Serve on a bed of rice with sliced banana, cucumber, tomatoes, raisins, dessicated coconut, on one of those round divided up serving plates, to accompany.

[yoshiLunk]

Thank you everyone, I will experiment this weekend, have a tasting session with sisters and report back.

still twitching over the Tinner Dinners flashback, - or was it TinnaDinna ? either way I'm going to be having a little chat with mum.....

[Housemum]

Sounds familiar, but my gran's curry was chicken which was so soft it went into shreds, very mild taste, bright yellow, definitely some sultanas or maybe apple in there. Would love to taste it again - coronation chicken salad is almost there in some ways.

[motherinferior]

Tamarind might figure in some south Indian cooking (although not that heavily, in all honesty) but I've never come across a kheema recipe with it in. Or with raisins in, obviously. Or curry powder, equally obviously.

[piebald]

Oh yuck, my mum always used to put banana with curry

[paulinderwick]

Sorry not to have spotted this before - the recipe that you are thinking of was very common as a beef curry in the 1950s. I have a copy in a GoodHousekeeping book from 1953 which includes a chopped up apple and sultanas - it may not be authentic but it does exist, even though everyone else seemed to think you were mad! If anyone is interested I can post the recipe. I was even tempted to try it myself!!!

[Deathraystare]

I wonder if the savoury mince was actually Batchelors or Vesta from a packet???