CURRY FAVOUR

 with my father’s mother, my , in the Cape Malay Quarter in Cape Town. It was my introduction to an authentic Cape Malay lamb curry. It required slow cooking – as most of the vintage Cape Malay dishes do – and was a test of my resolve as an impatient and petulant teenager. My would encourage me to cook this curry a few times under her watchful eye, before I could move on to my next curry. A Cape Malay lamb curry calls for tender pieces of lamb cooked in a velvety sauce infused with aromatics. The potatoes are meant to be firm on the outside but utterly fluffy on the inside. A dash of sugar is added at the end, the perfect antidote to complement the sharpness of the tomato gravy. By the time the curry is served, the enthusiastic oohs and aahs at the table are enough to make any rookie cook feel like a master chef! Flaky and crispy rotis are passed around and then dunked into the velvety curry sauce. Cutlery is banished at this stage – the temptation to break the flatbread with your hands and squish a potato or two engulfed by flaky roti sheets feels incredibly natural. Even at that young age I knew that nothing gave