There is good news to report! After having a conversation with Rosemary, author of Cooking in Sens, about beautiful skillets, my dad, a consummate charity shop ferret, received instructions to find me one. Not only did the ol’ chap deliver, he delivered in style – the skillet you can see below is not only in my eyes beautiful, it is made by AGA. Such a pan would normally set one back at least £60; this pan set us back £5 and is in jolly fine fettle. It appears that one may find it rather difficult to extoll the virtues of perseverance in charity shopping too much.

Frugal has now returned from his excursion to the wonderful Aylesbury – goodies have been purchased. You see, Aylesbury is a rather more ethnically diverse area of the world than is west Wales. As such, the supermarkets tend to stock all manner of obscure, though delightful, spices. Black mustard seeds, for instance, have proved rather tricky to find here in Aberystwyth, but they were quickly stumbled across in the back-end of Buckinghamshire. Naturally, both recent acquisitions simply had to be made use of, something this recipe does rather well. The spice mix for this curried chicken comes, roughly speaking, from a simply wonderful Indian recipe book penned by Laxmi Khurana. However, the recipe itself was not followed; it originally contained potato, no fresh tomatoes and occupied a place in the world which does not usually permit use of the humble onion. In my, admittedly humble, opinion this recipe and its colours really shows off the virtues of a good, cast iron, skillet – so, please enjoy!

Gujarati Curried Chicken

Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 200g chicken, cooked or uncooked

• 1 onion, finely sliced

• ½ tsp whole cumin seeds

• 1 tsp black mustard seeds

• ½ tsp ground turmeric

• ½ tsp ground cumin

• ½ tsp ground coriander

• 60 – 100ml water

• 2 tsp tomato puree

• 1 fresh chilli, sliced

• 10-12 cherry tomatoes, halved

• A handful of fresh coriander

• A spoonful of natural yoghurt

Method:

1. Begin by toasting the whole cumin and mustard seeds in a good glug of cooking oil. Cook these until they start to pop, before adding the rest of the spices. After 2 minutes add the onion and cook for a further 5 minutes. Add the puree and water, stir to make a sauce before adding the chicken – cook until the chicken is hot through. Some water may be needed before serving. Scatter over the tomatoes, chilli, coriander and yoghurt. Serve with rice or naan.

Cost: We used the chicken from a previous meal, so in some sense its price was factored in elsewhere. Anyway, if one takes each and every ingredient into account, this quick and easy curry should cost one no more than around £1.60.