Tomato and Spinach curry with hard boiled eggs

Drum roll, drum roll....

'This', I declared, 'is my new favourite dish', as we all ate dinner together one evening.

Silence. And then contemplation.

'Mine is that sausage and lentil thing' - #1 teenage son.
'You know mine, Mum - mushroom soup AND you haven't made it for ages' - #2 teenage son.
'Mine's cheesy jacket potatoes but with tuna added' - Hella.

Let's be honest, my favourite dinner changes all the time - every time I cook something new that goes really well, in fact. Although having said that, my fondness for Crispy Duck Pancakes is a constant - you know, the DIY kind with the teeny tiny strips of cucumber + spring onions + hoisin sauce.

But anyway, back to the main event of today ... this Tomato and Spinach Curry with hard-boiled eggs. Apologies for the less than catchy name - it was a tricky one. 'Egg curry' sounds a bit yuck and leaving out any reference to the eggs wasn't right either. I think we'll just have to go with it - although all suggestions gratefully received ... It's adapted from a recipe by the New Zealand chef, Karen Martini, in her book, Cooking at Home - a Christmas gift received when we were visiting Australia a few years ago.

The first time I made this dish, I was taken aback by what seemed like a vast volume of spices - not so much the range but the sheer quantity that the recipe called for. But here's the thing - TRUST THE RECIPE. There's a real depth to the flavour in this curry and much of it comes from the bulk of spices. And it's deeply fragrant rather than deeply hot. Oh and don't be afraid of the sugar in the sauce recipe, it does need a bit of sweetness (although I've taken the quantity down a lot from the original recipe).

So where to start on the things I like about this Tomato and Spinach Curry? -

• It tastes delicious - Rich and intensely favoured without being too overwhelming.
• It's super healthy - Especially served with some whole grains.
• It's a store cupboard saviour - You probably have most of the ingredients already so it's a perfect dish to rustle up when the fridge AND the freezer AND the cupboards are all looking a bit bare.
• It's sensational value for money.
• Great for preparing ahead of time - Boil the eggs, make the base, then bring it all together when you're ready to eat.
• Leftovers warm up nicely for lunch the next day.
• It's a handy vegetarian dish to have in your repertoire - but be sure to choose vegetable stock and not chicken stock.

And as my love for this dish was still in the honeymoon period a couple of weeks later when I visited Mum to celebrate her 70th birthday, I made this Tomato and Spinach Curry the centrepiece for our family birthday dinner.

The rest of the birthday spread looked like this -

• Roasted Curried Cauliflower Salad
• A simple cucumber raita and a small Indian styled salad
• Wholegrain rice cooked in vegetable stock + a tin each of chickpeas and sweetcorn stirred through it.
• My Dad's homemade Naan bread - he's a big fan of baking bread but this was his first venture into Naan .... yum. Incidentally, the crowd-pleasers were the ones that he sprinkled with a touch of sugar before grilling - think Peshwari.
• And for a sweet finale, we embraced zesty with this Lemon Layer Cake. There were candles too of course ... four times in fact - once for the birthday girl and three more times for each of her little grandchildren to have a go.

And you know, keeping it meat-free, really does keep the cost down - we fed 8 adults in style for £30 with plenty of leftovers for lunch the next day. Result.

So will you be giving this Tomato and Spinach Curry a try? It could also be your new favourite dinner ... Oh and by the way, this may not have been everybody's ALL TIME FAVOURITE dinner, but there were clean plates all around. I'll take that as a thumbs up.

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