18th March 2026

Today was a little bit of a fridge raid as I had not been to the shops or ordered food.  I made Khubani soya keema from Takari by Rohit Ghai.

I have had this book since it was book of the month at the cookbook club in March 22 and yet have never cooked from it, despite tagging a few things.  I have so many Indian cookery books, many of which have the same recipes that I often forget which books I have and have not cooked from. I was going through my book shelf the other day and picked it up and that is when I realised I had not cooked from it. 

Keema is something we often make and we do usually use veggie mince anyway so I thought this would be a good comparison. Plus I had everything (except the cream and roll) and didn’t fancy being in the kitchen too long so this fit the bill in many ways.

I followed the recipe which was really easy and found that my tomato base did need the addition of liquid as it did start to stick, I added some stock I had rather than water just because I like the umami hit a good stock can bring and mine needed about 5 tablespoons to stop it sticking. There are a lot of spices so it initially tasted very harsh but once the mince went in it got better. 

The portion size was very generous and the apricots were a nice addition if you are happy for fruit in savoury (I am).   I added a spoonful of mango chutney because it just felt it needed a little balancing and I think if I had cream and maybe a squeeze of lemon it would have been perfect. 

We served this on hot buttered toast as I did not have rolls and it was nice and filling with plenty of leftovers.