WHAT’S COOKING: ‘Found’ chicken and vegetable curry

Putting a curry together using random ingredients that happen to be to hand can make it more interesting. I found myself with some sweetly alluring Italian tomatoes and, soon, a curry was born.

Costoluto Genovese tomatoes, anyone? A pair of these was in my basket when I left Babylonstoren – the Franschhoek valley farm – on Thursday after a day of wandering around their magnificent garden, along with sundry other fruit and vegetables.

The “found” items that fell into my lap at Babylonstoren last Thursday – it’s a thing that happens there, where all sorts of fruit and vegetables are placed here and there for visitors to help themselves to – were pretty ordinary things. Like the two carrots that were as fresh as a new dawn. Apart from those tomatoes.

There was a pak choi plant, tempting but destined for another dish, not this curry. A few radishes. And those two exquisite yellow heirloom tomatoes. Yellow, but on their way to orange, ultimately red. Curvaceous, pleated, full of mysterious nooks, or were they crannies? There was a solitary clementine as well, but that was devoured as a snack shortly before writing this.

The tomatoes would find their way into a curry, as would those superb carrots. Never was a carrot finer or sweeter.

Their website informed me that they were Costoluto Genovese tomatoes of Italian origin. It was too late to change my plans and use them in a pasta sauce or on a pizza, as they had already gone into this curry the previous evening.

But that’s no problem, as they were sweet and very juicy, consequently perfect for a curry. And it was nice to use fresh tomatoes in a curry for a change; I usually use a can of chopped Italian tomatoes (yes, Italian, they tend to be sweeter than some canned options).

For the rest, I employed my usual array of spices that I keep in little jars in a cupboard out of the light, to lengthen their shelf life. The only fresh spices I used were garlic, ginger and turmeric – that little packet of fresh turmeric root I bought a couple of weeks ago is still rewarding me. And it gave this chicken curry a superb pop of flavour. You have to find, and use, fresh turmeric if you haven’t yet.

You’re not expected to trek to Babylonstoren to try to source Costoluto Genovese tomatoes, so just use what you have, or, yes, a can of chopped, peeled tomatoes.

Chopped fresh Costoluto Genovese heirloom tomatoes OR a can of chopped, peeled tomatoes

Pour a splash of cooking oil into a heavy pot and add all the hard spices – the seeds, cinnamon quill and star anise. Put the pot on a low heat and leave it until you hear th