My house mate Laura says she can’t cook (this is not true, I’ve seen her make lots of lovely things but anyway…), but she can play piano.

I definitely can’t play piano, but I can cook, or at least I can manage to put together a decent meal without setting fire to things or poisoning people. We decided to try and sort out this unbalance of skills by swapping cooking lessons for piano lessons. Woopeeee!

We had our first lesson a few months ago. We made a combination of about 8 different dishes to make a middle eastern style banquet, tabouleh, tzatziki, hummous, fateh, grilled halloumi and a few other things. It was complete chaos. The food turned out lovely, however the kitchen was a big muddle of plates, peelings, pans, spoons, stuff everywhere and a slightly confused, manic Laura and Leanne in the middle trying to pull everything together before our 6 guests arrived. Oops.

I was told to rein it in a little for the next one, “Good idea” I said.

“Something simple like Curry” Laura suggested.

“Cool! We’ll make vegetable samosas, two curries, pilau rice, a side dish and these lovely little…”

“Calm down!”

Eventually Laura managed to convince me to keep it simple and we made a lovely sweet potato, butter bean and coconut curry and some onion bhajis. The onion bhajis were ace! They were dead simple to make too and cost pennies. Laura now wants to start an onion bhaji business.

Here’s the recipe:

• 2 level cups gram flour
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 2 tbsp fresh chopped coriander leaves
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp chilli powder
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 2 medium onions, finely sliced – half moon

1. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. Add 1/4 pint of water to make a thick batter. Leave to stand for 5 mins.
2. Pour oil into wok or deep fryer, enough so it will pretty much cover a bhaji when you put it in. Heat it until very hot. You can test the oil is hot enough by dropping one piece of the coated onion mix if it sizzles rapidly it is ready.
3. Take one tablespoon of the mix and drop in carefully, put a couple more the same in, however many will fit in whatever you are cooking them in without touching too much.
4. Fry for about 5 mins until crisp and golden brown, turning over half way through.
5. Scoop out and drain on kitchen paper.
6. Check they are ready by cutting one in half, if they are not cooked properly the batter will still be runny inside, if it is you can just throw it back in and cook for another minute or so.

I love the way they look like crazy little aliens. They are so much nicer fresh from the pan than bought from a shop.

So Laura can now make onion bhajis and I can read basic notes, know the different lengths of notes and where they are on the piano. Expect a performance in a concert hall near you soon.