Last night I had some chicken to curry, and a couple of jars of Madras curry sauce. I don't have the time to start from scratch, and I always get Madras because both the men I feed like a hot and spicy curry. Usually I put onion, mushrooms and apple with the chicken. But on this occasion I had other ingredients I had to use up. There was an aubergine and some sweet potato.

I cut up the aubergine first to let it sweat while I peeled and chopped a couple of sweet potato and cried over a large onion. There was so much of it all that I decided to make two curries, leaving the chicken one till last and just adding the sauce to it without any other enhancements.

To make my veggie one, I first fried the sliced onions in some vegetable oil in my wok. When they were soft and turning brown, I added the sweet potato, stirring them round for a few minutes, and finally, the aubergine chunks, mixing it all together before stirring in the sauce from one of the jars and a quarter of a jar of water. After about 15 minutes, it was all soft and I mashed it up a bit with a potato masher before tipping it all into a casserole dish and putting it in the oven, leaving the wok free for the chicken curry to cook.

Lo and behold, I had my own brinjal bahjee which I used to love when we could afford to go out to an Indian restaurant. And now I have some in the freezer because I'd made more than enough for one sitting.