One of the first things DonQui did when he got home was to check on the state of his allotment.

Now one of the problems of going away on holiday when you grow your own vegetables is that when you come back you find everything choked with weeds.

This time, however, things seemed in pretty good shape. The beans were still going strong, there were tomatoes nicely ripening along with kale, chard, carrots and onions. And the weeds had not taken over entirely. There were even a second crop of strawberries coming on. Perhaps they thought it was spring again!

So DonQui decided to treat himself to a little homecoming meal of spicy beans and tomatoes from his own produce.

Here is the recipe. You will note that DonQui is not great on measurement as he tends to do things by feel and approximation.

Ingredients
Green beans topped, tailed and cut into small segments. Fine french beans are best but as DonQui had lots of runner beans he used them instead in this case.
Cherry tomatoes cut in half
A couple of spring onions finely sliced.
A handful of super fine soup noodles (optional)
Coconut oil (or you can use other cooking oil)
1 teaspoon cumin seed
Approximately 1 cm of ginger root, peeled and finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon tumeric
1/8-1/2 teaspoon hot chilli powder (depending on your heat tolerance, DonQui likes things fairly hot)
1 teaspoon garam marsala
1 small tin coconut cream (160ml)

Method
Step 1. Boil the beans, 3 minutes. Drain and set aside.
Step 2. Gently fry the onion in the coconut oil until it begins to colour then add cumin seeds, and stir fry for about a minute until the cumin seeds begin to pop. Add the ginger and remaining spices, stir fry for a a few seconds until the spices begin to release their aroma.
Step 3. Add the drained beans, stir fry for a couple of minutes then add the tomato halves and continue to stir fry for a minute or so until they begin to soften but not so long that they fall apart.

Up to this point you can prepare in advance and leave to finish off later.

Step 4. Add the coconut cream, bring to the boil and stir until well mixed. If you are using the noodles then add them to the pan. Then let simmer gently for a couple of minutes with a lid on the pan so that the liquid does not all evaporate. When everything is warmed up then serve. If you do not use the noodles then serve with rice.