It’s nearly a year now since I have (mostly) given up cow’s milk. I can cope with small amounts now and again, but any attempt to have cow’s milk products on a regular basis makes me uncomfortable and isn’t worth it. I am fine with goat’s milk on cereal and in tea; when I cook at home I use goat’s milk and butter, and Pete is fine with that. It’s hard to taste any difference in cooked foods, anyway.

One of the few things we have struggled with is finding a decent curry sauce that is free from cow’s milk. They’re either too fiery or completely insipid and leave a lot to be desired. But that has now changed, after a spontaneous visit to a local farm shop uncovered the range of curry sauces and chutneys (achars) from Ghurka Fine Foods.

For our first encounter I choose the mildest of the sauces on offer – the Masu cooking sauce has a heat rating of 1 (out of 5) and of itself is vegan although they recommend using it with red meat. We happened to have some lamb mince in the fridge, so today we cooked that up with the sauce, two onions and plenty of peas (Pete loves peas in curry!).

The result was delicious. Although there is not a hint of heat in the sauce, it still has plenty of flavour. We both loved it, without reservation, and would happily buy it again. Our local stockist had at least one other flavour on offer (and several chutneys), which was a heat rating of 3, and we’re confident enough of the quality of the range to give that one a go next time as well. And we’ll be keeping an eye out for the Ghurka Fine Foods range on supermarket shelves from now on.