Curry in a hurry

Easy peasy meals at UberChef.

The stall, run by Ian Bacon, offers a wide range of herbs and spices, as well as ‘Easy Peasy’ cooking packs, rubs and marinades, curry pastes and flavoured nuts.

“It’s a slightly different offering for the market,” explained Ian. “We trialled it just before Christmas at the Christmas market.

“What we launched there was the Easy Peasy cooking pack – the takeaway you cook at home,” he added. “Our most popular is the Jamaican curried goat.”

The cooking packs, which offer some of the components for a meal for four people cost £4.50.

Jars of spices at UberChef.

The Jamaican curried goat pack, for example, includes fresh chopped garlic and ginger, Scotch bonnet chillies, curry powder, thyme, curry leaves, beef stock concentrate, chopped tomatoes, basmati rice and cooking instructions.

At home, you just need to add vegetable oil, goat shoulder, an onion, a 400g can of kidney beans and a handful of chopped coriander.

Ian sources as many of the ingredients for the pack as he can from the market. And he points customers in the direction of local stalls for vegetables and fish, and to a town centre butcher, which has started selling goat, for the meat.

Ian was inspired to start selling herbs and spices by the spice markets in Morocco.

“We started with the herbs and spices as there was nowhere on the market you could buy them,” said Ian.

“We believe we have got a wider range than supermarkets and that we’re cheaper. People can buy as much as they want.”

Ian has recently employed chef Dayrell Leeks, who has devised some rubs and marinades for the stall.

These include Thai, harissa and curry blends, which all come with instructions on how to cook with them.

“The meat rub, chicken rub, and fish rub seem to be popular,” said Ian.

Ian and Dayrell also make up curry pastes on the stall, using some of the dried spices.

“We mix them up ourselves and put fresh ingredients in as well,” he added.

The pastes are available for all tastes – “from mild to burning hot!”.

And they launched some spiced nuts three weeks ago, which are already proving popular. “We’ve had our first commercial order, which is all going to Mannings pub,” explained Ian. “They tried the nuts last week and they’re going to sell them in the pub.”

The snacks on offer include sweet chilli peanuts and cashews, vindaloo peanuts and cashews and lime chilli peanuts.

From this weekend, you can ‘click and collect’ Uberchef cooking packs, curry pastes, flavoured nuts and Mumbai Mix on Youhopp.

“The whole concept behind Youhopp is to bring people into the town centre,” said Ian.

Simply go to yoohopp.co.uk, search for ‘Uberchef’ and place your order at least 24 hours in advance.

Then collect your order from the Uberchef stall, which is on Ipswich market, outside Barclays, on Fridays and Saturdays between 10am and 4pm.