I am a bit of a lightweight when it comes to spicy food, the slightest nip and I am fanning my hands about my face trying to cool my mouth down (does that even work? I doubt it) and exclaiming how spicy the food is. Everyone else tends to look at me in dismay as they have detected approximately zero spice from what ever I have been eating. A lot of my friends and family like to eat indian food both at a restaurant or getting a takeaway, would be a bit boring of me just to get typical "english" food that is sometimes on the menu, so years ago I was introduced to chicken korma, an indian restaurant staple that is usually completely non-spicy, just what is needed for a wuss like me, and it has become one of my favourite ever dishes :)

Chicken kormas vary from restaurant to restaurant, some can be slightly nippy (yeah wuss alert again) but I always have riata with them (a yoghurty cucumber dip) which cools it right down. The korma sauce is usually creamy and coconutty and can sometimes have nuts or fruit in it (one of the best kormas I ever had had banana in it, sounds weird but was lovely). I have to say there is nothing like a korma from an indian restaurant, I have cooked my own from jars of sauce, my mums has cooked some and I have tried a massive variety of ready meal kormas but they are never as good as the real thing, don't get me wrong they are still very tasty, but nothing can beat that indian restaurant korma.

My latest korma tryout has been a chilled korma ready meal made by curry leaf (never heard of it before to be honest) which I got in tescos. I was looking through the chilled ready meal section and spotted tescos own chicken korma with rice and next to it was the curry leaf version a whole 61p cheaper (tescos own chicken korma and rice is currently £2 and curry leaf is £1.39) being a cheapscate and having never tried it before I decided to give it a go.

The curry leaf korma comes packaged in a typical ready meal style, with a cardboard sleeve round a plastic food tray. The cardboard sleeve is purple coloured and has a picture of chicken korma with rice on it. The food tray bit is seperated into two sections, one with the korma in it and one with the pilau rice which is a yellow colour. The food itself weighs in at 450g and has 740 calories in it, that is really quite high but is pretty standard for a korma and other indian style meals, so as long as you're not having it every day should be fine.

The meal can be microwaved in about 9mins or oven cooked in 20-25mins, I don't think I've ever oven cooked it, microwaving it is just fine. It can also be frozen, I have microwaved it from frozen although it suggests you defrost it first. I have to say this is probably one of the best non restaurant made chicken kormas I've had, I've not tried all the types of chicken kormas out there of course but this one is the nicest of the ones I have tried.

The sauce is nice and creamy and isn't spicy at all, even for my sensitive mouth. It has a nice korma flavour which can sometimes be lacking in other kormas I've tried and it has a good amount of chicken in it as well. The rice is pretty good, it is slightly dry and obviously not as good as rice you cook fresh in a pot but it is certainly not the worst I've tasted. The meal is just the right size and fills me up (I'd hope so for the amount of calories in it) but it does go well with popadums, the tesco mini popudoms are especially good.

Overall I am very pleased with this dish, obviously nothing will every match a good restaurant cooked chicken korma, they really are the bees knees, but this is a pretty good substitute and at such a low price you can't really go wrong