OK I have to come clean and admit that despite being a lifelong curry fan, and being reminded by Mof that this was coming on AND being reminded by…er…me that this was coming on, I hadn’t watched any of Indian Food Made Easy until last night. I thought I’d picked the wrong one to start watching, too, at the start. It was fish night.

Now I’m OK with fish as long as it looks like fish, it isn’t looking back at me, and it’s had all the yucky bits removed. Skin, bone, eyes, head, guts, that kind of thing. What my brother-in-sin calls “lips and cheeks.” So starting with lumps of fish – “steaks” I think they’re called, where the fish is gutted and then simply sliced up, skin, spine (or notochord, or whatever it is that fish have) and all – was not good for me. And then presenter Anjum Anand progressed to mussels.

Mussels with dry coconut, to be precise. Having set up the premise that, while Indian chefs regularly cook with fish, English people tend not to think of currying fish preferring instead to stick with the more prosaic chicken, beef or lamb if they’re cooking a meat dish, Anjum set off for Cornwall where there’s (a) a married couple of refugees from Birmingham who have set up the Little Cornish Curry Company and (b) a lot of fish.

Nirmal and Louis are self-taught. They left Birmingham to pursue their dream of a life by the sea coupled with running their own curry cooking company. They’ve been successful in a small way, but they now want to start selling ready-made curry dishes to local pubs and restaurants and they also, rather conveniently I thought, want to branch out away from chicken tikka masala and lamb balti into – you guessed it: fish. Which brings us neatly back to the mussels. As if they hadn’t already made up their minds, Anjum shows them how easy it us to rustle up a mussel, remembering always to cook them until they pop open and never to eat the ones that don’t pop open, because they’re the ones that have gone off. There’s one more rule in my case, which is to always remember to turn around and walk away from the mussels while simulating retching. “Sea food” is very definitely not for me thanks very much, but I have to admit it did look very tasty.

Thankfully we then progressed to the main event: Green Coconut fish curry with lemon rice. I had another wobble while they visited the fishmonger and picked through a pile of fish most of which were uglier than Wayne Rooney and a variety of strange and unearthly colours. In the end though, cognisant of the fact that Nirmal and Louis were targeting a fairly conservative audience, they plumped for pollock. If you’re not familiar with pollock you soon will be – owing to shortages in supply it’s taking over from cod and even Birds Eye have started using it in their fish fingers.

Now we all know that TV cooking is a bit of a con. Bish, bosh, serve it up. Magic. “It’s so easy,” says Anjum, “and it only took fifteen minutes.” She certainly did make it look quick and easy on the night, but don’t be fooled. Keen eyes will notice the recipe states preparation time of “less than 30 minutes” and a cooking time of “10 to 30 minutes” so I think if you allow an hour you’ll be on the safe side.

That lemon rice looked delicious, didn’t you think? Mustard seed, fenugreek and lentils, with added peanuts for extra crunch! A couple of whole chillies for a mild spice, chopped ginger (OK I’m salivating already), a dash of turmeric (that’s TUR-meric), squeeze of lemon and some ripped up curry leaves. Cook it all up for a minute or two and stir in your drained basmati. Fabulous.

It all looked good enough to eat, I thought. I might even make it myself. Twenty-five years ago getting hold of curry leaves was almost impossible but I expect it’s easier now. We always used bay leaves instead but they’re not the same.

Anjum also made a side dish. Side dishes are essential in any really good Indian meal, so it was a bit of a shock to see the spiced crab cakes with tamarind mayonnaise being served in the pub with chips. Gotta love the Brits and their chips. Crab is on the verge of fishy acceptability for me. Love the meat; hate the preparation. Don’t come round here with your snobbery about how you have to crack the claws and suck it out. Having watched Anjum tearing the carapace off and digging out the brown bits last night, I was very relieved to hear her say it was fine to make the dish with prepared crab meat. That’s one occasion where I’d be happy to forego a little freshness in favour of keeping my breakfast down. I’ll have it extracted by the fishmonger, thanks, or even out of a tin.

This was the fifth of six IFME programmes. She certainly did make it look easy, and even if the recipes give the lie to that (slightly) all the recipes appear to be well within the capabilities of the average cook (like me) so I may well give it a go. I can’t remember ever eating curried fish and you have to try something new occasionally don’t you? As long as it’s not mussels.