When I was a kid growing up in Scotland, it seemed most people didn't know very much about Indian food. Indian food was curries and curries had raisins in them. I even remember eating curried baked beans with raisins, while camping. I think I quite liked them and I'm sure they're still available (they come in tins with the raisins already added). The point I'm trying to make is not that meals made with curry powder and raisins are bad, just that curried beans or a chicken curry pub lunch bear very little resemblance to Indian food.
Nowadays there are great 'Indian' restaurants all over Britain, run on the whole by British Asian guys who dish up fantastic, Punjabi style meals, with a British twist...and no raisins at all.
Now I'm going to describe an Indian dish - a fairly authentic one, I might add - with raisins in it. My version also has pineapple and sometimes banana is added. You could try that. It's good. There's no curry powder in the list of ingredients for this dish. I haven't done that yet on the site and I don't plan to.
Ingredients
200g of paneer
A cup of pineapple chunks
A handful of cashew nuts
A small handful of sultanas or raisins
1 onion. peeled and finely chopped
2 or 3 cloves of garlic, peeled
A piece of root ginger, peeled and chopped
2 cups of yoghurt
1 teaspoon of tomato paste
1 cardamom
1 clove
A small piece of cinnamon
A quarter teaspoon of black peppercorns
1 teaspoon of coriander seeds
Oil
Salt
Use a pestle and mortar to grind the spices (except the cinnamon, since it's almost impossible to do by hand) then add most of the cashews and grind further until a dry sticky paste begins to form. Empty the mixture into another container and grind the ginger and garlic to a paste. combine this paste with the cashew and dry spice mixture and leave aside for a few minutes while you fry the chopped onion in a little oil. When the onion is transparent add the cashew and spice mixture along with the cinnamon and fry for a few minutes more. Add the yoghurt, tomato paste, salt and a about a cup and a half of water and bring to the boil. Turn the heat down and simmer the sauce gently for about fifteen or twnty minutes until it begins to thicken nicely. Add the the paneer, cut into cubes, the fruit and the remainder of the cashews and cook for a further five minutes (Add a splash of water if the sauce is getting too thick).
Serve with boiled rice or chappati and maybe another spicy dish or two.