A FATHER-OF-THREE who used his love of curries to teach his children how to cook has amassed more than 65,000 Twitter followers and scooped a national accolade.

Dan Toombs, of Low Worsall, near Yarm, said when he launched his online The Curry Guy diary while cooking his family an Indian-style meal every day for more than 20 months he would never have imagined overcoming hundreds of rivals to win Vuelio's best UK food and drink blog.

Mr Toombs said while his instructions for dishes such as crispy fried spinach and Jaffna crab curry had drawn thousands to subscribe by email to his blog, he was also attracting more than 100 hundred new Twitter followers each week.

He said: "Writing the blog has been a wild experience. It is more fun now than when I started because I had no goal, I wrote down recipes for my own use.

"It is nice to be recognised and have people like using my recipes. I try to make them as simple as possible, despite there being a lot of ingredients in Asian cooking."

Mr Toombs said while he had recently launched a mobile phone app and was working to secure a publishing deal, he would continue to add to the array of recipes featured on his blog.

He said: "If you want to make an Indian feast for your friends, the first place you will look is the internet."

He said his online presence had bolstered his merchandise business and led to numerous offers, such as an all expenses paid trip to Sri Lanka to review five-star hotel resorts for jet-setters and sample the local cuisine, where he spent time with his food hero, Marco Pierre White.

Mr Toombs said as well as spending time last week being taught traditional cooking techniques by barefooted locals in mud huts, he watched the celebrity chef, one of the youngest chefs to win three Michelin stars, improvise with the regional ingredients.

He said: "You couldn’t meet a nicer, more down to earth guy. We are going to keep in touch."