One of the enduring disappointments in my life has been my inability to cook up some Indian food that tastes even remotely like anything you can get in a restaurant. We both like spiciness with not too much heat and with the rich vegetarian tradition in Indian cooking I thought I would be able to find something that even a culturally impoverished anglo like myself could put together. It seemed that it was not to be…….until now!
After much searching and, dare I say it, experimentation I have found a recipe that is not too much hassle, I can use with our homegrown produce and always turns out really well. I cook it in our 345mm wok, it is deep enough so that the sauce doesn’t dry out and burn, but you still need to keep an eye out and top up with extra water if required.
Ingredients
Sauce
- 1 large or two medium onions quartered
- 3 medium-sized tomatoes quartered (I use one 375ml jar of the diced tomatoes we preserved last summer)
- ½ teaspoon of chilli paste (reduce if you want less heat, add more if you want it hotter)
- 5 cloves garlic
- 1" piece of ginger, peeled
- 3 tbsps vegetable/ canola/ sunflower cooking oil
Spice mix
- 2 tsps ground coriander
- 2 tsp ground cumin
- 1/4 tsp turmeric powder
- 1 tsp garam masala
- 10 curry leaves
Vegetables
- 500 gms chunky, mixed vegetables - for example potato, sweet potato, choko, carrot, Jerusalem artichoke, cauliflower, broccoli, beans, corn, peas with the bigger stuff cut into 1cm or so cubes.
- Salt to taste
End bit
200gm Jalna Greek style yogurt whisked till smooth (we don’t use much yoghurt or I would be making my own, but the Jalna stuff is the right consistency and the pack size is perfect to ensure there is no waste.)
Instructions
- Cut the vegetables up and put to one side. To make things easier I steam the hard veggies in the microwave for a few minutes.
- Place the onion, tomatoes, chilli paste, ginger and garlic into a blender and blend into a smooth paste. You don’t need to add any water to the mix at this point, there is more than enough liquid contributed by the tomatoes.
- Measure out the spice mix into a small bowl. (we keep while spices and grind them as needed to ensure freshness; also there is no substitute for home grown fresh curry leaves!)
- Heat the cooking oil in the wok on medium heat. When hot, add the mixture from the blender. Add all the powdered spices and the curry leaves.
- Stir and fry/ sauté till the oil begins to separate from the sauce. Add some water to the blender and swish it around to wash down any sauce still remaining on the sides. If the sauce is getting a bit too thick, add some diluted sauce mix out of the blender to keep the water level up. At this point you need to be monitoring the sauce mix and stirring fairly continuously to prevent it burning.
- Add the soft vegetables and cook for 10 minutes, then add the steamed hard vegetables and cook for a further 10 minutes. Season with salt to taste. Cook till the vegetables are tender but not pulpy/ overcooked. Remove from heat and stir in the yogurt till fully blended.
I serve with steamed Basmati rice or homemade tortillas that have been made a bit more thickly (ie not rolled out as thin) and rebadged as roti.
This makes enough for two people with robust appetites plus lunch for one the next day or would feed four if you had another dish.
