Food Ambassador March challenge: Create your own recipe using only 5 ingredients with local and seasonal produce. Living on an island means that most of our fresh produce is imported, either flown in daily or by small fishermen’s boats from Venezuela. There are a few farms on the island, producing eggplants, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, tropical fruits, chillies and peppers.
For the March challenge I created a vegetable curry, ready in about 40 – 50 minutes. Not the prettiest of curries, but very tasty! Add chilli to taste 😉 Ingredients for the curry sauce (for 4 persons): – 1 large onion, finely chopped – 2 cloves garlic, grated – Piece of fresh ginger (about 5 cm), grated – Piece of cassia (bark of cinnamon tree) – 5 Whole cardamom pods – Teaspoon whole coriander seeds – Tablespoon of your favourite curry powder – 1 bay leave – 4 ripe tomatoes, washed and diced – Salt and pepper to taste To add to the curry sauce: – 1 large eggplant, washed and diced – 4 medium potatoes, peeled and diced – 4 medium or 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and diced – ½ Cauliflower, washed and cut into small florets – 2 handful of frozen peas – Bunch of fresh coriander, washed and chopped To make the sauce: Get your thick based (le Crueset) pan on the stove, slowly warm the pan. While the pan is warming up can add your whole spices and the curry powder. When you crush the bay leave before warming it up it will release even more flavour. Once the spices are heating up and starting to smell, you can add a splash of olive oil and a knob of butter. Turn up the heat slightly and add the onion, garlic and butter, fry for about 3 minutes, or until the onions have gone glazy. If you want to add eggplant to your vegetable curry, you should add it at this stage. You might want to add some more olive oil to the mixture as eggplant is a thirsty veg. Stir in the eggplant, coat it nicely with all the spices, when it starts to turn brown and it has soaked up most of the mixture you can add the diced tomatoes and stir through. Add some water if it sticks too much. Bring to a boil and turn down the heat to a simmer. Now that the sauce is simmering, you can wash, peel and dice the ingredients for the vegetable curry. Add the potatoes and cauliflower florets first as you go along. Let them cook in the sauce; at the end when the potatoes are cooked you can add your frozen peas for the last 5 minutes. To finish it off sprinkle the fresh coriander over the vegetable curry just before serving. Serve with basmati rice, or roti, or naan bread to soak up all the sauce. A wholesome recipe for some vegetarian comfort food ☺
