Tales from a Veggie Kitchen

Note: pic is taken with my phone, so not the usual quality. It looked more yellow than this.

BBC Good Food strikes again, and this time I was specifically looking for a curry of some sort. I saw this and it looked delicious. I'm so glad I don't have to type the recipe out, haha.

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1397/spiced-vegetable-biryani

I bought all the ingredients (quite expensive if you include some yoghurt, poppadoms and mango chutney) even though the recipe says it's for 6 people. I was curious to see how much it would make. Well believe it, it really is for 6. I had to leave out a good portion of veggies so it'd fit into my largest oven dish, and even then it went for 5 servings.

Making sure the rice is cooked is key here, so it's best to use a dish with a lid in addition to the foil trick. I cooked mine for 15 minutes to roast the veg, then another 35 minutes for the rice part. This cooked it beautifully, but I think it's definitely a trial and error thing.

Taste-wise it was lovely, a bit weak in the spices because my spoon didn't fit in the curry paste jar and I ended up estimating the size of a tablespoon. But looking beyond that and it would certainly make a fine dish. The veg takes quite some preparing, but it can be done whilst waiting for the oven to hear. Or, at least, the veg that goes in first.

I did find that the mustard seeds and thick spices collected in one place, but I'm not sure how to stop that. I did stir it a bit, but didn't have much room to give it a good mix, and by the time it was cooked they had all settled again anyway.

It's a good dish to make on the weekend; reheated it's just as good and you don't have to cook for a couple of nights if there are just 2 of you. It does need the condiments I added to give interest (i.e. the yoghurt etc) and some protein, Alternatively you could use some ready-done fake meat pieces added when serving.

Cauliflower with potato and spinach. There are many options here – you could use sliced large tomatoes instead of cherry toms (or none at all), frozen spinach instead of fresh, different types of potato… it’s a pretty forgiving dish. A note on the spinach – if you use fresh as I did, you will need to wilt it in a separate pan in a couple of batches most likely. I cook for 2 people (on 2 separate days) and I could barely stuff the fresh leaves into the pan. Also I didn’t fancy putting onion in it, which I don’t think detracted from the dish, but just about any Indian dish has onions so I’ll add it here.

Oh, and as usual I don’t put chillies in my curry. Feel free to add where you need.

Note: the idea for roasting the cauliflower first came from a Hairy Bikers’ recipe.

Gobi Aloo Saag

Serves 4

Time taken around 45 minutes.

1 head of cauliflower

500g potatoes

500g baby spinach leaves

1 onion

A punnet (around 20) of cherry tomatoes

Oil for frying and roasting

A few tablespoons of water

2 tsp curry powder

2 tsp turmeric

2 tsp ground cumin

2 tsp kalonji (onion seeds) or poppy seeds

2 tsp each of fresh ginger and garlic

5 curry leaves

Seasoning

* Preheat the oven to 180C (160C fan) and while it’s heating chop the cauliflower into florets. You will probably have time to chop the potatoes into 2cm pieces and chop the onion. Put the cauliflower into a roasting dish, sprinkle with oil and roast for 20 minutes.

* After the cauliflower is in the oven, heat some oil in a large pan or wok over a medium heat. When ready, add the onion and fry until the onion is translucent, then add the spices.

* When the spices are well mixed in, add the potatoes and mix so everything is coated with spices.

* Add the spinach, tomatoes, salt to taste and a few tablespoons of water sprinkled over to make it steam. Simmer for 25 minutes.

* Somewhere in that time the cauliflower will be ready. Tip it into the mix in the pan and stir well. Make sure everything is heated and spiced well. Your curry will be done when the potatoes are done (which should be after the 25 minutes stated in the previous step).

* Serve with rice or Indian breads. The curry itself is quite dry, so I’d recommend putting a dollop of yoghurt and mango chutney on top.