This blog post is a quick cooking tutorial to help any novice/newbie cooks out there before I get into the swing of it with Nigella. I've been watching through her DVD series, and some of the techniques I anticipate using may be at a more intermediate cooking level, rather than beginner basic. I'd like to set every single person who reads this blog for cooking success. As a heads up, this is a very basic recipe, and does involve use of a package curry paste to get the spices just right. If you're a bit more advanced, feel free to wait for my next installment where I'll be getting stuck right into it, or keep scrolling through for your enjoyment.
Now lets get into it. Monday evening I cooked up an absolutely huge curry. Mainly because I had a bunch of veggies in my fridge that were getting a bit past fresh, and making a curry is a great way to use up a variety of different veggies. I ended up with a massive curry that made about 12 portions, which are currently languishing in my freezer in just about every tupperware box I own. Here's what I found in my fridge that needed to be used up.
-2 zucchini
-1 sweet potato
-2 regular potatoes (red skinned ones)
-1 red capsicum.
If you have some veggies lying around, and a bag of lentils you have the backbone of your curry. You don't have to use the same veggies that I did, just have a look around your fridge and see what's there. If there are none, or they are all mouldy then chuck them out, head down to the fruit and veggie shop or the supermarket, and grab whatever is on special or that looks good to you. You can't go wrong, you can use whatever vegetables you like.
I also used green lentils to make my curry. You can use any lentils you want. As a bit of a guide, the smaller the lentil the quicker it will cook. In order to prepare my lentils I took 2 cups of dried green lentils, placed them in a big bowl, boiled the kettle then poured enough water over to make sure all of the lentils were covered. I left them to soak for four hours. (No I didn't eat tea really late, I started soaking the lentils around lunch time) You can use tap water instead of boiling water and leave them overnight, or you can buy canned lentils. Someone has already soaked and cooked them for you. If you're using canned lentils, they'll need much less cooking than the soaked dry ones, so I'll give you instructions for canned lentils as well.
Here's what my lentils looked like after 4 hours of soaking. You can see that they have absorbed most of the water, and pretty much doubled in size.
A lot of traditional Indian curries are made with lentils, partly due to the cultural and religious background of many Indians. (India is home to the world's largest population of vegetarians). Also lentils are way cheaper.
My bag of lentils cost about $3.00 from my local supermarket. I used half of that bag to make this curry. Traditionally a meat version of this curry would most commonly contain lamb. That leg of a lamb will cost you anywhere from $20-$50 dollars, with the upper end of that price range being at your local supermarket, and that lower end of the bracket being for a discount or local butcher. On top of that, it will take much more work to prepare a curry this way (you would have to chop all of that meat into bite-size pieces and cook it for longer). So in this case, making the curry vegan is a real win-win. You win time as it's less work to prepare, and you save a bunch of money. Great, now there's more money for a frosty cold beer to have with the curry, and the time to savour it. Priorities.
So, you have vegetables, you have lentils, you're excited like big kev. This curry is going to use a curry paste kindly made for me from the good people at Pataks. Yep. I'm not going to make you go to the supermarket today and buy the five or six different spices you need to make a curry from scratch. Yes, it's using packet food. No, I don't think all packet food is evil. Yes it's still vegan, I checked the label very carefully. In this case, it will save you time and effort and if you only plan on cooking very occasionally it's less wasteful than throwing out your spices every time they get stale.
The picture below shows you the other ingredients I'm going to use in this curry. You can see
-Rice
-Can of tomatoes
-Curry paste.
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| No magic, nothing fancy, just this stuff right here. |
You will also need some utensils (kitchen version of tools) to do this recipe. You will need the following.
-Chopping board
-Knife
-2 big pots
-wooden spoon
-plastic mircrowave safe container. A tupperware container will do
-Can opener
-basic cutlery and crockery
Okay, enough waffling. Let's get cooking. You will need to do a little bit of multi-tasking to get the rice and the curry finished at the same time, however if it doesn't quite go to plan don't panic. I'll give you a plan B wherever needed to manage any of the common boo-boo's.
The first thing you need to do is start boiling water to make the rice. To cook the rice, check the back of the packet the rice came in and follow the instructions. If it tells you how much water to use, measure that out and put the heat on high to get the water going. To save electricity use a big pot with a well-fitting lid. If you don't have a lid, then a large dinner plate covered in al-foil will do the job, just make sure you use a glove to lift the lid so you don't burn your hands. If the rice packet doesn't tell you how much water to use, be generous. Fill the big pot about half way up with water. You can always tip out extra water at the end. If the rice gets too dry it can burn and stick to the pot, setting off your smoke alarm and ruining your nice pot.
Once you've got the water going, it's time to chop your vegetables. I peeled my sweet potato, but left my regular potato unpeeled. You'll need to peel pumpkin (if using), top and tail zucchini or carrots, remove the green top bit and white middle bits from capsicum. Cut the vegetables into roughly bite-sized pieces. Separate the vegetables according to how quickly they will cook, things like onions capsicums, mushrooms and snow-peas will cook quicker than starchy vegetables like potatoes and pumpkin. If you're in a hurry and want to cook it quicker, cut the vegetables smaller, the surface area to volume ratio will effect the cooking time. I like to be able to see and recognise all the vegetables in my curry so I've gone for a bigger dice. Having the vegetables chopped, separated into your categories of "cooks quicker" and "starchy stuff that cooks slower" will help make the rest of the cooking job easier.
Put your second big pot on the stove then open the jar of curry paste and scoop it in, use any spoon, fork etc that will fit in the jar. Keep the jar for now. Once it starts to make a bit of a sizzly noise pop in any veggies you have that are similar to onion or capsicum.
Now this party-bus is going to turn into a three-ring circus! In just a moment you'll be doing 3 things at once.
Take your potato, pumpkin, or any starchy veggies and place them in the plastic microwave safe container. Pour in enough water to cover the vegetables.
Now is a good time to look back at the pot of boiling water, and the pot of vegetables. Stir the veggies around a bit, to make sure nothing is sticking to the base of the pan. If the water is boiling, then put the rice in. I used 2 cups of rice to get enough side serves for my 12 serves of curry. You can use as much or as little as you want. Depending on what type of stove you have (gas or electric), how big your pot is, and the temperature your water started at the pot of water for the rice will take a varying amount of time to boil. It will make a noise when it boils, so that will be a clue if you're not looking over it.
If at any point you feel rushed or stressed, then just slow things down. Turn the heat down on the veggies, cook the rice more slowly at a low simmer than a boil. You're supposed to be having fun. Slowing stuff down if you need it won't make the food taste any different, and will let you take your time to get things right. If you find that keeping half an eye on the rice while microwaving the veggies and keeping an eye on the curry is too much to do at once, that's okay too.
If you find yourself needing more time to keep up with everything that's going on then dial down the intensity by turning the heating element under the rice off for now. The rice won't get damaged by sitting in the water for a bit, and it's easy to keep the cooked curry at a good temperature while you cook the rice last if you need to. If you're really into labour saving devices you can buy pre-cooked rice and microwave it once the curry is just about done.
Now it's time to put the potatoes pumpkins / starchy vegetables into the microwave. I put mine in for two lots of four minutes, but my microwave is pretty piss-weak. What you're doing here is "par-boiling" the vegetables. This will help to pre-cook the starchy vegetables to make this dish a bit quicker.
Once you've got the starchy stuff into the microwave, it's time to put the lentils into the curry. Tip them in. If you're using canned lentils you'll need to open the can, and drain the contents into a colander or sieve. Then rinse them under the tap until the water runs clear, and doesn't smell like lentils (nowhere near as yuck as that sounds) use your fingers to comb through them and make sure the water gets everywhere. For completeness, here's an example of my lentils getting a bit of an extra rinse.
At this stage I turned my rice off, to finish cooking by absorption. My lentils are tipped into the pot. I'm going to add some liquids to this now. Take the jar of curry paste, fill it with water, put the lid back on and give it a shake. Tip that in. Now open the can of tomatoes, and tip them in. Fill the tomato can with water, give it a bit of a swish and tip that in. Stir the pot of curry and once it bubbles put the heat down to medium, or lower to let the lentils cook. If you're using canned lentils this won't take long at all.
This is another good time to say Hi to your rice, and make sure it's going okay. Give it a good stir to make sure that it's not sticking to the bottom of the pot, or hasn't gone dry. If you've switched your rice off to give yourself more time to focus on the curry, now might be a good time to get it heating again if you feel ready.
Once the starchy vegetables are parboiled, which is just a fancy way of saying "partially cooked by boiling them for a bit" they will look like this:
as you can see I'm testing them with a fork. You should get a fork in there without much effort, but they won't be quite as soft as when they're fully cooked.
Drain the potatoes (you can re-use your lentil colander to save on dishes) then tip them into the curry.
At this stage, my rice was cooked, so I just gave it a good stir, then left it on the stove with the lid on to keep warm. My cooked rice looked like this in the pot.
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| All over it like white on rice |
My curry now looks like this.
I turned the heat down, and put the lid on to let it bubble way for about another 10-15 minutes to get the lentils thoroughly cooked, and the potatoes nicely done.
This is what my stove looked like.
I came and checked on it at five minute intervals, in between watching some TV. You could read a book, or feed your cat.
This is what my cat, and his food bowl looked like.
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| It's a travesty. |
Good thing I took a break while making this curry. The 15 minute cat biscuit famine was very hard on the local feline residents, but I believe we all pulled through okay.
Once you're finished, you can serve your curry. I live by myself. (with the cats.) and my serving looked like this.
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| Ta Daaaaa! |
I've added in a store bought roti bread to help collect all the sauce, you can use any sides you like, pappadoms, relish, salad, anything you would like is fine.
If you're dishing up for lots of people, you could put the rice and curry in big bowls (or keep them in their pots on place-mats) at your table to let people help themselves. There's plenty to go around. If you don't have a big table, you can do it uni-student style and give everyone a plate/bowl and let them serve themselves from over the stove. Saves on dishes.
I hope you enjoyed this little vegan cooking 101 tutorial!
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