Sweet & Sour Balti Vegetable Curry

During the winter, my favorite last-minute dinners involve throwing together whatever root vegetables I have around the house in a warm, comforting soup, stew or curry.  This recipe is an adaptation of a chicken curry dish I found in this Indian cookbook, which uses a yogurt, chutney and tomato base to create a creamy sauce that is, indeed, sweet & sour–and delicious.

Here’s how we did it: first, begin sauteing the vegetables, beginning with the cubed root vegetables–we used red potatoes, sweet potatoes and carrots.   While these get going, mix together the following in a small bowl:

• 3 Tbsp. tomato paste
• 2 Tbsp. Greek yogurt
• 1/2 tsp. garam masala (or hot curry powder)
• 1 tsp. chili powder
• 1 tsp. crushed garlic
• 2 Tbsp. peach or mango chutney
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. sugar

Add a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil to the sauteing root vegetables, plus any other vegetables you want to add.  We used some red bell pepper and green chillies. Add the spice, tomato and yogurt mixture.  Allow to cook on medium-high for a couple of minutes, then add 2/3 cup water.  Return to a boil, then lower the heat and allow the entire thing to cook, covered, for 5-7 minutes, or until the root vegetables are tender.

Finally, stir in about 1/4 cup milk or cream.  When everything is hot, serve over white rice.  It would also be a great idea to garnish this with fresh cilantro, but we weren’t fortunate enough to have any lying around the house at the time.

I love this curry for a few reasons: one is that it can be assembled using things that I almost always have around in the pantry (though, of course, this means being the sort of person who keeps peach chutney on hand).  The other is that it’s incredibly tasty in virtue of its ability to hit all the satisfying tastes–sweet, sour, salty, and spicy–while also being creamy and rich-tasting (but secretly involves less fat than is apparent, especially if you use low-fat milk instead of heavy cream).  Perfect for winter days at home.

Balti Curry Vegetables

I am a huge fan of store-bought curry pastes.  They provide a really wonderful depth of flavor without requiring the significant labor that goes into putting together a great sauce from scratch.  At the same time, however, the fact that they aren’t finished in the way that a pre-made jar of sauce is makes them both more versatile and potentially more tasty.  My own experience with pre-made Indian simmer sauces, for example, is decent–but basically ‘meh.’  But with curry paste?  It’s a whole different story.

Here I used a Balti curry paste, which is a good bit less spicy than some Indian curry pastes on the market–but which can still get pretty hot if you use too much (I speak from experience!).  After sauteing diced carrots, sweet potatoes, and new potatoes in a little oil to get their cooking started, I added some onion and bell pepper, plus a few tablespoons of the curry paste.  When the veggies were basically cooked, I added a little water, some diced tomatoes and–my favorite addition to Indian curry–some plain yogurt.  I love the creaminess the yogurt gives, and I really love that it’s achieved without using a ton of fat, as Indian curries made with heavy cream or butter (or Thai curries made with coconut milk) do.  The resulting curry was spicy, tangy, sweet and savory, with a satisfying combination of classic Indian spices.  How often do simple vegetables get to be such a treat?

Guelph Goodness, no. 1: Diana Downtown

I’ve been thinking recently about adding some sort of recurring feature to the blog, in addition to my regular updates on the Garden (Futility?) Project.  My initial idea was to write regular postings about things I love in any of the 5 cities I’ve lived in before moving to Canada, entitled “Things I Miss.”  But after some reflection, I’ve decided that indulging my nostalgia in this way would be just a little too…well, nostalgic.  Instead, I want to tell you about fun, delicious, unique or weird things I find in  Guelph, and why, despite the fact that I miss lots of things about any of my 5 former homes, I love living here.  So, as they say, without further ado…

Diana Downtown is one of those funny little gems in the restaurant business that’s been around for a while, but in varying incarnations of itself.  In the 80s, it was apparently a Mediterranean-style restaurant (hence the “Diana”), complete with faux columns and fountains, but these days it’s more Indian and Southeast Asian than anything, and has a great–modern, warm, sexy–style.  Maybe I’m just a sucker for red walls.  Anyway, despite the potential for such a restaurant shape-shifting to go awry, Diana Downtown manages to avoid the fate of Babu Bhatt’s Dream Cafe, serving great curries in a cool space.

I went to DD for a bachelorette party with a bunch of other ladies (it’s definitely a special-occasion kind of place, at least for a pack of grad students), and it was great.  I had the Butter Vegetables–a riff on the classic Indian Butter Chicken–which, while absolutely not something I’d advise eating every day, was fantastic.  Creamy, rich, and spicy, and paired with a refreshing cucumber and tomato salad.

And to add to all that, the waiter was really over-the-top nice, not only offering to split the check (there were 7 of us), but splitting up the cost of the bottles of wine we ordered as well.  This, by the way, was a far cry from restaurants in Boston, in which wait staff regularly informed us (after the dinner was over, of course) that they did not split checks, period, and that we were more than welcome to use their ATM.  So, our server’s willingness to be accommodating was definitely a pleasant surprise–as crazy as that may sound, especially if you haven’t spent much time outside the American South.

Anyway, Diana Downtown was absolutely worth the trip.  Tasty, fun, easy on the eyes…one of many great things to love about Guelph.