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.

American Thanksgiving

As you probably know, Thanksgiving happens much earlier in Canada (before Halloween, even!) than it does in the United States, which means that when American Thanksgiving rolls around, despite the fact that the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade is on television, life goes on as usual.  So, Josh and I decided to have our own Thanksgiving celebration and invite all our friends–though we did do it on the Friday following, since everyone still had work on the actual (American) holiday.

We did the dinner as a potluck, so Josh and I each made our own contributions.  Here are his: (fake) bacon-and-corn cornbread, and Southern-style buttermilk biscuits.  The cornbread was adapted from a recipe that called for real bacon (drippings plus crispy bits on top), but he put together this pork-free version by sauteing the fake bacon in a butter and oil (to give it the smoky flavor and crisp up the faux meat), and used this in place of the drippings.

I made cornbread dressing, which was surprisingly more complicated than I anticipated.  It seems that (perhaps because cornbread isn’t something that people eat regularly here–or maybe it has more to do with the lack of Grits-eating) it is almost impossible to get coarsely ground cornmeal in this area.  Everywhere I went, I found finely ground cornmeal, which is great for polenta, but not so awesome for cornbread (as I found out with the first batch).  After finding some coarsely ground stuff in the organics section, I made the cornbread and turned it into dressing by mixing it up with vegetable broth, eggs, onions, celery and butter, and then baking the entire thing in the same iron skillet I used for the cornbread itself.  In the background of this picture is a lovely roasted vegetable flatbread dish made by our friend, Philippe.

I also made this Tofurkey (!), which was great–though less exciting, because it mainly cooks according to the package instructions–as well as some killer mashed potatoes, which I sadly did not get to photograph.  The potatoes were made exciting by the addition of caramelized onions, cumin and cayenne pepper.  Very, very tasty.  And speaking of tasty, in this photo we also have sweet potato casserole and green bean casserole, courtesy of our friends Kelly and Drew.  Mmmm, marshmallows.

And, as my inner Southern Lady kicked in, I became obsessed with properly setting the table.  In the end, though I thought it looked cute, my attempts at propriety were cruelly thwarted by the fact that 1) we only own 6 matching napkins and 2) we have only 8 chairs, which meant that I tragically forced several of my friends to eat at the “kid’s table”–which is to say, the living room.  Of course, if they’re anything like my dad, they might just think that this was something of a coup, given its closer proximity to the television.

Butternut Squash Soup

Today is a chilly, dreary day: perfect soup weather.  Plus, since it’s a Saturday, there was time enough to make a good one while doing some chores and watching the LSU game on the internet (no SEC football on my limited cable, unfortunately!).  I’d gotten a butternut squash on my last trip to the store for just such an occasion, and I have to admit that I was more than a little excited to use it.

Last summer, Josh and I actually grew (several!) butternut squash in our garden in Nashville, and we love using them in the fall.  They keep a really long time in the pantry, and since they’re also super-delicious and good for you, they’re a great garden item.  In case you’ve never had them, the flavor is somewhere between a sweet potato and a pumpkin.  So, between their tastiness, health benefits and general economy, I’d have to rank butternut squash as one of my absolute favorite fall vegetables (even though, technically, it’s not a vegetable at all).

Though I was looking forward to making a butternut squash soup, I actually wasn’t quite sure what I would do, recipe-wise.  I’ve recently fallen into watching a Canadian cooking show called “It’s Just Food,” which is great for getting basic ideas; their butternut squash soup used carrots, garlic, onion, green apples, and a dash of maple syrup, but I had no apples or syrup, and wasn’t quite sure that I wanted my soup to be sweet at all.  All too often I believe people make the mistake of thinking that if they’re using fall vegetables with fall-esque spices, everything needs to come out tasting like pumpkin pie, which becomes overwhelmingly cloying really quickly.  But enough of my soap-box.

I decided to do my own thing–inspired by, but not directly derivative of, the “It’s Just Food” recipe.  I did follow their tip of doing a preliminary browning of the chunks of squash and carrots and yellow onion (the carmelization brings out just enough sweetness for me), butI used potatoes instead of apples.  After these got a bit of color, I added several cups of vegetable stock and a few cloves of garlic.  Before letting this boil away, I went to town with the spices–which, by the way, is my favorite part of the cooking process.  This time, since I was really just winging it, I added quite a bit.  What ended up being most prominent, though were the following: ginger, coriander, cayenne and dried chipotles (as I mentioned earlier, these give the smokiness of bacon flavor to vegetarian foods), plus a pinch of cinnamon, nutmeg and sage.  After everything simmered together for about half an hour and the vegetables were all tender, I hit the whole thing with my immersion blender till it was pureed.  Things were pretty thick at that point, so I decided to finish the entire thing with a bit of milk, which toned down some of the heat and made the finished soup really rich and creamy.  In the end, I was super happy with how it turned out–warm, spicy and savory, with just a hint of sweetness–and maybe just a little too proud of myself for coming up with something so great on my own.  I’m hoping the LSU game turns out so well!

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?