Two Vegetarian Curries this week and what a combo - Aloo Subzi (potato) and the old reliable and a seriously under-appreciated stalwart the humble Ghobi curry (cabbage).

These will last awhile and taste good with the leftover KFC in the fridge and I expect will also go well with leftover turkey I'm anticipating from Thanksgiving at the girlfriends house tomorrow(white people food hack!).

To turn a humble cabbage and a couple boring potatos into an awesome couple of curries see the recipe below:


Potato Curry (aloo subzi)

2 potatoes
1 green pepper
1/2 white / yellow onion
2 green onion stems
2 cloves garlic
1 chilli

masala mix:
tumeric
garam masala
five spice powder
garlic powder
ginger powder
white pepper
yeo's curry powder (any yellow curry powder is fine)


First start by slicing your potato into big chunks and boiling (i leave skin on).

Cover the bottom of a deep frying pan with about 1 cm of mustard oil (its ok to mix oils if you dont have much mustard).

fry your masala mix powders in the oil on low heat.  Stir so it doesnt get stuck to the pan and gets mixed into the oil.  When a you have a good mix, chuck in your onion, garlic, chilli chopped small and stir fry until golden brown.

By now your potato should be boiled a bit, dont boil too long because you will be frying after.

Chuck in your green peppers and spring onions along with the boiled potato chunks.  Try and spread the rest of the ingredients to the side so you can get the potato chunks in the oil to get crispy (if you like crispy potatoes).

After awhile  the mix might be getting dry so you can use your potato water one splash at a time to get a gravy, just stir it into the pot and use the water to clean your masala from the sides of the pan and get a nice thick gravy going.  Should be ready in a couple minutes.




Cabbage (gobi subzi)

1/2 yellow onion
2 garlic cloves
1 small cabbage
1 red chili fresh
1 red chilli dried
1 carrot

masala mix:
tumeric
garam masala
ginger powder
five spice powder
yellow curry powder
black sesame seeds
kafir lime leaves (if available)

This is a staple in any vegetarian Thali set or Malaysian Banana leaf and is always one of the most popular meal accompaniments with any curry combo.

Prep is similar to above Potato recipe - heat your mustard oil and masala mix (less garam masala and more tumeric in this recipe - this is a yellow curry).

Once the masala and oil is mixed, chuck in your garlic/onion/chilli and lime leaves.

after the onion starts to go darker throw in your cabbage and carrot chopped small and stir fry for about 5-8 mins.  Add a bit of water to steam the vegetables and make it a bit of a gravy dish. The more liquid you put in the more of a gravy dish this becomes.  Same goes for the cabbage - the finer you chop the strips of cabbage, the more this will become a gravy veg and not a dry veg.

Daal Fry Malaysian Mamak Style

Daal Fry Malaysian Mamak Style

Super slow cook, be ready to put in the time for this one but look forward to a good result in the end.  

The proportion of daal / yellow lentils  to water depends on how much gravy you want versus how much chunky daal.  Some people like it chunky, I prefer a lot of gravy for my rice / roti so I use about 4:1 daal to water ratio. 

The night before you start your daal, leave it to soak in water overnight.  Make sure there is at least 1 inch of water above the lentils when you soak it. 

Pan Fry in a lot of oil the following ingredients until almost liquefied (maybe 10-15 mins): 

• whole dried chillies ( as many as you like min. 3)
•  star anise x1  cloves 3 or 4 whole + cinnamon stick or cardamom buds if you have em
• 1 onion chopped small pieces
• big chunk of ginger minced
• 3 garlic cloves
• 2 or 3 carrots
• 1 chinese eggplant in no more than 3 large chunks
• 1 or 2 tomatoes in large chunks
• large spoonful of tumeric
• large spoonful of curry powder
• teaspoon of salt
• teaspoon white pepper(optional)

Now you are ready to put in the lentils.  Pan fry them until the onion /curry paste coats the lentils and then add water or vegetable stock, bring to boil and then reduce on low to simmer for what seems like an eternity.

The longer you wait, the better it will taste probably. Let the lentils really liquefy and help it on its way with some hard stirring and constantly topping up water.  

A minimum indicator when the dish is ready is when the large eggplant chunks are no longer visible and have fully liquefied.  

This is what most of the people in South Asia survive off of and feeds literally billions every day.  Poor people will survive off of one plate of rice and daal for a full day of hard labor.  It is best served with achar or indian pickle, chutney, raita (yogurt), some lime or cucumber, chillies or curd chillies

Beef Curry for Bad Mfckers

 

Get your shit ready, you are gonna need the following items choped up tiny for the paste:-

• Ginger
• Garlic
• Onion
• Chillies Red or Green but spicy (so not jalapenos )
• Lemongrass (cut into strings lengthwise for maximum result)
• Mint
• Green Pepper
• Tomato

 

Before you start chopping all this shit put your beef chunks into a zip lock bag with the marinade:-

• soy sauce
• lots of chilli powder
• bit of cumin
• oyster sauce
• Sri Racha hot sauce
• bit of yogurt if you have it

Fry the paste ingredients in a decent amount of oil (flavor oil is best - mustard, peanut, thick african palm oil) -

Keep frying until the onion and paste breaks down and liquifies in the oil.  Feel free to help it on its way and smoosh the shit.

After about 10-15 mins of frying the paste mix it should start looking like a gravy.  Now its time to chuck in the meat with the marinade and fry until the meat browns.

FRY THAT SHIT!
I forgot to tell you about the same time as the meat you should chuck in a couple of raw carrots and potato chunks.

 

After the meat is browned you should already have a pretty decent gravy what with the marinade and the liquified onion/tomato/greenpepper in the paste mix,  now you can add the final secret ingredients:

Add Beef Stock till you have enough gravy(top it up with more stock as the gravy reduces)
Add a Schmeer of Cream Cheese and stir it in for creaminess

Turn the heat really low and let it simmer until the potatos are done and the meat is fall apart soft.

You cant really cook it too long, after about an hour on low heat pull out the biggest chunk of meat and try to cut it with a spoon, it should fall apart easily or another way to time it is to add a final tomato cut in wedges when you turn the heat down to low in the final step and when the tomatos are almost liquified then the rest of the food is probably done too. 

Garnish with finely chopped cilantro, spring onion and vidalia purple onion.  Have some cucumber and mango(or pinappple whatever) sliced nearby to cool your mouth off cuz should be pretty fucking hot. 

Easy chicken curry

Ingredients:

1 Onion
2 tomatoes
2 -5 chillies depending on preference
4 yukon gold potatoes
2 chicken breast with bone in
2 carrots
3 garlic cloves
1 small nub of ginger
2 strips of spinach
Handful of coriander

Masala mix:
Tumeric
Cumin
Chilli powder
Curry powder
Salt
Ginger powder
Cinnamon sticks, star anise, cardammom and cloves whole 

Place a small pot of water to boil with the carrots potatoes and spinach

Fry the masala mix in oil
Add the onion garlic ginger and tomato

Fry till almost luiqiified then add the chicken, stir fry till brown.

Now add potatoes,  carrots,  boiled veg water and all into the chicken pot.

Simmer on low heat for 10 - 15 mins or until chicken is done.  With bone in chicken and drumsticks you can cook for ages but boneless chicken is easy to over cook and rubberize so don't fuck it up.

Add cilantro when done or near the end.

Stir in tomato paste, butter, milk or yogurt to make this curry more red or creamy.

Malaysian Auntie Schools Ramsy on Correct Rendang Curry Making

Rendang Curry is a Malay specialty and is something which cannot be fucked with.

See this Auntie show Gordon how to cook the coconut based dry curry - great to eat with Bread like Roti Canai!

Curd Chillies Crispy Fried

get ahold of a buttload of chillies. Clean them and leave stems on. Break them up a bit, keep them intact, just try and make sure there is a hole in the chilli so that liquid can get inside. Fill up a big plastic tupperware with them. now soak them overnight in a salt + watery yogurt marinade. Can put in some garam masala if u have any. In the morning, get them out of the yogurt mix (can save it in the fridge for later).

 Dry them out on a tray without rinsing the marinade off, and put them out in the sun all day. In the evening, re-soak them in the yogurt. In the morning put them in the sun. Repeat for 3-5 days depending on sun. Now you got curd chillies. So what u do with these fuckers, is toss a handful in some oil next time u have some extra grease in the pan. Deep fry them in super super hot oil. Make them black and crispy and burnt.

 Then just eat them on the side when you are having your next load of rice n curry or beans or noodles whatever.

Fucking delicious. im addicted. Try making them really salty. If u cant wait, u can just slice open the chillies keeping the fruit intact and soak them in salt water for a cpl hrs then deep fry them green and fresh and they will get delicious, then give them another lite toss with salt before u put it on the side with your dish.

Its too good. When doing the fresh fry you can also mix in pre-steamed eggplant sliced long wise and fry that at the same time/temp as the green chillies. Makes for salty, goey greasy side dish to spice up the main course.

Pumpkin Curry

Pumpkin is an awesome gravy maker and looks a lot like meat when in the mix.

I steamed the carrot and pumpkin for about 15 mins before to get it nice and soft then just bunged it all together and cooked on low for 30 mins or so.

Ingredients:

Half a Pumpkin in thick cubes
3 or 4 carrots cubes
garlic 3 cloves
ginger about same as garlic
rendang curry paste or any yellow/red paste
beef(or chicken or pork) chunks soaked overnight in milk and yogurt
thick cubes of hard tofu
1 pack of coconut milk

you can add these in some kind of order or just bung em all in together, its pretty much impossible to fuck up.

If you overcook the pumpkin, it becomes a part of the coconut milk broth which makes a gravy that is out of this world. You could just siphon off the gravy and sell it as your take on pumpkin soup but i prefer my soup chunky.