Tonight's Curry Recipe
I just wrote this up for someone following tonight's potluck, figured it can be blogged. It's tonight's variation on a family recipe I've toyed with and made my own over the years.
The curry tonight was as follows, adjust to taste:
Ingredients:
2 onions (yellow)
2 large potatoes (yellow)
2 tomatoes (I used organic on the vine tomatoes)
1 (or more) hot finger peppers
A bunch of spring onions
2 cloves of garlic
Mushrooms (however many you like, I got the brown kind... would work well with shittake mushrooms I think... mushrooms can be replaced with meat of some kind, chicken preferably)
A tin of coconut milk
Sugar
Soy sauce (not too dark)
Corn starch
Most importantly, a nice yellow curry powder. I use one from India which is amazing, but homemade is always good, otherwise hunt your spice shops. The stuff in a plastic bag works, but not as good at all.
Cooking oil (I use canola)
Prep:
Cut everything. Onions into strips, potatoes into large chunks, quarter the tomatoes, dice the peppers and spring onions, mushrooms into chunks.
Mushrooms should be marinated in sugar/cornstarch/soy sauce. The corn starch is for thickening and getting the sugar/soysauce to stick to the mushrooms... pretty much 1 part sugar, 1 part (a little less, really) corn starch, and 1 part soy sauce. Meats are marinated in the same way.
Cook:
Heat pot on high, add oil and coat bottom of the pan. Do not be shy about using too much cause you'll probably add a bit more to keep the onions from burning.
Add onions, garlic. Stir in three heaping teaspoons of curry powder.
Keep up the heat, keep the onions going with the curry powder, till onions are nice and soft. This gets the curry flavour into the onions, which forms the base of the whole sauce. Stir in a teaspoon or so of soy sauce at a certain point.
Add hot peppers, spring onions, and coconut milk to keep everything from burning (do not add too much). Turn heat down to medium low, keep simmering.
keep stirring, and eventually add quartered tomatoes and mushrooms, adding coconut milk as needed for liquid, continue stirring.
The curry should be a nice and thick, just about the consistency of what you might expect when it's done... I do it by feel and taste but you should use about half the tin of coconut milk by the end...
Add potatoes. The liquid from the tomatoes and other veggies will eventually make the consistency a little more liquidy than you might expect. However, let potatoes simmer, the starch from the potatoes when they get nice and soft will thicken it back up again, and the potatoes will absorb the curry's flavour.
Simmer on low until potatoes are soft (lid on), stirring occasionally.
Serve with rice, bread, or whatever.
Ingredients are of course adjustable... I usually just use whatever the hell groceries I have in my fridge at the time, but onions and potatoes are a must. Fillers inbetween range from bell peppers to tomatoes to bamboo shoots to whatever. Add bay leaves and other spices as you see fit.