Curry September 13, 2008

This is super easy and uses cheap root vegetables and red bell peppers.  We often add a little chicken, though it’s fine without.  There are several types of curry powder out there, so the ultimate results depend on what you use.  We’ve had several types, unnamed, and some need a little hot paprika added and some need cumin.  Just depends on what you get and what you like.  

Ingredients:  2 med yellow onions, 4+ carrots, 4-6 med. potatoes, 2 bell peppers, 1-2 chicken breasts 2-3 cans of coconut milk, curry powder, cumin &/or hot paprika, salt, lime and toasted cashews optional

 

• Peel carrots
• Cut carrots and potatoes into bite-sized chunks
• Steam carrots and potatoes in a steamer rack or put them in a pot with a little water in the bottom for about 5-10 min till you can pierce them with a fork.
• Dice onions
• Cut up peppers in bite sized pieces
• Cut up chicken in small pieces if using
• Saute chicken, onion, and pepper in a large pan or wok
• When chicken is cooked and onions are clearish, add other veggies and curry powder (we use 3tsp curry for every can of coconut milk + 1 tsp of either cumin or hot paprika)
• Quickly stir the curry in with the veggies till fragrant.
• Add coconut milk and check flavor.  Add salt and more curry/cumin/paprika to taste.
• Sometimes we also add lime juice or toasted cashews
• Serve with rice.  Sticky rice is a current favorite, but any will do.

Roasted Sweet Potato Pasta

Sweet Potatoes are super cheap here in Israel and I was recently told that they are a very dense source of nutrition, so I feel even better about using them.  They really fill you up, too!  There’s not many recipes out there that use them as a main dish, so we pretty consistently stick to this one.  Everyone really loves it.

• Peel and cube sweet potatoes (3 big ones or a bunch of little ones)
• slice 3-4 onions into semi circles, not too thin
• Put these 2 veggies in a roasting pan and toss with olive oil
• Roast at 400F/200C for about an hour.  Every 20min or so, toss to keep the onions from burning.  You want the potatoes to be soft and a little browned, hopefully not entirely mushy, and the onions should be caramelized.
• While the veggies are roasting, dice some garlic (half a head) and and set a small pan with olive oil on low heat.  Cook the garlic, watching closely, till golden.  Don’t let it get too brown or it will taste bitter.  Set aside.  
• As the vegetables are getting close to finished, cook your pasta.  We usually use a full bag of rotini usually, but anything should do.  It’s nice if they have some texture to catch the sauce.
• Combine the pasta, veggies, and garlic/olive oil sauce in a large bowl or the pasta pot.  In the end, you can either add the rest of the ingredients in the kitchen or set them out on the table for each person to do their own.  The finishing ingredients are:  Sour cream, salt, and grated parmesan to taste.  Usually we set this out on the table, but each bowl usually only takes 1 or 2 spoonfuls of the sour cream if you need an estimate.  

Note:  to save energy/time, sometimes we steam the potatoes and just roast them briefly to firm and brown them.  If so, we also saute the onions on the stove so they still get caramelized.  In all it probably cuts the time in half, though it’s a more labor intensive time.