Indian Veggie Curry

I’m on a new health kick with some of my coworkers and friends, and part of it involves really cooking enough to feed myself during the week. This massive curry which I sort of took from Fine Cooking was perfect. You can pretty much just use whatever vegetables you want, and then loosely follow their other directions (at least that’s what I did…)

I had gone to the store and bought all kinds of delicious vegetables, assuming that I had garlic, onion, and ginger at home – nope! But we made do.

First I made a veggie stock because my dinner companion was not a meat-eater. Without onion and garlic, etc, I just boiled a bunch of vegetable parts – like broccoli and parsley stems, carrots, mushrooms, the butts and tips of leeks and fennel left over from the braised ones, a bay leaf, and some salt and pepper. It didn’t taste too exciting, but good enough, and definitely nutritious, and a great way to use all your bits of things!

Then for the curry:
– We heated coconut oil with a bunch of spices (if you have onion, etc, do that first) including:
— Turmeric
— Curry powder
— Coriander (the last of it – I need to get some more)
— Cinnamon
— Cumin
— Salt
— Pepper

– Then we added
— The veggie broth
— Coconut milk (we ended up using the whole can, of course, and not the lite kind, of course)
— Canned pumpkin because I didn’t have tomato paste, although I have since found a version that doesn’t have any random crap in it…
– Let that all cook for a few minutes, and then we added the chopped vegetables:
— Broccoli
— Cauliflower
— Eggplant
— Carrots
– Let that cook until the vegetables were tender which was probably 40 minutes.

Just a note that when we started the broth level was only about 2/3 the way up to the top of the vegetables, but by the end it was the perfect amount. We had been debating adding more broth, and I’m glad we didn’t.

Then we added in a splash of apple cider vinegar (because it called for lime and I didn’t have that either but wanted to add in some sort of acid) and garnished it with chopped parsley and red pepper flakes.