By The Bush Cook
This month, the Free Times’ resident ‘Bush Cook’ shares a delightful winter warmer idea. The Bush Cook likes to be a bit mysterious so we can’t give her a ‘by-line’, but here’s her simple curry recipe to beat those winter blues …
‘Bush Cook’s Curry’
This is a simple curry that can be made with ingredients from any pantry.
While the Bush Cook realises there is a vast array of ready-made curry pastes available to purchase or prepare these day, if you live some distance from town as the Bush Cook has, these are not always an option. Most pantries, however, do contain a tin of curry powder.
Method
Chop an onion, stalk of celery and some capsicum and soften in a little oil or butter.
Add about a tablespoon of curry powder and stir for about a minute. Vary this according to your personal taste.
Add a chopped carrot, some corn kernels, peas, chopped potato and whatever other vegetables you have on hand (zucchini, sweet potato, beans, pumpkin, shredded cabbage, etc). If you find you have been a little heavy handed with the curry powder, add an extra potato as this absorbs the flavour.
Just cover with water and add some stock cubes.
Simmer until the vegetables are tender and then add a tin of chick peas, drained and rinsed, for a vegetarian curry or if you have leftover roast or barbecued chicken, chop it up and add it at the last to heat through.
Season with salt and pepper and thicken it slightly.
Serve with whatever rice you have in the cupboard. Those new quinoa, ancient grain and rice mixes go very nicely and add a different texture.
If you want to make it a sweet curry, try adding a handful of sultanas and a peeled and chopped apple. That was how my mother used to make it many, many years ago.
This can be made in a slow cooker or on the stove top and can be reheated and eaten the next day … the curry flavour is always better then.
If you are on your own it also freezes well in meal sized containers.
