Top tips for a really tasty veggie curry?

[TEJQ]

I love (mild) curry, but it HAS to be veggie cos I just can't take to meat in curries.

I want to make a batch with lots of onion, aubergine, courgette, some sweet potato etc in, but I'm looking for tips as my idea otherwise will be to chuck everything in together.

PS trying to keep the calories low too so I can eat it and feel virtuous

There is a good recipe on the 5 a day website .
I made it a few weeks ago and everyone loved it .

do not put in sweet potato straight away as it cooks very quickly and will go to mush.

chop the onion as small as possible and fry on quite a high heat stirring often to stop burning, for as long as possible (15-20 mins), add a teaspoon or two of water to loosen if necessary and use sunflower/vegetable/other normal oil rather than olive oil, or if possible use ghee. Cooking this way will caramelise the onion and give the curry a great base flavour/consistency.

Keep it simple, do not use too many vegetables in one dish. Decide on the type of curry you want and if necessary make two for variety - for example, I make potato, spinach and chickpea curry, a little drier and hot, then along with this a wetter dhal or red peppers, courgettes and sweet potato curry, milder, more sweet and sour.

Serve it with pickles and yoghurt to add some dimension to it all.

chickpea, potato, spinach curry:

fried finely chopped onions in hot sunflower oil or similar for 15 mins until caramelised. Add green peppers if desired.

Separately, blanch roughly chopped waxy potatoes (skin on or off, your choice, i keep them on, DH takes them off) for about 5 mins just to take the hardness off, drain then add to the onions. Fry on a lowe heat for about 5 mins, stirring to avoid sticking.

Add 2-3 tablespoons of Pataks paste, such as rogan josh, for milder, vindaloo for stronger, fry further for about 2-3 mins to get spices going, then add tin of chickpeas (or pre-soaked chickpeas if not lazy!)

Then, there are some variations on the next bit

either - add tin of tomatoes, chopped and a little stock, simmerfor 20 mins, stirring occasionally to stop burning. Depending on how liquidy you want it, add a little more stock as it cooks.

or - add a little milk, to give it a deeper less tomatoey flavour, simmer gently, adding a little more milk as required. I like this way as I like it dry, hot and spicey, and this brings out the flavours well I think, but if you prefer tomato based, the above is more conventional.

once potatoes are cooked (20 mins or so), add several large handfuls of fresh spinach, large dollop of yoghurt, turn of heat and cover for 5 mins while you set the table. Or while you eat popadum with pickles.

Serve with steaming basmati rice (with saffron if feeling extravangant), chapati, and dhaal (will post seperately for ease)

There was a lovely recipe in the April edition of Good Food Magazine for Aubergine and mushroom curry. It should be on their website.

this is a good dhal recipe, I usually follow a recipe roughly, and have not cooked it for a while as I have a horrid aversion to garlic.

Which reminds me - add garlic to my last recipe, I did not put it down as I don't use it at the moment, but it should go in really, about 2 gloves.

Or

Sweet Potato and lentil curry (i know two lots of potato but the textures work well together)

Onions fried as below - to speed up caramelising, add a teaspoon of sugar and shorten cooking time by 5 mins.

add Red peppers roughly chopped, fry for 5 mins in sunflower oil

Add Pataks Dhansak paste, fry for 2-3 mins. then add tin of tomatoes and some passata (not a whole jar), add several handfuls of part cooked lentils and cook for 10 mins, then add peeled and roughly chopped sweet potatoes (not precooked), and about 1/4 pint of stock, cook for further 20 mins (or until lentils are cooked) checking liquid levels fully. This should become a thick sauce, add a little water as you go to keep it from becoming dry, be careful not to water down too much.

Serve with same as below.

LOL actually did the chickpea curry today as I wrote it down then fancied it! I added some thick sliced tomatoes to it about 5 mins before the end, instead of spinach as we had no spinach! Twas lovely

If you like sweet potato curry, you could try a thai curry too, it curries really well imo but Dh is not keen. It is also nice to have a sweet potato and carrot curry, with a sweet and coconut paste, such as jalfrezi. It is often a little hotter, but you can calm it down by adding yoghurt at/towards the end.

Enjoy!