Vegetarian Homemade "Curry in a Hurry"

In the time it takes to cook the rice, you can make this curry from scratch. Made with all natural and nutritious ingredients - unlike jars of ready-made curries which are packed with toxic artificial ingredients and very little nutrition! Plus there's no satisfaction in that kind of cooking :-)

You may have seen a post I did a while ago on Vegetarian Curry, which I absolutely love, yet this quick version is very similar in taste and texture, so a good option if you don't have as much time to prepare the dish. The list of ingredients even in this quick version may appear long at a glance, but actually most of them are flavours and spices, which I'm assuming the vegetarians amongst you will likely have already. If you're new to vegetarianism, I would recommend stocking up on as many herbs and spices as you can, and things like honey, natural yoghurt, tomato puree, pesto, mustard, etc, as it's the clever combination of flavours and textures that make vegetarian dishes so yummy and (in my opinion now) far superior to meat dishes I used to eat! Without creating your own flavoursome sauces, you may find veg and grain dishes a little bland and lose interest in preparing meals. But if you get creative... every dish is a taste sensation, not to mention nutritious! I don't recommend the use of stock cubes, 'stock pots' or granules, as they all contain MSGs. You really don't need them anyway, as flavouring your own dishes with herbs & spices is so easy once you get the knack.

I use organic wholegrain brown basmati rice as personally I'm not too keen on regular brown rice, but I don't want to eat white rice as it's not as nutritious. Wholegrain basmati is perfect, as it looks and tastes so much like white rice I have served this to fussy eaters and they didn't even notice! Ha ha. I also recommend using a healthy oil such as coconut, avocado or olive, as the oil becomes part of the sauce and you don't want to be ingesting unhealthy vegetable oils (such as sunflower, rapeseed, grapeseed, canola, etc).

What you will need: (Makes enough for 1 hungry person, or 2 modest appetites!)

75 - 100g wholegrain brown basmati rice (per person)

Coconut oil for frying

2 large carrots

1 onion

4-6 cloves garlic

1/2 red pepper

1/2 courgette

1 cup mixed beans*

2/3 cup water

2 tblsp tomato puree

3 tblsp natural yoghurt

2 tsp coconut powder

1/4 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp honey

2 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp garam masala

1/2 tsp curry powder

* I always have my own stash of cooked-from-dried beans in little jars in the freezer, which is super handy if you do a lot of vegetarian cooking. Please see my previous post on the easiest way to batch cook beans. In this recipe I used black turtle beans and pinto beans, but any type will work just as well as it's the texture of them that is most important.

Method:

Put the rice in a pan and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil and then reduce heat, and simmer for about 30 minutes whilst you prepare the curry

Peel and roughly chop the carrots, onion and garlic. Blitz in a food processor or manual veg chopper

In a large frying pan, saute the carrots, onion and garlic on moderate heat for about 8-10 minutes until softened. Dice the pepper and courgette whilst this is sauteing

Add the pepper and courgette to the pan. Continue to saute for 5 minutes

Add the beans, water, tomato puree, natural yoghurt and all the spices. Simmer on moderate heat for about 10 minutes until everything is cooked to a hot temperature and the sauce is a desirable thickness.