Massaman Curry and Naan.

Well, hello! So Chris is at work until like 10 tonight, so I'm making dinner solo. It's currently 8:30, and I'm almost done. Oops. In the mean time I'm watching Wife Swap and harassing the cats. Anyway, tonight I decided to make one of Chris' favorites- Massaman Curry. I don't know how authentic it is, but whatever, it's really good. I've been sampling. The naan...I don't know. I don't know why I bother making bread. I'm seriously terrible at it. I'm bad at following recipes, so I really suck at baking anything. Occasionally I've made some fabulous muffins, but they take like triple the time the recipe says they will to cook. Either that, or I burn it. Yeast is not my friend, as you will see soon.

Okay, Wife Swap is ridiculous. Goths vs Hockey Family. The goth mom is trying to make the hockey dad wear a skirt.



But the naan. I looked up recipes for vegan naan, and found a bunch of different ones. The one I followed is here- http://innocentprimate.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/pillow-foods-vegan-naan/

Ingredients- 2/3 cup of warm water, 1 tsp sugar, 1 tsp dry active yeast, 1 1/2 cup flour (i used bread flour, but we'll see how that turns out.) 1 TBSP vegetable oil, and some salt.

So we don't have measuring spoons, so the palm of my hand works as one. Which is probably why I continually fail at making bread rise.

The first step is to put the warm water in a bowl, and put the yeast and sugar in it and stir to dissolve. It didn't dissolve- but I let it stand for ten minutes. It was supposed to froth. It didn't.


That is hardly froth, but I went with it, and added the flour and oil. Just realizing now I forgot to add the salt, we'll see what happens. I kneaded it for five minutes and left it, still waiting on how much it will rise.


On to the curry! Okay so here to I searched recipes, and didn't find any that were perfect, so I combined what I could from all of them. This won't be an exact recipe, but I don't think you need one! Spread your wings! Fly! Something like that, just have fun.

Ingredients- 3 sweet potatoes, 2 yellow onions, half a pineapple, 2 cans of coconut milk (I used light because i'm a girl and have an irrational fear of calories.) curry paste (MAKE SURE IT DOESN'T HAVE SHRIMP OR FISH IN IT, if you're vegan- a lot do!) cardamom powder, tamarind sauce/concentrate, 2 cinnamon sticks, peanuts (don't buy nice ones, you don't need them) some chili powder if you want it.

I probably didn't need to buy three sweet potatoes, but I do this all the time. For some reason the other night I thought Chris and I could eat three stuffed eggplants, we barely killed one and a half. k so

Chop the sweet potato first, nice bite size pieces. Ignore the rogue bananas that should be in the fruit bowl, but for some reason aren't. Put them in a nice bowl, set aside for a second.

Turn on the stove, heat up a large hunk of Earth Balance (or oil, but I had Earth Balance and it worked nicely). Let it melt and put a large spoonful of the curry paste in, and the cinnamon sticks, along with one of the cans of coconut milk. In about twenty seconds, it will smell AMAZINGGGGGGG.

It doesn't look so great- I have a shitty camera, but ahhhhhh it smells soooooooo good. Ahh! I got really excited here. So then I sliced the onions, and added them. Then the sweet potatoes-


At this point I realize that I cut way too many potatoes, and add the second can of coconut milk and another spoonful of curry paste, and some chili powder. Still smells amazing.

None of the recipes I looked at had pineapple in it, but all the Massaman curries I've eaten have had pineapple, so I wanted to add it. I realize that I've only had it in New England, which might not be especially authentic, but whatevs. Okay, so pineapple chopping. Cut off the top, then the sides so it looks like this-


Then chop off the sides, leaving the hard white part in the middle, and then cut around that. Chop into bite size pieces, realize you don't need THAT much pineapple, eat a quarter, put a quarter in the fridge, and put half in the curry.

Then I added the tamarind concentrate, about a spoonful. Precise. Let it cook on low until everything is soft.

Back to the naan! I really don't think it doubled in size, but I'm going with it. I kneaded it for another two minutes, and I Earth Balance-d the hell out of a cookie sheet, and made six balls of dough and flattened them.
Not particularly attractive- let's hope for the best. I also put a little earth balance on the top. Cook at 475F and check every couple of minutes, and flip a few times. They're really starting to rise! I am very excited about this.

Now, time to straighten the apartment, do this dishes, make the bed, have a glass of wine and congratulate yourself for being an awesome girlfriend.


Keep checking the naan, realize that it looks more like biscuits than naan. Whatever, you're still an awesome girlfriend who makes your boyfriend homemade naan.
Yeah those look like biscuits. But alright! Everything's done.



Chea. That's kind of a terrible picture, but curries don't photograph well and I have a terrible camera.

Hearts,

Diane

Dinner for two.

Diane and I have always enjoyed cooking together and further more eating together. I have always said that we should make a cookbook on how to eat well on a budget while staying true to a vegan lifestyle. Later today we are making Massaman curry, A favorite of mine!