This is one of my staple dinners. But last night, as I had to go to my allotment to get some comfrey to make a comfrey poultice for my ribs, I did it slightly differently. I usually steam the cauliflower but as it would take me 20 minutes to get to the plot and back, I roasted it in the oven instead.
INGREDIENTS
- A cauliflower
- One can of coconut milk
- Thai yellow curry paste
- Tomato purée
- Green beans, frozen
- Sweetcorn, frozen
- Greens
- Sumac
- Lemon juice
- Brown rice
METHOD
- Use as much of the cauliflower as you need. I was making enough for dinner and for lunch the next day so I used three-quarters of it. I chopped it in half, pulled off the florets, then put them in an oven dish with a little bit of olive oil. I sprinkled them with sumac for some tanginess. Then I went to the plot, picked comfrey and came back.
- With the cauliflower still roasting, I put some brown rice on to boil, in an uncovered saucepan. I always steam white rice in the steamer – one cup rice to one and a half cups of water – but brown rice is trickier so I boil it. I cover the rice with boiling water then top up the water if it boils dry. It takes about 25 minutes.
- I steamed some frozen green beans and sweetcorn for five minutes in the steamer.
- Then, I took a small bowl and squeezed in a few nuggets of yellow curry paste, 3/4 of the can of coconut milk (shaken first to liquefy it), and squeezed in a dollop of tomato paste. Sorry not to be more accurate, but it depends on how spicy or coconutty you want the sauce to be. Ignore the ginger and garlic in the picture, I was going to use it to fry with the greens, but it turns out to be a salad dressing I’d stored in the jar.
- You can make the paste as thick or runny as you like. I made mine quite thick. I took the cauliflower out of the oven, when it was browned but not blackened, and added it to a deep frying pan, which I used because I wanted to simmer with the lid on. I added the green beans, then stirred in a mountain of fresh greens. Spinach, chard: the usual.
- Once they had cooked down, I added the sauce. Then, I made a mistake. I thought the paste was too thick, so I watered it down with some hot water. I shouldn’t have done that: it was then too watery and I should have stuck with the paste as it was. So I tried to rescue it by adding a teaspoon of white flour mixed with water, i.e. my standard gravy thickening method.
- After about five minutes of simmering on a medium-low heat, so that the sauce was bubbling, I added some salt and lemon juice, and served it with Turkish yogurt and parsley, on top of the rice, plus some torn up bits of Quorn chicken fillets for extra protein. It was alright.
And, because I want this blog to be realistic, I’ll show you what my counter top looked like afterwards. Not glossy, not shiny, just messy.
