Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Eggplant, Mushroom & Pumpkin Thai Curry

The next challenge is: eggplant! Tonight my booful husband Morgan made thai curry.

Ingredients
1 onion finely chopped
3 baby eggplant cut in slices
2 small sweet potatoes diced
1/4 butternut pumpkin diced
4 swiss brown mushrooms sliced
Marinated tofu
1 can coconut milk
Green curry paste (from a jar)
Fish sauce
Fresh coriander
Lime juice

Method

Salt the eggplant and leave to drain out the yucky bitter juices. At the same time put pumpkin and sweet potato chunks into a moderate oven for 1/2 hr.

Update: Apparently fresh, small eggplants don't need to be salted--thanks to my readers for pointing this out. I guess living for so long with old, stale supermarket produce has affected the way I approach my veges.


Pre-dinner snacks of rice cakes, re-fried beans, (tin of re-fried beans mixed with sour cream, lime juice, garlic, jalapeno, pinch of cumin) and spouted mung beans.

Saute onion in some peanut oil. Add curry paste (plus extra red chillies if you wish) and cook for a few minutes until fragrant. Add eggplant (well-rinsed), mushrooms and coconut milk and bring to the boil (add a few kaffir lime leaves and a spoon of palm sugar if desired). Simmer for ten minutes. Add the roast veges, tofu and fish sauce and heat through.


Serve with fresh coriander on brown rice (we were lazy and used a microwave pouch).


Eggplant triumph! :)

Cleaning up the kitchen tonight I saw the empty bags from my tofu and rice and thought I'd share them. Anyone living in Brisbane can buy these at a local supermarket.


Soyco Tofu & microwavable brown rice. It's so easy to have these long-life items in the fridge and pantry to make week day meals a breeze.

4 comments:

  1. looks good but one comment.

    If eggplant are young and sweet without large seeds, they are not bitter and don't need to be salted.....

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  2. I usually skip salting on eggplants altogether and am yet to find it a problem - and my favourite way to have them is parma!

    Worth mentioning: SunRice is an aussie company totally worth supporting. They're a collective of rice farmers rather than a faceless corp. and are working hard on sustainable water practices. They mostly support family farms and are in pretty big danger of going under with the crop the way it has been - products like microwaveable rice and rice cakes allow them to add to their profit margin considerably, especially while Australia is in drought and not growing much rice.

    And that last is a nice point too - as an annual crops, rice farmers are able to respond to the amount of water available and go plant something else. The people who suffer are the factory workers, and they can get by on imported rice if products like these can be sold.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have to try this one (minus fish sauce to make it vegetarian). Looks brilliant. :)

    IMHO, salting eggplants only makes everything taste salty. Maybe the natural taste of eggplants isn't so palatable to some, or maybe we're just lucky to have excellent varieties here?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for the salt suggestions folks. I've modified the original post to reflect your thoughts.

    ReplyDelete