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.

BBQ Roast Kangaroo

Sunday is a good day to do some work on my PhD. After messing about for the morning I cycled off to the office with my lunchbox full of treats.



Banana cake, figs, banana, honey-encrusted macadamia nuts and apple slices. I took a side jar of yogurt to schlorp over the top of the fruit when I got to work. Yummo!

For dinner Morgan and I made BBQ roast kangaroo. We cooked the mini-roasts by searing the roo on both sides for a couple of minutes and then covering the lid of the BBQ for 25mins on a low heat. Once off the heat wrap in foil and let sit for 10mins before slicing. Cooking times are similar to the same amount of medium-rare beef, but without the damage to the Aussie environment! :)

I served roasted sweet potato and butternut pumpkin in rosemary and olive oil (30mins on 180 degree oven). I made a quick rocket salad with lime juice and olive oil. Plus chickpeas and quinoa on the side.

Ingredients
1 cup quinoa
1 tin chickpeas
2 cups beef stock
3 tbsp sour cream
3 cloves of garlic finely chopped
1 red onion finely chopped
handful of olives finely chopped

method
simmer quinoa, chickpeas 1/2 garlic and stock for 5mins (covered). Add red onion, sour cream and remaining garlic and simmer for 10mins. Take off heat and add olives and pepper to taste.


Serve roast kangaroo with sides, cranberry sauce and Dijon mustard


What you're going to see on this blog is some repetition of ingredients. This is what happens when you're a real person with a finite kitchen and fresh produce.


Some items get used over and over again until they're used up. Sorry if it seems predictable! luckily we get a new box of exciting ingredients each week to experiment with.


Speaking of exciting ingredients. I've begun storing my vegetables inside these crisper snap-lock bags. They let the ethylene out, which helps prevent spoilage. I reuse the same bags over and over again. They really help keep all my produce fresh.