How make curry powder and cook a vegetable curry

Making curry powder
  • Until you’ve tasted homemade curry powder you won’t know what you’re missing.
  • The basic ingredients of any curry powder are coriander, cumin and turmeric in equal quantities. To Rob’s curry powder he adds ginger, bay leaves, chilli, cloves, fenugreek, black pepper, cardamom and cinnamon.
  • We need to dry roast the seeds, so heat a heavy-based pan up first then add coriander and cumin seeds. To make sure they don’t burn, keep the pan moving or keep stirring the seeds. After a few minutes feel the seeds with your hand and if they’re hot and have moisture coming from them that’s a sign they’re releasing their oils and have finished roasting. This will take 4-5 minutes per ingredient. Then roast bay leaves, cloves, cardamom, fenugreek and black pepper. Black pepper is used to help absorb the properties of turmeric better into our systems. Finally roast the cinnamon quills – crush first (with a pestle and mortar if you have one).
  • Cool all the roasted ingredients in one bowl.
  • Use a spice grinder or coffee grinder to reduce the spices to powder (a pestle and mortar will also do the job but takes a lot more effort). Sieve the grounds into another bowl. Put aside what doesn’t go through the sieve and that can be ground again.
  • Now add ground turmeric, ground ginger and ground chilli.
  • Spoon into glass jars with well-sealed lids. Store out of the sunlight.
  • The measurements for the ingredients of Rob’s curry powder are:
    1 cup coriander seed
    1 cup cumin seed
    1 cup turmeric
    3 bay leaves
    3 cloves
    1 teaspoon black peppercorns
    1 teaspoon fenugreek
    2 cinnamon quills
    3 cardamom pods
    1 tablespoon ground ginger
    1 tablespoon ground chilli
Making a vegetable curry
  • To make a tasty vegetable curry here are the ingredients:
    1 tablespoon coconut oil
    1 shallot
    1 onion
    1 teaspoon sugar (we used coconut sugar)
    3 generous teaspoons curry powder
    ½ pumpkin, peeled and steamed
    ½ cauliflower, cut into flowerets
    250 grams frozen beans
    1/3 cup cashew nuts
    400 ml can organic coconut cream
    1 tablespoon soy sauce
    juice of 1 lime
    handful of coriander leaves, chopped
  • Melt coconut oil, cook shallot and onion with sugar until soft and slightly caramelised. Add curry powder and cook for 2 minutes.
  • Add cauliflower and beans, then coconut cream. Cook till almost ready, then add pumpkin and cashew nuts. Cook for another 2 minutes. Add juice of the lime and stir through.
  • Garnish with coriander leaves.
  • Enjoy!

 

Camera: Tom Neunzerling
Editor: Thomas Asche