Diet Curry devine

This is a firm favourite in the devine household and beyond; everyone who has tasted this quick and simple dish has DEMANDED the recipe!

In fact, it’s loosely based on BAKISALMON’s ‘No Point Veggie Curry’ from WeightWatchers (you have to be logged in to see the recipes). Here is my version of the recipe:

Prep Time:10 mins to chop up veggies
Cooking Time: 20-30 mins
Serves: 4

Equipment:

• One cooking hob
• Electric hand blender
• Chopping boards
• Knife
• Spoon
• Can opener
• Jug
• Risotto Pan (Ø250mm diam x 50mm deep pan)

Shopping List:

• 400g (1 can) tomatoes [chopped];
• 250g (1 large) Onion [chopped];
• 250g Lamb or chicken [diced];
• 200g (1 small tub) Greek style natural yogurt [3% fat];
• 40g (2 tbsp) curry powder or spicy Bombay ;
• 20g (1 tbsp) Kalonji seeds;
• Garlic (1 clove) [chopped];
• 250ml cold tap water (or enough to cover vegetables).

Bulk up with any vegetables you have in the fridge, they don’t make much difference to flavour or texture, it’s your preference! We usually add the following:

• 300g (2 small) courgettes [sliced];
• 150g (1 medium) green pepper [capsicum, or bell-pepper];
• 150g (1 medium) yellow pepper [capsicum, or bell-pepper].

We have also used 1/2 butternut squash, celery, fresh spinach, and one or two green chillies if you want some extra heat!

To Make devine Curry:

Chop the meat and vegetables into small chunks and open the can of tomatoes.

Dry fry the Kalonji seeds, chopped onions and garlic over a medium heat until slightly browned. Add the meat and brown. Add the rest of the chopped vegetables and stir-fry until slightly soft. Add the can of tomatoes and curry powder then cover with cold tap water. Bring to boil and set to simmer for 20-30 mins until vegetables are cooked and sauce has reduced.

Meanwhile, you can get cracking making the accompaniment which could be rice, naan bread, pappadums (lentil crackers), cous cous, chips or a healthy green salad!

The next bit is a bit tricky but it makes all the difference. Spoon out as much of the meat as you can from the curry and keep warm. Put the sauce into a jug and blend using a hand blender until smooth. Return meat and the purée back into the pan until ready to serve with the Greek style yogurt in small dishes (the yogurt when mixed in with the curry makes a delicious milder ‘Korma’ variation).

Footnotes:

We have split-up the curry, blending half of it to a smooth thick sauce and leaving the other half ‘chunky’ — et voila! two really different dishes in one! The blender makes THAT much of a difference — it’s quite amazing how authentic and wonderful the dish becomes when it is a thick sauce for the meat… we are so glad we thought this up all by ourselves!

You could easily take this idea further — splitting the dish again and again to create six smaller but quite distinct dishes! Just take about one-third of the chunky curry to one side. This will simply be halved, where meat goes into one half, leaving the other as basic chunky veg curry. Meanwhile, blend the other two-thirds worth of chunky veg curry until a smooth thick sauce, then divide into four equal portions — leave the aside the first quarter untouched as a dip, add meat to the next portion for an authentic Indian ‘Bhoona’ style dish, then add the Greek style yogurt to the next amount to make a ‘Korma’ dish. The final quarter of the sauce can be the base for dish that is anything you want — tomatoes and onion make a sort-of ‘Rogan Josh’ style dish, or else add more chillies or curry powder (or both) for a real kick — which will make a pretty perfect ‘Madras’ style dish. In summary, with some concentration, you can amaze people at a dinner party by producing a buffet of Indian food in about half-an-hour…

1. Chunky + meat
2. Chunky vegetarian dish
3. smooth vegetarian dip
4. smooth + meat
5. smooth + meat + yogurt (‘Korma’ style)
6. smooth + meat + more tomatoes/ tomato purée/ onions (‘Rogan Josh’ style)

The main thing is that you cannot get this wrong! It simply cannot fail. The nice thing is that as it does not use oil, butter, lard, cheese, cream, sugar, colouring or E Numbers, it really is about as healthy as you can get!