Tag Archives: curry

#427 – Japanese Curry Lunch

#427 - Japanese Curry

I’m getting back onto the lunch packing horse again. I’ve been very naughty lately and eating convenience food or (even worse) not eating at all at lunchtime. After a phase of not doing something the anticipated chore always seems worse then the actual undertaking. So here I go again…

Today’s Lunch:

  • Japanese Curry with carrot, potato, sweet potato (those delicious orange fleshed ones), onion and strips of beef,
  • short grain brown rice and
  • mangetout

I didn’t like how the curry looked in my bento, so I took another photo after warming it up at work. Much more appealing do you think?

#427 - Japanese Curry

Daring Cooks July 2010 – Nut Butter

Daring Cooks July 2010 - Nut Butter

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

The first part of this month’s challenge was to produce a fresh nut butter using nuts of our choice.  I chose to make a raw almond butter and because the end result would be used in a savoury dish I loosened it up with a little garlic infused avocado oil. For awhile I thought my little food processor wouldn’t be able to handle the nuts or produce anything but nuts crumbs. But with a little patience and a few added teaspoons of avocado oil we eventually got there.

Daring Cooks July 2010 - Nut Butter

The final part of the challenge was to produce a savoury dish using our freshly made nut butter. I chose the butter chicken recipe as it is a dish I’ve wanted to cook for awhile.  It came out really well and yet again I find myself wondering what I was so afraid of and thinking that sometimes things are not as complicated as you think they are.

Daring Cooks July 2010 - Butter Chicken

All recipes from this months challenge can be found here.

#410 – Lentil and Okra Curry Lunch

#410 - Lentil and Okra Curry

I often see okra in my local Checkers but, not knowing how to cook it and having read tales of how slimy it can be, have usually avoided buying it.  After a little internet research I discovered cooking okra with tomatoes reduces the slime factor.  With this knowledge I took the plunge, bought some okra and devised this lentil and okra curry.

Today’s Lunch:

  • Lentil and Okra curry,
  • brown rice with sun dried tomatoes,
  • coriander yoghurt,
  • dried mango and
  • some grapes.

Here is my recipe for Lentil and Okra Curry.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup of black lentils
  • 1 tsp olive oil
  • 2 onions thinly sliced
  • 2 garlic cloves minced
  • 4 tablespoons curry powder
  • 4 tomatoes roughly chopped
  • 2 cups tomato puree
  • 1 cup water
  • 300g okra topped and tailed then cut into 1cm rounds
  • 1 green pepper cut into strips

Method:

  1. Cover lentils with water and leave to soak (overnight is best, but I only soaked them for four hours and this was sufficient).
  2. Fry onions and garlic in olive oil till the onions are translucent.
  3. Add curry powder and stir to coat.
  4. Add lentils, chopped tomatoes, tomato puree and water and leave to cook for 15 minutes.
  5. Add okra and green pepper then cook for a further 5 minutes.

Service over rice with coriander yoghurt.

Makes 4-6 servings.

Lentil and Okra Curry