Food Friday

I love Asian foods, from India all the way to the Philippines. I vaguely know how to cook a few Filipino dishes from my time there (pancit and lumpia to be exact) and I watched Seyan make Chinese food all the time in college (here's a shout-out to her famous fried rice!) but that's about the extent of my culinary knowledge from the Asian continent. However, there happens to be a great little spice shop in downtown Denver just a few blocks from where I used to work that Martha introduced me to. (She is a spice fiend. She can whip up the best concoctions of all sorts of global spices in seconds.) So to my advantage, she loved this shop and one day brought home a wonderful green curry spice...and the rest is history. I'm still in the process of perfecting my curry but this is what I have so far. It's really simple. I think I make it differently every time; I have a hard time following recipes. Lately I've been using a red curry bought in bulk at Ozark Natural Foods (for all you locals).

Vegetable Tofu Curry
(or I guess you could add some sort of meat if you are carnivorous)

In a medium saucepan (or wok), toss in a couple of rounds of olive oil and a tablespoon or so of garlic and let that start heating up. Add 1 can of coconut milk (I would like to try frozen coconut milk but haven't found it yet) and half a can of water to dilute it. I like to think this makes it a bit less fattening and it does stretch the recipe a bit (for those of you trying to make less of something into more!) without affecting taste too much. Add the spice concoction: a tablespoon of curry or however much you like really, a teaspoon or so of turmeric, maybe a teaspoon or so of ground ginger (unless you like to use fresh but I find that to be a hassle), and several shakes of the salt. If you want it spicy, add pepper as well but warning: don't go overboard on the pepper! At this point you can also add in a quarter cup of sugar if you like or allow each person to add that at the end to their liking (which is what we do in my family). Surprisingly, the sugar is key in this recipe. Chop up a few potatoes (I peel mine for this recipe), a few carrots, a green pepper, and an onion and toss those in. Allow this to come to a boil. There are differing opinions on boiling coconut milk but I have found it to work fine if you stir it regularly. Then turn down the heat and let it simmer until the potatoes are edible, stirring often. If you want to add the tofu, use the firm kind or it might fall apart. It's not necessary to add it in until the veggies have simmered a while. And there you have it. Easy. Serve it over rice.