I think I have mentioned that though on the whole my family is an omnivorous group we do have one vegetarian who is aiming at paganism.  I know that many families find this a hard situation.  I like for us to sit down and have our meals together whenever possible so this means the food needs to be ready at the same time… this is not always possible but it is the goal. Sometimes this means that I am making two meals at the same time like I did on Sunday.  Other times this means that Katie cooks her protein and I provide the vegetables and grains.

No one really wants to cook two separate meals if they can help it.  Often I do vegetarian or vegan meals so as to keep everything simple but I have no intention of denying one person in order to provide for the other. It was Father’s Day and my husband had requested curry.  The great thing about curry is that you can use just about anything in it.  I had an abundance of white fish (mostly Hake I believe) so decided to make it a fish curry.  This is how I made two meals simultaneously, one with fish and one with chickpeas.  I made this up as I went and had my husband write down everything I did as I am horrible at following recipes.

Curry recipe: serves 6

2 Onions – diced

2 Bell peppers – diced

5 Carrots – diced to about the size of a sweetcorn kernel

2 Vegetable stock cubes

800 ml Water

3 Tbsp Curry powder (I used a madras curry powder)

1 can (400ml) Coconut milk

1 Tbsp Tomato puree

2 tsp Garam masala

For vegan version: 200 g tinned chickpeas

For Fish version:  1 kg white fish (diced chucks)

1 package of prawns (peeled)

 

Step 1:

Sauté the onions until starting to soften

Step 2:

Add the peppers, carrots, veg stock cubes,  and 300 ml water.  Cook until the carrot  starts to soften to your taste.

Step 3:

Add the curry powder, coconut milk,  tomato puree and the rest of the water.  Let cook another 5 minutes or so.  It should now be a nice curried vegetable soup.

Step 4a:

Ladle out about 2 scoops of the “soup”(per person having the veggie option) into a second saucepan.   Add chickpeas. Allow to cook together until the chickpeas are warm through.  Add 1/2 tsp garam masala.

Step 4b:

To the remaining vegetable soup add the fish and prawns.  Cook until the fish is cooked through.  Add 1.5 tsp (reduce as needed if you have more than one veggie serving going out) of garam masala.

 

Serve with rice or naan if you like.  If you want to add some greens I would suggest spinach.  If you have finicky eaters like I do the best way to get that spinach in is to stick the fresh spinach in a freezer bag and freeze it the day before.  Just before the end of cooking the curry get out the spinach bag.  Beat the frozen spinach until it is frozen confetti in the bag.  Add the frozen spinach confetti to the curry and it will cook pretty much instantly in the boiling sauce.  I do the same thing with most soups and stews as well.

I hope you enjoy this curry as much as we did.  This was truly my favourite curry I have had yet.

I plan to provide two way meals once every week in the future.  If you enjoyed this one please follow me so you don’t miss future recipes.