March 12, 2007: Punjab spinach vegetable curry

Continuing our celebration of SBS's Hooray for Bollywood series, we settled in on Monday night with 'The Rising: Ballad of Mangal Pandey' and this curry. Again, the inspiration came from Camellia Panjabi's '50 Great Curries of India', a book that is focussed predominantly on meaty curries. Luckily, the curry sauces all sound wonderful, and can easily be applied to vegetarian alternatives. The basis of tonight's curry was a lamb spinach curry, with a marinade and a spinachy sauce. We swapped lamb for vegies, mainly potato, with a few mushrooms and carrots for colour and variety. I think we went a bit overboard on the spuds, so the marinade and spices had too much work to do to spread their flavours fully around, leaving the whole thing a little blander than I'd like. Luckily we're well stocked with chutneys and pickles to liven things up - it would have been hard going to get through dinner and three lunches of slightly tasteless curry. I think we could probably go with something more suited to a marinade next time - tofu or seitan or something, and pay a little more attention to the sauce-to-solids ratio to ensure the flavour at the end justifies all the hard work.

Punjab spinach vegetable curry

3 potatoes, peeled and chopped
2 cups mushrooms, halved
2 carrots, diced
3 cloves garlic
2 green chillies
2 inch piece of fresh ginger
200ml yoghurt
2 teaspoons cumin
200g spinach leaves, washed
2 bay leaves
6 cardamom pods
2 cloves
2 medium onions, chopped
1 teaspoon coriander powder
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons oil

To make the marinade, puree the yoghurt, ginger, garlic and chillies in a food processor, along with one teaspoon of the cumin powder. Marinate the carrots, mushrooms and potatoes in this mixture for as long as possible - we gave it about an hour, but it could have done with longer.

The next step is to sort out the spinach - you'll need to wash your food processor in between these steps so you can puree the spinach into a liquidy mush. First of all, blanch the spinach for a few seconds in some boiling water and then drain it. Then zap in the food processor and you're ready to go.

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat. Throw in the bay leaves, cardamom and cloves and fry for a minute or two. Add in the onions and fry for about 15 minutes, until they're nice and soft.

Add the corainder powder and the cumin powder and a splash of water. Stir everything together and cook for a few more minutes. Tip in the marinated vegetables and cook for about five minutes, until everything is well combined. Add in the tomato paste and the chopped tomatoes, along with a cup of hot water and the salt.

Simmer for as long as it takes for the potato to go nice and soft - about half an hour or so. Add in the spinach puree and stir everything together for a couple more minutes of cooking. When it's all done, serve it up on freshly fried roti bread with a few spoons of chilli and lime pickle and settle in for three hours of Bollywood entertainment.