One pot wonder

Whilst walking through the grocer's picking up some of my favorite vegetables, I saw this Korean brand of tofu, Cho Dang. I hadn't seen it for a good many years now and it brought back memories of an Easter trip we made many years ago where I met A, one of the most talented and messiest cooks I had ever encountered. She made this Curry on our stay there and even though she used Malaysian curry paste, the curry turned out with Thai flavors and was really delicious. The most memorable thing for me was that she had put this Cho Dang tofu into the curry and I had never had white tofu on curry before that!

We normally would put tofu puffs, but sliced white tofu... With A's recipe though, the sour tang from the curry latches onto the smooth tofu, and this particular brand had a bite to it which I adored.
So when hit with sudden cravings for A's curry I just broke all desperate housewife rules and made this one pot wonder (all your proteins and three vegs in one pot) for Monday night's dinner.

Preparation time including chopping: 1.5 hours
Serves 2 very hungry adults

Ingredients:
1.5 cups of steamed rice (To serve)
1/3 cup loosely packed chopped coriander, include roots if you have it
1 shallot diced
3 cloves garlic diced
1 litre stock
2/3 cups red curry paste. I used a Malaysian meat curry powder instead.
100ml coconut cream
1 tsp of tamarind purée
1 tsp of lime juice
1tbsp soy sauce
1tbsp fish sauce (A was very particular about the fish sauce. I was pretty Devo when I found out we had run out so had to use more soy sauce to balance out the flavours instead)
300g meat of choice: I used lean rump beef, diced
100g of sliced Cho Dang tofu
Three vegetables of choice: popular choices include potato, eggplant, carrot, tomatoes, beans...I used roasted sweet potatoes so that it is already soft, capsicum and okra, sliced into rather large pieces as I didn't want them to dissolve into the curry.

To Garnish:
Coriander leaves
Fried shallots

Method:

1) Heat a tbsp of vegetable oil on high heat in a heavy based pot. Fry the coriander stalks and root, shallots and garlic until fragrant.

2) Add curry powder mixed with 2 tbsp of stock to form a paste and mix them all up and add to the herbs to fry.

3) Add meat to brown in the Curry Paste Mix.

4) Add Coconut Cream and vegetables that you want to soften (I put in capsicum first then okra about 5 minutes later) If the curry gets too hot/start to dry up, you slowly add the stock, just 1.3 cup each time and you can now add the coriander leaves, tamarind, fish sauce, soy sauce and lime juice and begin balancing out the flavours. I added the soft potato and tofu after the flavour of the curry is right and let it simmer for 2-3 minutes on a lower heat before I began to spoon the curry into a serving bowl.

5) You can garnish with the remaining coriander leaves and the dried shallots. I even put some on the rice just to make it look nicer.

 And then, 'Makan!' Is how our Malaysian friends would encourage you to dig in!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone