It’s All About What You Do With It
Posted: Monday, July 14th, 2008 by Rob
Die-hard carnivores have some preconceptions about vegetarian foods. “Bland,” they say. “Wimpy,” complain others. It involves all that chopping and weird produce. However, in nutritional bang for the buck, vegetables provide a filling, healthy meal if you choose wisely, and flavor is all a matter of how you work with them. Plus, with a few adjustments this dish can go from vegetarian to omnivorous in a flash.
This basic Thai-style vegetable curry takes about 45 minutes from start to the table, mostly because of the number of ingredients that must be assembled. Don’t be intimidated – it’s a lot of stuff, but it’s prepared very simply.
Ingredients:
2 large sweet potatoes
8 oz. frozen, cut okra
10-12 large leafs kale
3 cups prepared vegetable stock
1 13.5 oz can coconut milk
2 cups plain non-fat (or low-fat) yogurt
2 shallots, minced fine
1 1″x1″ knob of fresh ginger, grated fine
3 tbsp. olive oil
2 tsp. turmeric powder
1 tsp. ground coriander seed
1/2 tsp. ground cumin seed
1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
3/4 tsp. grated nutmeg (fresh, if possible)
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
Salt
Limes
Peel the sweet potatoes, rinse, and cut into 1″ cubes. Rinse and drain the kale, then remove the center stems and roughly chop. You should end up with about 4 cups of chopped kale.
Combine all dry spices together and set aside. Place a 5-quart pot over med-hi heat and add the olive oil. When the oil begins to look shimmery on the surface, add the ginger and shallot. Allow to cook for about a minute – do not allow to brown, and add the dried spices to the oil. Stir immediately for 15-20 seconds, and the spices will become very aromatic. The mixture will likely stick to the bottom of the pot – this is OK.
Add the veg. broth and coconut milk and stir to combine. Salt to taste. Add the okra and sweet potatoes, stir again, cover, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 25 minutes.
Test the potatoes with a paring knife – if the blade goes all the way through with no resistance, they’re done. Taste the sauce. Add salt if necessary, then add the kale, stir, re-cover, and simmer for another five minutes. Lightly whip the yogurt with a whisk to reduce curdling. Remove from heat and stir in yogurt. Serve over rice (preferably jasmine or basmati) with a wedge of lime for squeezing. Provide chili sauce (Sriracha is widely available in the international section of your supermarket).
The most expensive thing about this meal is the spices, and you should have many of these on hand to start with*. The vegetables are dirt cheap – $1.50 worth of sweet potatoes, less than a buck for kale, $1.60 for a pound of frozen okra, 79¢ worth of shallots, and 59¢ of ginger. The coconut milk’s about $1.69, and vegetable broth is about 89¢ for 14 oz.
If, however, you can’t get away with serving this minus some protein, substituting 3-4 large carrots for the sweet potato and adding a pound’s worth of firm-fleshed white fish such as cod, halibut, or grouper yields a decent fish curry. Other optional additions – whole Thai basil leaves, lemongrass, 2-3 dried red chiles, spinach or mustard greens instead of kale.
With plenty of vitamin A, folic acid, fiber, and complex carbohydrates, this mostly one-pot meal (minus the rice) really brings the flavor.
* We’ll be talking about how to outfit your spice rack in another article.
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Cinnamon said,
August 6, 2008 @ 2:17 am
Make sure that you use real Cinnamon and not Cassia.
Cassia has a chemical called coumarin which could be toxic. Please click the below link to read more.
http://www.bfr.bund.de/cd/8487
Rob said,
August 6, 2008 @ 10:09 pm
I almost tossed your comment because of your link to an industry promotional site (which I removed), which smelled canned-pink-meatish. However, I have to speak to this because I’m sick of people who can’t do math, nor think rationally, responding to every scary-sounding compound with horror and alarm. I’m sorry if I’m being harsh with you.
Yes, coumarin is used in rat poison, and cassia bark contains coumarin, but rodent metabolism is very different from humans. A healthy human would have to eat 275mg per kilogram of body weight (2 1/2 tsp. of cinnamon) to have a 50% chance of consuming a lethal dose. For a 110-lb woman, that’s over half a pound of cinnamon.
Coumarin can be problematic for people who have compromised liver function, or have a rare sensitivity to it. Cassia “cinnamon” contains 4-5% coumarin by weight.
The 1/2 teaspoon in this recipe (1.15g) would contain about 57 mg total, and each serving (the recipe serves about six) would contain less than 10mg. The recommendation for people who might be sensitive to coumarin is 1mg/kg of body weight. A 120-lb. individual with compromised liver function would have to eat the whole pot to exceed the recommended limit.
Lots of foods have toxic compounds – almonds, stone fruit seeds, and apple seeds contain cyanide compounds. Rutabaga, spinach, and beets contain oxalic acid. Plants don’t want to be eaten. However, for the average healthy person, these compounds present little to no risk, and it irks me that panic-mongers want to make food “dangerous.” No wonder the American diet is so damned pitiful.