Jungle Curry

Day number 2 on the January health kick and the soreness of my legs from the aerobics workout videos on Amazon prime from day number 1 has obliterated all possibility of a run. Just a walk today for exercise but at least I can keep up the healthy-eating with another recipe from Shelina Permaloo’s ‘Sunshine Diet’. I was surprised to see a jungle curry in there as it’s typically a Thai dish. However, comparing it to my Thai cookbook, she’s kept it authentic. Jungle curry is a great option if you’re trying to keep the calories down as unlike most Thai curries we know in the West there is no coconut milk. Apparently coconuts are not so common in Northern Thai jungles! I also chose this recipe to be economical with the shrimp paste that I bought for the Ghanaian Okra I cooked the previous day.

Serves 2

Ingredients

Spray oil/vegetable oil

300g quorn (I no longer eat meat but the original recipe calls for 200g turkey mince)

300ml vegetable stock

1 aubergine

100g green beans

2 carrots

basil leaves (I forgot to include these)

Curry paste

1/2 tsp chilli flakes

6 cloves of garlic

5cm root ginger

1 tsp lemongrass paste

black pepper

1 tbsp dark brown sugar

1 tbsp fish sauce

zest of 1 lime

1 tsp shrimp paste

Method

1.) Peel the carrots, chop into slices and chop up the aubergines into cubes. You can see in my pictures I had a lot of aubergine which is because I had 2 aubergines to use up. Honestly I think aubergine is best roasted in the oven and had I had the foresight I would have just whacked it in there and omitted the carrot from the recipe.

2.) Fry the aubergine and carrot until cooked through then put to one side in a bowl. At this point it’s worth putting on some rice if you want to serve it with that.

3.) Put all the curry paste ingredients in a food processor and blitz. Then further crush in a pestle and mortar. (Unless you have a specific spice attachment on your processor, I don’t think a normal bowl will do the job – Thai people spend a lot of time grinding their curry paste in a pestle and mortar.)

4.) Heat some oil and fry the paste for a couple of minutes until fragrant.

5.) Add the quorn, the carrot and aubergine and the vegetable stock.

6.) Turn down the heat and simmer for 10 minutes or so until it’s reduced.

7.) In the meantime, rip up the basil leaves for the garnish.

8.) Serve!