Back in high school, I lived near an authentic, honest to God, indian curry shop that was simply amazing. It was cheap, too, so I ended up eating there about four to five times a week for lunch. The owner served homemade potato, chicken, and vegetable curries with fresh naan and beef or chicken pastries. Unfortunately, not everyone in my neck of the woods liked the place, and it went under around the summer of 2004. Ever since then I've been off and on a somewhat holy crusade to rebuild that lovely recipe.

Sadly, most of the curry recipes I've tried over the years degenerate into brown vegetarian gack. This one, however, does not. Borne by mixing and matching elements of other curry recipes, this one is moderately spicy and brightly colored. It is also vegan, as far as I can tell. The garam masala is a common indian spice mix of pepper, coriander, cinammon, bay leaf, and other warming spices that play with your internal heating system to make you feel hot (as opposed to being a spicy hot).

Sauce
• 2 tbsp olive oil or butter
• 1 diced onion
• 1 can of diced tomatoes, around 400g
• 1 tbsp garam masala
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 1 1/2 tsp turmeric (or yellow curry powder, if turmeric is hard to get)
• 250ml vegetable stock (can substitute chicken stock if not vegetarian and lacking vegetable stock)
Vegetables
• 400g diced potatoes (hardy yellow ones that will hold up to boiling)
• 250g or so cauliflower or broccoli, chopped as fine as the potatoes
• 250g or so carrots, chopped to match the potatoes.

Over medium heat, sweat the onion in the oil or butter along with the spices until transparent, desperately trying to keep the spices from burning. Best done over low heat for a longer time. Don't try to caramelize the onions — they taste funny in the sauce and don't disintegrate well. The idea is to get it so that the onions will break up in the sauce and act as a thickener, since there isn't any chemical thickener (like cornstarch) around. Add the tomatoes and vegetable stock and set it on a burner out of the way to simmer for a good while.

In a big pasta pot, boil enough water to cover the veggies. Add in the potatoes and carrots first, wait about ten minutes, then add the cauliflower or broccoli. Boil an additional ten minutes or until everything is soft. You want the potatoes to be soft enough to break up just a little to thicken the sauce, but the pieces should be visible and have some texture to them. After the veggies are done, drain and stir in the sauce. Serve over rice (cooked with turmeric and butter to make it yellow and aromatic is the best), or a nice hard bread roll. Makes enough for four or so.

A nice trick that I haven't tried yet involves blending a portion of the cooked curry in a food processor and remixing it into the curry for a thicker sauce.

Here is another way to make a vegetable curry that is not just brown gack:

Ingredients

• 4 tbsp oil or a large chunk of butter
• 2 sliced onions
• Spices (minimum quantities):
  • 2 tsp ground coriander (seeds)
  • 2 tsp turmeric
  • 1 tsp curry powder (or 1 tsp garam masala and 1/4tsp powdered chillies)
  • 2 tsp chopped root ginger, or powder if that’s all you can get
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed (under a knife or a wooden spoon, not in a garlic press. If the cloves are small, use more. You can never be too careful with garlic.)
• 4 sliced carrots
• 250ml (1/2pt) vegetable stock (use stock cubes/powder, or water and a heaped tsp marmite/yeast extract/vegemite/[enter your perversion here])
• 350g (12oz) sliced courgettes (=zucchini=summer squash)
• salt and pepper
• 1 small cauliflower, broken into florets
• 50g (2oz) roasted cashew nuts (at least)
• 150g (5oz) natural yoghurt (at least)

Instructions

1. Heat the oil or butter gently in a large pan, add the onions and fry gently until they are softened (transparent).
2. Add the spices and garlic, fry for 1 minute, stirring.
3. Add the carrots, fry for 2-3 minutes, stirring.
4. Add stock, and salt and pepper to taste.
5. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes.
6. Add courgettes and cauliflower.
7. Cook around 10 more minutes, until the carrots are done but not until the cauliflower goes soft and squishy. Hard carrot is far preferable to squishy cauliflower.
8. Stir in the nuts and yoghurt and heat through.

Serve with rice, naan, chapati, cucumber in yoghurt, imagination...

Variants

• You can double the quantities of spices and garlic with no ill effects.
• If you like coriander, add some whole seeds and enjoy the taste exploding in your mouth when you bite on them.
• Add some potatoes at the same time as the carrots. You'll need more oil and spices.
• Use broccoli instead of cauliflower.
• Add other vegetables.
• Leave out vegetables.

This recipe is derived from one in a vegetarian cookery book in which none of the other recipes were any good at all. It therefore gets no credit, especially since I no longer have it and have forgotten what it was called.

At the risk of presenting further brown gack, I offer my...

Easy All-Vegetable Curry

Ingredients

The ingredients are not critical - you can use pretty much any and all vegetables, as long as you make allowance for cooking time. Here is a suggestion for roughly 5 litres of curry (which I freeze in 20 portions).

Core ingredients (highly recommended)

• A little oil to fry the onions & garlic
• 2 or 3 onions, chopped finely
• Quarter to half a bulb of garlic, chopped finely
• fresh ground black pepper
• 1 small jar (283g) of Patak's Madras curry paste
• 3 tins of chopped tomatoes
• Some concentrated tomato puree

The curry paste is most important. It should be 'curry paste', not 'curry sauce'. It contains lots of nice spices in the correct proportions and ground into in an oily mush, which saves us having to sort out a dozen spices ourselves. I use the Indian curry paste, but there is also Thai curry paste. In the UK, it seems the Indian paste is oil based, while the Thai paste is water based. Both these are different to 'curry sauce' which is a less concentrated, heat-and-serve solution. Curry paste requires cooking to make the spices edible.

Variable ingredients (can be adjusted widely)

Any veg, such as:

• 1 large baking potato
• 1 or 2 large carrots
• 2 sticks celery
• 1 tin kidney beans
• 3 tins mixed beans (in spicy/tomato/no sauce)
• 1 large tin spinach puree
• 1 or 2 other tins (there are so many other types of beans. I've also used sweetcorn.)
• A sweet pepper or two (red, green, yellow and/or orange)
• 6 to 8 small mushrooms

(In the past I have also used swede, cauliflower, leek, broccoli, parsnip, beetroot; really, anything available. All veg is chopped up. The harder it is, the smaller the pieces should be, in an effort equalise cooking time). As a guide, potato might end up in quarter-inch cubes, with some bits smaller than that.

Optional:

• 1 or 2 apples
  
• Raisins

Method

I normally cook all this in a single 5 litre saucepan with a flat, heavy bottom. Chop all the hard vegetables before starting cooking. Start by frying the garlic and onion in the oil. When they have softened and are getting slightly translucent, add the black pepper and curry paste. If this were a meat curry, you'd add the meat now and continue to fry while the meat sealed. Now add the tins of chopped tomatoes - this provides the juice that everything else will cook in. Tomato puree can go in now, or wait until later and judge the taste.

Turn the heat down, keeping the mixture simmering as you add the hard and then medium vegetables, chopped finely. Mix well into the curry & tomato sauce. If it starts to get too dry to cook (also risks sticking/burning), then add more tinned tomatoes or a glass of red wine.

Once the hard vegetables are in, keep simmering and occasionally mixing until they are half to three-quarters cooked. Now add the tinned veg (which is cooked anyway; really we're just heating it and getting some spices in) and the fruit. Keep heating and occasionally mixing.

Check the hard veg again. If it's nearly done, add the soft veg (sweet peppers and mushrooms) These should not be heated much, or they will be destroyed. When it's all hot - tada: all done.

Serving

Can be served with rice, pasta, chapatis, wholemeal bread or as a topping for jacket potatoes. Or freeze in 250ml portions for later quick dinners.