Thai butternut squash curry

(For the meal shown in the picture, I only had carrots for my extra vegetables, and I used chili powder instead of a fresh chili.)

Ingredients

• 1 butternut squash
• 1 medium onion, roughly chopped
• 500g of other vegetables, such as green beans, broccoli, carrots, aubergine, pepper
• 400ml (1 can) coconut milk, or equivalent made from creamed coconut dissolved in warm water (creamed coconut is cheaper)
• 2·5cm piece fresh root ginger, roughly chopped
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2·5cm piece fresh lemongrass (if you have it)
• 1 fresh chili, or dried
• ½ teaspoon ground turmeric
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• Juice of 1 lime
• Sesame oil, or another oil if you don’t have it

Method

1. Put the onion, garlic, ginger, lemongrass, chili, turmeric, salt, lime juice and oil in a blender and puree until a smooth paste. (I don’t have a blender, so I finely chopped everything with a knife.)
2. Peel the squash with a potato peeler. Chop off the stalk and flower end. Chop in half and use a spoon to remove the seeds. Chop into 2cm cubes. It is important to remove all the seeds, they have a very bitter taste.
3. Prepare the other vegetables by washing and chopping into chunks.
4. Put the paste into a large pan or wok and fry gently, stirring, for 2 minutes.
5. Add the vegetables and stir, to coat them with the paste. Fry them for about 5 minutes.
6. Add the coconut milk and mix well.
7. Bring to the boil then turn down the heat to simmer, uncovered, for 10–15 minutes, until the vegetables are tender and the sauce has thickened. Stir occasionally, to prevent burning and uneven cooking. Add more water if the sauce gets too dry, before the vegetables are cooked.

One butternut squash, a pepper, two onions, a pack of mini-sweetcorn (200g) and four medium-sized mushrooms made enough curry for three generous servings.

This page was last modified on 23 January 2008.

This work by Matthew Blissett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.