Eggplant and Lentil Curry

A good old standby. I always stock curry, rice and beans in the cupboard, and, though I really like to use eggplant in this dish, you can use whatever veggies you have available.

Ingredients

Makes enough for 4-5 hungry people.

Green Grocer

2 good sized eggplant

1 large onion

2 large carrots

green vegetable of choice. For convenience, I often use frozen peas or frozen spinach for this dish, but broccoli or fresh beans would be great.

Optional: 1 litre of vegetable stock

Dry Store

4 teaspoons of curry powder

4 cups of brown lentils. Red or green/yellow lentils are fine, but they will lose their shape during cooking.

3 cups brown rice

400g Tin of tomatoes crushed or whole

2 Tbsp frying oil

2 Tbsp high quality oil, ghee or butter

salt to taste. I often season this with Nam Pla (Thai Fish Sauce) for more umami, but that renders the dish unsuitable for vegetarians.

Method

• Either soak the lentils overnight or simmer them for 15 minutes in a separate pan
• Bring the rice to the boil and then turn it right down to the lowest setting for 40 minutes.
• Chop the onion and carrots paysanne (rough cut ~1cm cubes) 
• Fry the onion and carrots in the frying oil over a high heat. Add a little salt at this stage for a deeper flavour.
• Chop the eggplant into 2cm cubes.
• When the onion and carrots have a little colour on them, add the eggplant and get a little colour on them. The eggplant will soak up all the oil. If it looks a little dry at this stage, add some enough oil to give the eggplant the 'wet' look
• Add the curry powder. Stir to coat everything. Fry for a minute or two until the smell of the curry gets toasty
• Drain and add the lentils
• Add the tomatoes - if using whole tomatoes, gently crush them with your hands before they go in the pot
• Rinse the tomato tin with stock or water and add to the pot
• Add extra oil/butter/ghee. 
• Simmer gently for about an hour. The lycopene in the tomatoes will dissolve in the oil/butter/ghee and give it a rich red colour. 

Notes

Serve with a raita - I make one with finely diced cucumber and yoghurt.

The President's Peaches

No, not that president, these ones. I've had their hit song, "Peaches", running around my head for a day now on account of the 20kg of peaches I picked of my neighbour's tree (with her permission).

I agonised over what to do with this bounty. I don't have the right equipment to can peaches. Canning, or pickling them in sugar (aka jam) both require peeling the fruit and I'm a bit overwhelmed by that prospect. Forget about trying to eat them all fresh - after the first dozen, I was over that idea. So, I settled on trying a few different ideas:

• Lavashak - Iranian style fruit leather
• Peach jelly - "jelly" referring to a jam without the fruit solids
• Dried Peaches
• Peach syrup - for Ice blocks and drinks

Here is roughly how I made the jelly and the syrup. This made about 2 Litres of jelly.

Ingredients 

Green Grocer 

10kg peaches. They don't have to be super ripe, in fact, the acid in the less-than-ripe fruit is essential for getting it to set.

Many recipes say to use lemon juice for extra acidity, but I had enough unripe fruit to provide sufficient acid.

I also found recommendations to use refined pectin to be sure the jelly gels. I don't have anything against it, but its not something I had to hand. I did it the hard way and got to bed at midnight.

Dry Store 

1kg sugar

Method

• Remove the stones and roughly cut the fruit.
• Put fruit in a big pot with about 2 litres of water
• Bring to the boil, simmer for about 10 minutes, then strain. I used a wire mesh strainer and pushed through batches of fruit. You could do it all at once using cheesecloth and leave it overnight to maximise the yield.
• Return the juice to a clean pan
• Bring to the boil and add the sugar
• Simmer robustly until setting point - you can read about this elsewhere. I kept testing by dropping a bit onto a cold plate and seeing if it made wrinkles. It took about 2 hours as I had to boil off quite a bit of extra water.

Notes

There is a real art to jam-making. I've only tried a few times and I don't always get it right. Take a look at the articles linked above. They certainly improved my jam game.

I took off some of the syrup for ice-blocks and drinks once I judged the sour/sweet balance to be about right.