Japanese golden curry

Posted in Main courses, Spotlight, Asian, Popular

Japanese golden curry recipe – a great starting point

Vegan Japanese Golden Curry with tofu and Linda McCartney vegan chicken or Plant Pioneers “chicken style chunks“! A winner with my children! It’s got them into eating spicy food, and now they’ll even eat a Green Thai Curry. This goes well with hummus and brown rice plus a few veggies and is a great family meal. I think sometimes it’s not worth getting too puritanical about cooking. Using a few ready made sauces with hard to find ingredients is fine. As long as you jazz them up a bit with some extra spices it ok. So for this dish, I make no apology in using a Japanese Golden Curry block mix. Because this is a vegan website to help you go vegan or improve your vegan food! Sometimes you just need easy fairly quick dishes.

Veggies to suit the dish

The main thing is to choose some good veggies – that suit the particular sauce or curry that you’re using. Good choices are potatoes, peppers, courgettes, carrots, baby sweet corn, white mushrooms, aubergine, onions, celery. I always add fresh ginger, and garlic for a bit of zing and some vegan fish sauce, plus soy sauce and a little veg stock – simply perfect. Pre-sauteeing the other veg in my Tefal actifry, but cooking the onions, ginger, garlic and celery in the large pan works well. For that, I like my Le Creuset, sauteuse or Mediterranean casserole which is perfect for these kind of dishes. Using an actifry – though by no means essential gives you more control over the timing. You can always just add them to the main pan if you prefer.

Getting going with those base ingredients

Start off with the onions, celery, ginger and garlic, and when that’s nice and soft, add in the Japanese curry blocks. I like to use quite a bit of the medium hot with a couple of blocks of the hot. Or you can use chillies instead of the hot curry blocks. Pre-saute the veggies in batches, and assemble it all, but making sure to add enough water. if you’re adding the veggies straight to the pan, you’ll need to simmer it longer until they’re tender. Vegan fish sauce as mentioned is a good thing to add to give a bit of extra depth. Thai Taste do one and they sell it in Waitrose as well as the Vegan Kind supermarket.

Cooking clever saves time and effort

A good plan is to make enough for say 8 to 10 and then use what you need and keep the rest for another meal. It will keep for 7 days in a good fridge. It’s superb when served with long grain basmati brown rice, and a green veg like brocoli. That way, you’ve got a really tasty nutritious meal packed with fiber.

Japanese Golden Curry

This is an easy dish, that can be embellished and made super good with a few extras and the right veggies. It's all about balancing the sauce with the veg. Some would argue that using ready made sauces like this is cheating - but it's just like using curry powder - but you make the dish work by using extras to enhance the taste and the judicious choice of veggies.

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Prep Time 35

Servings: 10 people

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Japanese

Ingredients Equipment Method Notes

Ingredients

2 medium onions – 2cm pieces – or slices - 350g approx.
300 gm baby potatoes – in 2cm pieces – cut in half & half again
2 medium carrots – in 2cm chunks – 300g approx.
1 smallish aubergine chopped in 2cm pieces 300g approx.
3 sticks of celery – chopped in 1 to 2 cm pieces – 200g approx.
5 cloves of garlic if you love garlic!
30 g of finely chopped ginger
2 medium red yellow, orange or green peppers – 2cm pieces – 350g approx.
400 g of firm tofu – 2cm pieces
1 pack of V-bites “chicken” pieces – or skip the tofu and use 1 ½ packs
2 whole packs of golden curry to serve 5 each 10 cubes in all plus 2 cubes of hot golden curry
1 cube low salt umami stock cube this is a Kallo brand stock cube
1 cube onion stock cube Kallo or similar
2 teasps of soya sauce low salt
1 teasp of vegan “fish sauce”. Thai Taste brand veggie one is vegan

Equipment

large pan or casserole,

Method

Chop the onions (slices or 2cm squares) and begin sautéing in a large pan (32cm Mediterranean casserole is best) on a medium heat.
Finely chop the ginger and add to pan, shortly followed by the crushed or finely sliced garlic.
Chop the celery into 2cm pieces and add to pan
Chopping the curry blocks up into smaller pieces makes them melt more quickly.
continue to saute the mix of onions, garlic, celery & ginger until it's nice and soft, and translucent. Then add the small pieces of golden curry block
Melt and soften the curry paste blocks on low heat and stir in to veg mix.
Add the water 1.2 litres – but maybe you will need another 200ml or so – it’s important that it’s not to runny or too thick. A judgement call is required here. Also add in the stock powder plus the soya sauce.
Meanwhile (and for this I use an Actifry) sauté (in a modest amount of oil) the other veg for these approximate times. Aubergine 15 mins, peppers 12 minutes & courgettes, tofu (plus chilli sauce & soya sauce) 12 minutes, Plant Pioneers chicken – 12 minutes. The idea is that they will take a minimal amount of extra time to cook and won’t be mushy when the dish is served.
potatoes, carrots 12 to 14mins
sauteeing the tofu in the actifry
Meanwhile simmer the sauce on a very low heat – for around 20 minutes – while the other veg and items are sauteed. Turn off the heat when you think it’s well integrated and every thing is tender.
Add all the veg and chicken to the sauce, and cook for another 10 minutes or so to integrate the flavours. You can use other veg, but these ones seem to suit the style of sauce the best.
Adjust water content if necessary – not too runny, but not too thick.
simmer until the veggies are tender, and add some chopped corriander a few minutes before serving.
Serve with brown basmati rice and a green vegetable of your choice.

Notes

• The Actifry is the easiest way to accomplish sautéing the veg as you can do other things while they are cooking (I have 2 I think they are so good!).
• You’re aiming to get everything to the point where it just needs a little extra cooking in the sauce for it all to be cooked with some texture to the veg.
• The sizes of the veg pieces are up to you, but roughly 2cm is a good measure. Not cubes of course, but that kind of size.
• The spices do contain a few e-numbers, I haven’t managed to find one that doesn’t but they are tasty, and most makes of golden curry are vegan – watch out for the fish sauce though as some do contain it……….