L to R: mango lassi, chana masala, raita, potato and swiss chard curry, keema curry

One of my (many many) favorite cuisine is Indian food.

It’s really fun to go to Indian restaurant with whole bunch of friends and share various curries and tandoori dishes.  (OK, I love sharing and trying various dishes with any cuisine, and am known to get really disappointed when some people don’t like that idea. (Maybe they are worried that their share will be mostly end up in my stomach?)

I cook curry periodically.  One of my dilemma had been this — when I cook curry at home, I only made one kind.  If I wanted some other curry, I had to wait until next time I felt like eating it, which in our household, well over a month later.

Now I figure out how to cook various curries easily all at once, so our single curry days are over.  Just like at the Indian restaurants — at home.

Do you want to know the secret?

It’s pretty simple. You just make a large batch of curry base, and then split it and cook with any cooked vegetable or meat you have.  For example, one will become Keema curry, one with eggplant, one with potatoes, one with spinach, one with cauliflower…  The choice are endless, only limited by, pretty much what else you have in your fridge, ready to go and your imagination. If you use leftover blanched or sautéed vegetables like I did, it shorten the process significantly.

So today, I’ll explain how to make the base.  Later this week, I’ll share the recipe on how to make other kind of curries.

Curry Base: 2-3 servings

Ingredients

• Vegetable oil - 2 TBS
• Garlic (minced) - 2 cloves
• Ginger (minced) - 1 inch/2.5 cm
• Curry Powder - 2 TBS
• Cumin powder - 1 ts
• Garam masala - 2 ts
• Onion (chopped) - 1 large
• Tomato (chopped) - 2 large, or 1 small can chopped tomatoes

Directions:

1. Heat oil in a skillet on medium heat.  Add minced garlic, ginger, and once it becomes fragrant, add the spices, stir briefly until the mixture becomes fragrant with the scent of curry spices.
2. Add chopped onions and cook until soft (and a little browned, if you have time), stirring occasionally.
3. Add chopped tomatoes and cook until most of the moisture evaporates and the mixture gets a bit “pasty”.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

You can keep this in the fridge for a few days.

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Tagged as: curry, easy, fast, food, indian, Recipe, vegan, vegetable, Vegetarian