Purple and Green Curry

By Evan Casper-Futterman & Katherine Howitt

Our first CSA share was this winter, so we had gotten pretty used to being creative with beets, turnips, rutabaga, radishes, and of course, the unforgettable kohlrabi. But with the winter share, at least we had a couple weeks to figure out how to integrate all of those good roots into our weekly meals. Now, as first-timers to the summer share, we have to be super up on our game and ready to rock from the moment the box comes in the door on Wednesday afternoon. 

So we’ve gotten our routine down - quick inventory of the haul, followed by a reference check to what we’ve got on the fridge, followed by a huddle on first draft meal inspirations, followed by the longer task of cutting stems, and repacking everything into the fridge so it fits. Not easy with some of the leafy greens and giant spring onions! For dinners where we’re not sure exactly what we’ll want or have left in any given week, we’ve taken to writing in “garden basket” as a general catch all, that can go with anything: tofu garden basket, pasta garden basket, etc. 

But the times when inspiration strikes are usually a bit more fun, because they come with some intentionality around flavors, colors, etc. This week, our first meal was a gigantic (sort of accidentally) tofu and vegetable curry. This curry has now fed each of us (in a two person household, our cat has his own veggie share) for at least two or three meals, and is a real crowd pleaser we’ll come back to throughout the rest of the summer and fall. 

For the curry, we started off with a few things we had already that we wanted to use: tofu, one pepper, some mushrooms, and broccoli. The rest were from our share: a heaping bunch of amaranth, a beautiful purple pepper, an eggplant, romano beans, and a couple spring onions. We also threw in some of the garlic from the share the previous week. 

While the rice cooked with a bit of coconut milk, we threw the ingredients into the pan in stages, eventually realizing that we were looking at a near overflow situation. The ingredients were all cooked down with some curry paste and coconut milk, and after about 20 minutes of simmer, we were ready to go. It felt great to start off the new share with using so many different share ingredients all in one recipe, and we’re excited to try it again with some new veggies later on this summer.

RECIPE

Ingredients:

Lots of veggies! We used:

• Amaranth

• Peppers

• Eggplant

• Mushrooms

• Broccoli

• Spring Onion

• Garlic

• Rice (1 cup)

• 1 can coconut milk

• 1 tablespoon red curry paste

• 1 teaspoon curry powder

• 1 teaspoon coriander

• 1 teaspoon cumin

• ½ teaspoon paprika

• ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes

• Olive oil

• Salt and pepper to taste

To make the rice:
Boil 1 part rice with 2 parts water, half the can of coconut milk and ½ teaspoon of salt. Once boiling sit to simmer for 20-25 minutes until all liquid is absorbed. 

To make the curry:
We definitely didn’t follow a recipe here but spices and oil went first followed by onions and garlic. We added ingredients based on our beliefs about how long they’d take to cook (broccoli early, mushrooms late, tofu somewhere in the middle) to give everything adequate time to cook and cook down. At some point we added the rest of the coconut milk. Salt and pepper throughout as desired. 

Finishing touches:
We like more spice so we added hot sauce while eating.