Aubergine, Sweet Potato & Plantain curry

One of the inevitable consequences of moving towards a mediterranena diet is the increase use of

vegetables without actually becomming a vegetarian. Another reason for increasing the occurrence of vegetables is the fact that they are so damned easy to prepare and cook that they fit in with a midday main meal eating pattern and accommodate the inevitable conflicts of time on a working day.

Whilst the range of vegetables on offer in Dartmouth is not great, we have occasion enough to head towards Totnes or even back to Frome where we can pick up a fairly good variety. This latest recipe is the result of foraging in Frome at the Great Western store and a bus ride to Totnes early on a Saturday morning to shop at Annies.

The meal is based on our go to staple of pearl barley and red lentils with a mix of vegetables, aromatics and spices. The only oil used is EVOO and only a tbsp at that for sweat the onions. Most of the other ingredients are dry fried with a little hot water being added toward the end. The result is a tasty filling meal that hits the spot and doesn't pile on the calories whilst doing its bit to minimise LDL cholesterol.

Ingredients

1 medium sweet potato

One large aubergine

1 plantain

1 red onion roughly cut

3 cloves garlic

a small piece of fresh ginger finely chopped

1/2 cup pearl barley

1/2 cup split red lentils

8 heads of cloves

8 cardamom pods crushed

1 tsp turmeric powder

1 tsp cumin powder

freshly ground black pepper

1 cinnamon stick (Ceylon variety)

1 tsp coriander powder

1 tsp smoked paprika

1 tbsp EVOO

pinch salt

hot water as required

Method

First, cook the pearl barley and lentils together in water. This can be done in advance or left to simmer whilst you get on with the other tasks.

Roughly chop the onion and drop that in a large heated frying pan ( having brought the EVOO up to heat). Fry carefully stirring occasionally to prevent sticking or burning. turn the heat down low.

Break the cinnamon stick into 3 or 4 pieces and add to the pan.

crsh the cardamom pods with the flat of a knife and drop those itno the pan together with the heasd of the cloves. Str a few times to mix and prevent sticking.

Chop the sweet potato into bit size chunks. No need to peel. Add to the large pan abd bring the heat

back up a bit. Stir occasionally ( 5 minutes or so)

Peel and slice the ginger into strips and add to the pan, stirring to mix in.

Peel, crush and slice the garlic cloves and add those to the pan.

Cut a quarter of the aubergine up into large chunks and put those straight into the pan, stir and leave. Slice the remaining aubergine into short strips about 1/2 cm thick and set those aside.

Slice the plantain into 1/2 cm rounds and set aside.

Once the sweet potatoes have been in the pan for 8 minutes, add the powdered spices, stir for 30 seconds and then add the remaining aubergine and the water (about 100ml). Lid and leave to steam for a few minutes ( say five).

Finally fold in the cooked lentils and pearl barley and if necessary a little water to ensure a gravy. Lid again and leave for a further 3 minutes.

Serve!

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Observations

The pearl barley and lentils go on together and take about 40 minutes to cook. use about 3:1 water to dry mix otherwise there will be too much liquid at the end when you come to add to the curry. This should give you a moist, slightly creamy mixture, with the barley retaining some bite.

We had added okra on occasions as it makes an interestingly tactlie variation. The trick is to cook htem so they dont release the mucilage into the dish ( unless you want to do that - like their use in gumbo). what we do is to dry fry them until they start to char and then set aaside whislt we prepare the rest of hte dish. Then at the end, either back in a dry pan for a couple of minutes or a minute in hte microwave, served on top of the plated dish.

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We have. substituted a number of different vegetables - beetroot, fennel, cauliflower, mooli even sprouts. The important point is to add the slower cooking vegetables in first and in the right portion size so that everything comes together at hte end as a cooked product. Vegetables are so convenient and usually fairly forgiving.

With the aubergines, we added some of the cubed piec es early so that they could contribute to the sauce texture itself and then added the visually individual pieces later to retain theri shape.