Monday, April 30, 2012

Cooking in Guyana...Pumpkin Curry!

When in doubt, make a curry!  The Guyanese make all different types of curry.  You name it, it probably can be put into curry.  My favorite thing is when you are out on the road with people and all of a sudden they sniff the air and say, "someone is cooking a NICE curry!"  Usually, people will eat curry with rice or with a tortilla like thing called roti (I will tell you more about roti..jus now!).


Recipe adapted from http://www.inner-gourmet.com/2013/03/guyanese-chicken-curry.html 


 

Ingredients 

Seasoning
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1 head of garlic cloves, peeled
  • leaves of a few sprigs of fresh thyme
  • desired amount of wiri wiri pepper or scotch bonnet pepper
  • 1/4 cup water
Curry
  • At least a cup of pumpkin
  • 4 tbsp seasoning (for masala-curry powder mixture)
  • 4 tbsp garam masala
  • 3 tbsp curry powder
  • 1/2 tsp ground geera (cumin)
  • 1/3 cup boiilng water 
  • 6 tbsp oil, canola or vegetable
  • 2 tsp salt (or salt to taste)
  • 3 cups boiling water
  • 1 tbsp tomato paste
  • 2 cloves, (not pictured)
Directions:
  1. In a blender, combine medium onion, head of garlic, thyme leaves, pepper, and 1/4 cup water. Blend until smooth and thick like a smoothie. 
  2. Cut up the pumpkin.
  3. In a bowl, mix 5 heaping tbsp seasoning, masala, curry powder, geera, and 1/3 cup water into a paste.  
  4. Heat a cast iron pot with  6 tbsp oil.  Add masala-curry powder paste and fry for 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly until mixture looks darker and not watery . 
  5. Add pumpkin to pot and stir to coat with masala-curry powder mixture.  
  6. Cover pot and let pumpkin cook for 15-20 minutes on medium heat stirring every once in a while.  Remove lid and allow water to evaporate.  Add salt and stir.
  7. Add boiling water, tomato paste and cover with lid.  
  8. Let curry boil on medium-high heat until gravy has reduced by one-third and thickens to your desire   

2 comments:

  1. When you say 4tbsp 'seasoning' for the paste, what do you mean by seasoning. In England seasoning is salt and pepper, or just salt, but you wouldn't add 4tbsps of salt, surely?!

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    1. Seasoning here in Guyana is a mix of thyme, basil, and celery. People usually grind it up or you might be able to find "green seasoning" in a Caribbean store. 4 Tablespoons of Salt would be insane! :-)

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