Vegetable Curry

This is perhaps one of my favorite vegetarian dishes. To say the least, it is flavorful and aromatic. You can use any combination of your preferred vegetables. As the season changes, you may use cauliflower, fresh beans, peas, eggplants, cabbage, potatoes, peppers and carrots. This dish warms you up in cold days and helps you break into a sweat in summer.

Ingredients: (Serves 2 very hungry adults)
A handful of shallots or 1 medium red onion
2 cloves garlic
1 small piece of ginger (no larger than a small olive, optional)
dried chilli or chilli powder (optional)
1 Eggplant
1 - 2 carrot
3 medium potato
1 green or red pepper
1 packet of Miss Khoo's Essential Curry Powder
1/2 cup of vegetable oil or olive oil

1/2 pack coconut milk or 1/2 cup milk
water
salt and pepper to season

Preparations:
Soak dried chilli in a bowl of hot water for about 30 minutes or until soften. In an electrical blender, pulverize ginger, garlic, onion and dried chilli into a paste (nevertheless, pulverizing these ingredient in a stone mortar is even better). Drizzle in some cooking oil and pulverize if you find the mixture hard to get into a paste.

In a small bowl, mix the curry powder into a thick paste with a little water. Cut the vegetables into cubes or wedges to your preferred size (presumably you already un-bitter the eggplant).

Lightly fry the eggplants in a large pot with a few table spoon of cooking oil, remove and set aside. 

In the same pot, heat the vegetable oil until pipping hot. Turn to medium heat and add in the onion paste saute continuously (this will prevent it from sticking to the pot and burn) until fragrance. Add in the curry powder paste and continue to saute the mixture until you can smell the fragrance of the curry powder. Add in cubed vegetables and mix before adding water, just enough to cover the vegetables. Turn to high heat and bring to a boil before turning it down to a simmer. Stirring occasionally, continue to simmer until the vegetables are soft and cooked. Add in coconut milk, salt and pepper to season and bring it to a boil and it is ready. Serve with rice or bread.

Notes:
Miss Khoo's curry powder can be ordered online or simply use the generic curry powder from the supermarket or Asian store. The curry powder i used here contains coriander, cardamon, cloves, turmeric, fennel, cumin, garlic, ginger, cinnamon, chilli (it is labeled as moderately spicy), white pepper, star anise seeds and salt. If there is a choice, pick something for vegetables otherwise, any curry powder will do.