(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)
Figured it’s time I get back to posting my cooking experiments.
This sauce came about after seeing an Indian mini-cafeteria on my job. It had some lovely thick sauces that looked like a complete meal on rice, and there was a dish that was a bed of greens, then rice, then curry. These came together in my head to make me ask “can I make a curry sauce that is largely a meal?”
This is the result. This sauce’s body comes from squash and garbanzo beans and tastes very much like my Japanese Curry sauces. Each serving has a about serving of legumes and a serving of vegetables in it. Throw it onto rice with a side dish – or rice and a bed of greens, say shredded spinach, and you have a very complete meal.
Makes 6-8 servings
Ingredients:
- 1 small butternut squash (about 2 pounds unpeeled), peeled, seeded, cut into cubes.
- 2 tomatoes, diced.
- 3 cups cooked garbanzo beans (2 14.5 oz cans)
- 2 cups low-sodium vegetable stock
- 2/3 cup red wine (shiraz and zinfandel are good)
- 4 tablespoons curry powder.
- 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
- 1 tbsp maple syrup
- 4 tablespoons soy sauce (If you use store-bought not-quite sodium free vegetable broth, use 1 Tbsp)
- 4T bsp garlic
- 4 1/2 tsp cocoa powder
- 4 Tbsp peanut butter
To prepare:
- Place squash, tomatoes, garbanzo beans, vegetable stock, wine into a pot, bring to boil, simmer.
- While bringing to boil, add other ingredients one at a time, stirring.
- When the squash is soft, mash with potato masher to break it and the beans and tomatoes up.
- Either puree with immersion blender or let cool and puree in regular blender.
Notes: This sauce is a bit thick, may need more vegetable broth – I’d say ½ to 1 cups. it’s also hot so you might want to tone the curry powder down a bit depending on taste
– Steve