Broccoli Coriander Curry

Last few Sundays have been quite busy for me. I had been cooking something specifically for blogging. Waking up on a Sunday morning, the next thought would be what to cook for the evening (Iftar), what are the things I have at hand and how to get it to blogging. I would keep watch over the sky to see if it is cloudy or sunny. After the usual cleaning works, I would happily start cooking, then arrange the items and shoot... It is all such fun, you know.

If at all I have a little bit of that enthusiasm when it comes to writing the post. Sigh... After all these, I would not have the slightest inclination to write the post on Sunday itself and would tend to procrastinate. Weekdays have never been better. After a tiring day at work, the body and mind just wants to relax rather than sitting up with the laptop. I don't know how many of you feel the same. But, I, the lazy goose, am still learning to be better organized :)

Now, coming to last week's work. I found a few pods of butter beans in the farmer's market. I was more than excited. I absolutely love those creamy crunchy butter beans I have tasted in India. Those I found here had beautiful purple patterns. I thought of trying some different curry with them rather than a stir fry. I had some ideas in my mind and was determined to give a try. I put the butter beans in a pressure cooker and started preparing the curry in parallel.

The curry was developing exactly like I wanted it to be. After some time, I opened the cooker only to find the beans overcooked. Ooooppss... It was a disaster :( They turned out to be so mushy that they would not survive the stirring with the curry. Nevertheless, they tasted good and I just added some ground pepper and saved them aside. Ok, I learnt a lesson. Now, what to do with the curry, it is indeed good!!

An idea sparked suddenly on my mind. I had some frozen broccolis. Just added them to the curry and cooked along. The end result was very tasty and it made up for all the distress I had a little while ago. This is the story behind this curry. Now, let's get straight to the recipe.

Cooking Time: 30 mins
Serves: 2 to 3

Ingredients:
To grind:
Coriander leaves/Cilantro - a small bunch
Cashew - 10 pieces
Onion - 1 big or a handful of small shallots
Green chillies - 2

Cinnamon - 2 small sticks
Cardamom - 3 pieces
Cloves - 3 pieces
Ginger garlic paste - 2 tsp
Broccoli florets - 400 g
Coconut milk - 3 tbsp

Method:
Wash and chop the coriander leaves. Chop the shallots/onion and green chillies finely. Take all these along with the cashews in a blender and blend to a smooth paste adding very little water.

Heat oil in a skillet. Add the cinnamon, cardamom and cloves. Now, add the ground paste and sauté till the raw smell of onion fades off. Now, add the ginger and garlic paste to it and sauté for a few more minutes.

Add the cut and clean Broccoli florets, stir and cover the skillet and cook for about 5 minutes in medium heat. Give a stir again, add the coconut milk and cook till the florets are cooked, but still crunchy. Give a final stir and switch off the heat.

Garnish with coriander leaves or nuts and/or a dash of cream and serve hot with steamed rice or roti.

Notes:

• Instead of coconut milk, you can use about 3 tbs of grated coconut. If so, you can grind it along with the coriander leaves and shallots.
• In my humble opinion, shallots give a better taste to the dish than onions.

As I said, this curry originated out of the blue in my mind. So, feel free to adapt it to your taste buds with various other veggies and ingredients too. We had this curry with Roti and later with Rice too. It was very creamy, tasty and aromatic. We were glad that we had a simple, tasty yet healthy vegetarian dish. Hope you like it too :)