Recipe A Day #11: Easy Tomato Curry

For today's hilariously easy and inexpensive recipe, we turn to one of Casual Kitchen's foundational influences: our girl Mollie Katzen and her timeless The Moosewood Cookbook.

Today's recipe was inspired by Mollie's own version, but I've made specific changes to reduce the cost, complexity and cooking time. The result is a healthy, simple, inexpensive and nutritionally complete recipe. I hope you enjoy it!

And before we get to the recipe itself, permit me to slip in a brief plug of Mollie's latest cookbook, The Heart of the Plate. I wrote a ragingly favorable review of it here several months ago. I highly recommend both it and her original Moosewood Cookbook if you'd like to add simple, creative and delicious vegetarian recipes to your cooking arsenal.

Easy Tomato Curry

Ingredients:
3-4 Tablespoons olive or canola oil
1 large onion, chopped coarsely
2 teaspoons mustard seeds
½ teaspoon salt and ground black pepper to taste
2 teaspoons cumin
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper or other hot chili powder
3-4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 green bell pepper, chopped
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger (or 1 teaspoon ground ginger)
2 28-ounce cans diced tomatoes
2 or 3 boiled eggs

Directions:
1) In a large pot, saute chopped onion and mustard seeds in oil on medium high heat until onion begins to soften, about 5 minutes.

2) Add all seasonings, combine well, and saute for another 2-3 minutes. Then add garlic, green bell pepper and ginger, and then continue to saute until green bell pepper begins to soften, about another 5 minutes.

3) Add diced tomatoes, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 15-20 minutes. In the meantime, separately, prepare rice and boil 2-3 eggs until hard-boiled. Peel eggs and slice into slices.

4) Serve tomatoes over rice and arrange sliced boiled eggs over each plate.

Serves 5.

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Recipe Notes:
1) A quick word on the laughable cheapness of today’s recipe:

onion 40c
pepper: 1.00
garlic cloves: 15c
2 cans diced tomatoes (generic, of course!) 2.00
ginger: 20c
eggs: ~75c
oil, spices: 25c

Total cost: about $4.75, or about 95c per serving. Clearly, a candidate for one of CK’s upcoming top favorite laughably cheap recipes posts!

2) On using diced and canned tomatoes: If you'd like to learn more about how canned tomatoes can save you a buck or two and increase the quality of your meals, read this post.






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