Fruit salad…what? Yep, that’s right, let me say it slowly…fruit…salad…curry…

Well, it’s not usually a curry – it was last night because I’ve allowed myself to run out of cumin…the core recipe is Food.com’s New Zealand Curried Sausages but I have found it to be as good, if not better, when the meat content is dropped out…I don’t mind sausages but am a little more suss about their contents now and tend to eat them way less than prior to my green journey…

Ingredients

• 25 g butter (or any oil) I still use butter because I have heaps still in the freezer.
• 1 -2 teaspoon ground coriander ( or 1-2 tsp curry powder instead of the coriander and cumin)
• 1 -2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 10 -12 links pork sausage, each cut into about four pieces – or any other meat, really…so far I’ve tried it with chicken chunks, beef chunks and beef mince or just leave the meat out entirely
• 1 -2 onion, chopped
• 1 -2 carrot, chopped
• 2 (400 g) cans chopped tomatoes
• 1 (400 g) cans coconut cream
• 2 tablespoons coconut
• 2 tablespoons sultanas
• 1 -2 banana, chopped, frozen is OK but fresh holds its shape better.
• one chopped apple (optional) or any other fruit…so far adding chopped pears and kiwifruit has worked well
• salt and pepper to taste but neither’s really necessary

Directions 

• In a large deep frying pan or electric frypan, melt the butter. Don’t let it spread all over the pan but keep in a smallish area.
• Place the spices over the butter and mix them into the butter and cook a minute or two till the spice flavour has expanded.
• Stir the sausages (if used) through the butter and spice mix.
• Add the onions and carrots and stir through also.
• Cook a few minutes stirring every now and then, till the sausage and onion are starting to brown a little and the mix is sticking to the pan surface.
• Add the tomatoes and stir through.
• Add the coconut cream and stir through.
• Add coconut, sultanas, bananas and any other fruit you are using.
• Simmer all together till the mix is as thick as you want.
• Season to taste and serve on rice.

Onion and carrot just gone in on top of the spices

I used coconut milk powder this time as a potentially more flexible and additive-less alternative to canned coconut milk which has too many big words on the label. I used 4 tablespoons to 400 mls of water (using slightly warm water helps the mixing) and it tastes OK but I think that maybe another spoon or two with further beef up the coconut flavour.Similar, once I eventually run out of butter, using coconut oil may have a similar effect.

I don’t think that this would work well with ice cream i.e. it’s not (yet) a dessert curry but the coconut milk blends the flavours of the spices and fruit very smoothly. I’m also still using white rice until I finally run out of it – a 5 kg bag goes a loooong way..! – but will eventually switch to brown rice for more of my rice recipes and hold the black rice in reserve for special occasions…

Fruit added

Done after about 45 minutes