Students' Curry 1

So, the challenge was: show us a curry that's dead easy to make with ingredients readily available at most basic supermarkets. NO LONG INGREDIENT LISTS allowed!

So, here goes. This is the most basic that I can do while still tasting (and I was a bit surprised) pretty damn good!

The supermarket de choix was Lidl so I trundled along there and bought the following ingredients (oops, forgot to include the vegetable oil and rice in the photo...) but ended up not using the lemon so imagine it's not there, although it does look nice on the photo, doesn't it?

Serves: 4
Per person: 3.20 zl (60 UK pence, 75 Euro cents, 90 US cents)

Ingredients:

- 2 onions
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 inch ginger
- 2 fresh chillies
- 1 tin of tomatoes
- 1 20g pack of curry powder
- 1 pack of frozen veg
- some veg oil
- basmati rice to serve (80g per person - 1 Lidl pack serves 5)
- salt

A couple of things. Firstly, the frozen veg - go for mixes that contain carrots, green beans, peas, cauliflower, potatoes. These work well in a curry. Secondly - curry powder. You shouldn't really use it in the sense that authentic curries use individual spice mixes, But, here we're going for simplicity and this is as simple as I can make it.

So, on with the show:

1. Prep the onions by chopping very fine. Mince the garlic and ginger finely to make a paste. Chop the chillies. Blend the tomatoes.

2. Cover the bottom of the pan with vegetable oil. Medium heat.

3. Onions in plus a pinch of salt. Cook down for around 15 minutes.

4. Ginger/ garlic paste in. Chillies in. Saute for a further 5 minutes.

5. Curry powder in

6. Stir in for a minute to cook out the rawness of the spices - this improves the flavour

7. Frozen veg in. Stir to cover with the spice mix. 

8. Add the blended tomatoes. Cover and cook down on low heat for around 15-20 minutes. Check if it's ready by tasting the most problematic (in this case, green beans - they don't taste good unless cooked just enough but not too much) vegetable - if that one's done, then the whole thing's ready. Check the seasoning - add a pinch more salt if necessary.

9. Serve with rice

Costing:

- onions, ginger, garlic: 2.00 zl
- tomatoes: 2.00 zl
- chillies: 1.50 zl
- veg: 2.50 zl
- rice: 3.20 zl
- curry powder: 1.50

total: 12.70 zl
Per person: 3.20 zl