Recently Miss T has been on a quest to end same same cookering, and this resulted in some cookering from the Asian Vegan Kitchen. As this is a book I have and haven't used it a while, I thought I would give it a go!
I was feeling in a curry mood (nb: this is actually my normal state), so I picked something with liquid, the assorted vegetables in cashew gravy (India, p18), and something with lots of spicy, the fiery potato curry (Malaysia, p160). In contrast to Miss T, however, this did not prove an end to same-same cookery.
The fiery potato curry had that strong, slightly assam, overwhelming flavour I associate with my childhood. It was not until I was pounding the spices together that I realised that the smell was so familiar, a smell I used to hate when I was a kid, and I flipped back to the book and I looked at the Malay translation: kari pedas kentang. Oh, of course.
Don't get me wrong, this curry was delicious. It would have been more delicious if I had cooked the onion for longer, but it was rich and full-flavoured, and delightfully spicy (and, incidentally, nowhere near as spicy as I had thought it would be). It's not something I've cooked before, but it's not something unfamiliar, so I was a bit annoyed at myself! It was still good, and I will probably cook this one again.
The assorted vegetables in cashew gravy was nice, but a bit bland. The recipe calls for presteaming the root vegetables - if I were to cook this again I would instead go for a longer cooking time and try to cook the vegetables in the sauce. I would probably also add a little bit more chili, and maybe a bit more coriander. It did make a nice contrast to the fieryness of the potatoes.
I modified the potato curry to make it gluten free; the cashew gravy was already gluten free. Then of course we ruined it by serving on roti, but that's because roti is the best.