Surprisingly Amazing Pumpkin & Mushroom Yellow Curry

Curry is a staple at our house.  You throw some chickpeas, a few veggies - and mushrooms, always mushrooms - into a pot with curry paste and coconut milk, and KABOOM, the result is always a satisfying and tasty meal.  But tonight's was exceptional.  Easy.  Fast.  And actually made me cling to the last traces of my winter vegetables.

A week ago we got our hands on the last pumpkin on the shelf in the organic food store.  I say "the" organic food store, but there are two near work and one a block from our house.  Prenzlauer Berg rocks like that... I digress.  For a cookin' pumpkin, this hokkaido is massive!  We used a third of it last week for another round of vegetarian geschnetzeltes and have been watching the rest slowly dry out in the fridge.  Tonight was the night for another third.  Now we only have a third of it left!  I gotta get back to the Bio-stores and see if there are any last holdouts.  Although, now that the weather's warmed up so beautifully & suddenly this week, it really will start to feel out of season!

The title of the recipe is misleading.  Of course everything coming from my kitchen is amazing - that's no surprise.  The surprise is how something so fulfilling resulted from surprisingly few ingredients and surprisingly little preparation.

As for the curry paste, your mileage may vary.  It might take you a couple tries (or tastes of your curry-in-progress) to figure out how much curry paste to use.  The ATIC kitchen is rockin' Mae Ploy.  Most of their curry pastes contain shrimp powder, but the yellow does not.  We heart Mae Ploy because it's strong enough for us!  German curry pastes are almost as weak as the ones we used to get in Ireland!  We would always need twice the recommended amount of those, minimum, to get the flavors we like.  So play around with your own curry paste measurements until you have a curry that carries its weight.

Surprisingly Amazing Pumpkin & Mushroom Yellow Curry

serves 3-4
prep time: 15-30 minutes (depending on your pumpkin cutting & peeling skillz)
cook time: 25 minutes

ingredients:

1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 clove garlic, diced
1/2 red chili, diced (optional)
2 1/2 tbsp yellow curry paste
1 can chickpeas, drained
1 can coconut milk
1/3 large (or 1/2 small) Hokkaido or other pumpkin (about 2 cups, cubed)
150g brown mushrooms (about 2 cups, cut)
1 tbsp fish sauce or 1/2 tbsp ume plum vinegar
1 tbsp roughly torn cilantro
lime or lemon wedges

directions:

Slice the pumpkin into wedges.  Using a sharp knife, cut the skin off the wedges.  Cut the flesh into 1- to 2-inch cubes.  Cut larger mushrooms into thirds or quarters, or smaller mushrooms in half.

Heat the oil on medium heat in a medium-sized pot.  Add the garlic and chili; cook until the garlic is soft, about 2 minutes.  Add the curry paste and cook until fragrant.

Stir in the chickpeas and coconut milk.  Cover and bring to a boil.  Taste for seasoning, if necessary.  When the liquid is simmering, add the pumpkin pieces.  Cover again and simmer for 8 minutes.  Add mushrooms, cover again, and simmer for 5 minutes.  Add the fish sauce or ume vinegar and taste for saltiness.

Serve with rice.  Top with cilantro and freshly squeezed lime or lemon juice.

You caught me with my camerapants down.  I didn't expect this meal to be all that extraordinary, so I didn't even think of taking pictures.  But then I burned the roof of my mouth on it 'cause I just couldn't slow down eating it, and I knew I had something blogworthy!  So I actually had to set up a plate of cooled-down curry and put whatever ingredients were left on the cutting board for a postprandial shoot.  MAN I wish I could eat it again.  I think this will have to be the destiny of the last 1/3 of the massive hokkaido, too.