Bean and potato curry

Another quick bean curry, this time with potatoes. The main recipe I wanted to feature here is actually the moung dhal, but thought I would add the recipe for the beans as it differs slightly from the others I have posted so far. But check out the moung.

Ingredients:

• 3 potatoes
• 1 onion
• 2 chillies (I would have used more, but 2 was all I had)
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 finger of ginger
• 1 heaped tsp jeera powder (cumin)
• 1 heaped tsp dhanya powder (coriander)
• 1 heaped tsp chilli powder
• curry leaves
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1 tin tomatoes
• 1 tin beans
• fresh dhanya

I usually par boil the potatoes and then add them to the curry, but decided this time to give them a little bit of a fry. This worked well as the potatoes sucked up all the juice of the curry, but didn’t disintegrate. So, peel the potatoes, cube them and then give them a little fry in the pot you plan to make the curry in. In this way you can use the same oil for the onions and spices. Once the potatoes are browned, but not necessarily cooked all the way through, take them out and drain them in a colander or on some newspaper.

While the potatoes are frying, evenly slice the onions, crush the garlic and grate the ginger. Add the sliced onions to the oil the potato was frying in. When the onions are browned, add the curry leaves and the spices and dry for a short while. Add some of the juice of the tinned tomatoes and stir in the garlic and ginger before adding the rest of the tomatoes.

Add the beans with their juice. I would have used butter beans, but only had a tin of mixed beans. Also add the potatoes. Allow these to cook together until the flavours have been absorbed. This can be between 20mins and several hours depending on how much time you have. The longer the better, but realistically we often don’t have time to let the curry brew forever.

We served this with moung dhal, rotis, yoghurt and chutney.

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