Butternut squash in green curry sauce

I’ve mentioned before that my husband will only eat squash if it’s prepared in ways that disguise its sweetness and bring in lots of other flavours. I had lots of squash leftover from my risotto and was determined to find a way to use it that he’d like. I came across this basic idea in Nancy McDermott’s “Real Vegetarian Thai” but I played around with it enough to let you have a recipe, for a change! We both thought that the sauce was fresh and tasty and really brought out the best of the butternut squash. I served it with some brown rice flavoured with a slight touch of star anise and coriander seed.

Leftover butternut squash, cut into 1 inch cubes (I had about 1lb)
2 big shallots, chopped roughly
1 plump clove garlic, chopped
Small chunk ginger
2 small green chillies
Couple of kaffir lime leaves
Big bunch of fresh coriander
Small sprig sweet basil
About 2/3 tin coconut milk rinsed out with about 1/3 tin water
1/2 tsp sugar
Salt

Blend together the shallots, garlic, chillies, lime leaves, half of the coriander and basil with a splash of water unil you have a smooth paste.  I use my mini chopper attachment.

Heat the coconut milk in a large pan then add the green paste and cook together for a few minutes. Add the water (from the rinsed out tin), the squash, sugar and salt. Increase the heat until boiling then turn down and cook until squash is cooked, about 15 minutes. Stir in the rest of the coriander and serve.

Thai meal

Most of my photos of this meal didn’t turn out but I still wanted to write about it because it was so nice. A friend of ours was staying and was off to Thailand the following day so I decided to cook some vaguely Thai style dishes.

The picture shown is the mango summer rolls from VWAV. I make life easy for myself and buy a packet of beansprout stir fry from the supermarket so I don’t have to do much chopping. I make a nice spicy dipping sauce to go with them.

I also did some jasmine rice, potato mussaman curry, mapo tofu and sesame fried pak choi. The curry recipe is from Nancy McDermott “Real Vegetarian Thai”. I made a big batch of the curry paste a while ago and froze it in tablespoon sizes so that was quite easy. Mussaman curry was our favourite dish in Thailand and this was a very nice version of it.

For the mapo tofu I found loads of recipes on-line using firm tofu but when we’d had it in Thailand it was made with silken and I’d got some specially to try it. This recipe was one of the more simple ones I found but it was very tasty. I just stir fried the pak choi with some green chilli, a splash of tamari and some sesame seeds.

Altogether it was a very nice meal and I’ll be doing more experimenting with Thai food from now on!