Post 122: Mystery Squash Curry

Having not gained any further clues as to the identity of my mystery squash, I was struggling as to what to do with it. Time was passing and I was conscious that I didn't want to waste yet more of my VegBox (I'd been very profligate with the lettuces they kept sending). I'd also become over-run with courgette's after having several weeks where my courgette plant had produced and I'd received more in the VegBox too.

In addition, for the first time, I'd actually got some ripe tomatoes. Here's the beauties:

Obviously, I'm fibbing atthis point - they are quite the ugliest tomatoes I've seen in a long while. Tasty though.

To try to use all these things, I went for the very easiest option - curry. Clearly this wasn't ever going to be a particularly authentic curry experience; but then how authentic is it ever going to be if you eat it while watching the One Show.

The recipe went along the lines of:

• Onions, 2 chopped and fried slowly
• Garlic 4 cloves added to the softened onions (I'm still on home grown garlic, which is pleasing), and curry spices - chillis (4 hot ones), curry powder, tumeric, cumin seeds and paprika
• I added these in to 1 1/2 pints of beef stock
• Then I fried on super hot two chopped courgettes and the peeled de-seeded mystery squash and added these in to the boiling mess
• 1/2 lb of chicken (this wasn't enough really, but it was what I had in), fried and added.
• Following those into the pot with a medium cauliflower chopped into small florets and the ugly tomatoes
• I let this simmer for a while, but the colour looked very wishy-washy, so I added some tomatoe puree and a bit more tumeric for colour

Testing this, it tastred a bit wishy-washy too. The sauce was far too thin. I'd used far too much stock at the start. Fortunately currys are very forgiving, my tool to enable forgiveness - red Lentils.

 Adding these added body to the sauce. By tea time, the consistency was not exactly rich, but perfectly adequate to coat the rice and bind everything together. Rating 5/10, a per

I hope you all appreciate the 2 to 3 seconds I took to take the photo - chip on the bowl to the fore.

There was enough left to have again the next night, by which time the sauce had thickened further and it was up to a 7/10 kind of dish.

In short, it's not a terrible way to use up some squashes, but not something I'd look to repeat in a hurry - that said, another mystery squash has arrived this week - so I may end up repeating this sooner than I'd expected.