curry

Curried Popcorn

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Inspired and tweaked from a Stéphane Reynaud recipe, this is a surprising twist on the norm. Popcorn can be a reasonably healthy snack, although the classic styles are far from it.

Popping your own corn couldn’t be simpler – just heat a little oil in a large pan until shimmering, add the corn kernels and cover with a lid. Give it a little shake and then wait for the popping sound to subside.

Ingredients:

  • 2 tbsp vegetable oil
  • 50g popping corn
  • 35g unsalted butter
  • 1 tsp garam masala (or any curry powder)
  • zest of 1 unwaxed lemon, finely grated
  • Pinch of salt 

Method:

Once you’ve popped the corn as described above, mix in the other ingredients whilst it’s still hot and serve. Too easy.

lemon and curry flavoured popcorn

You could use pretty much any flavoured butter you might have.

Vietnamese Sweet Potato Curry

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This recipe completes the set; 10 twists on Jamie Oliver’s 10 recipes to save your life. It has been an honour to share recipes for such an important cause. The concept is simple: master these basic recipes and you’ll be empowered to cook good, nutritious and delicious food for yourself, and your family. If you can learn to cook those dishes, you can easily extend your repertoire to a whopping 1oo dishes with our twists and tweaks.

Vietnamese curries are milder than Thai curries but you can always add extra chilli as a garnish if you like it hot.

This curry starts with a paste that will deliver the wonderful aromatic flavour – you could always buy a paste, but I like to do things properly.

Ingredients:

Vietnamese Curry Paste

  • 1 lemongrass stalk, tough outer leaves removed
  • 1 thumb-sized piece of galangal or ginger, peeled
  • 4 garlic cloves, peeled
  • 3 shallots, peeled
  • 2 small green chillies
  • 1 tsp ground turmeric
  • 1 bunch coriander stalks
  • 1 tbsp fish sauce
  • 1 tbsp palm sugar or light brown muscovado
  • Juice of 1 lime
  • 1 tbsp groundnut oil

 

Sweet Potato Curry

  • 1 large onion, sliced
  • 2 garlic cloves, sliced
  • 3 tbsp Vietnamese curry paste
  • 400ml coconut milk
  • 600g sweet potato, peeled and chopped
  • 200g green beans, halved
  • 1 handful of spinach
  • dash of fish sauce
  • 1 tbsp palm sugar
  • 1 red chilli
  • 2 tbsp groundnut oil
  • coriander leaves

Method:

Begin by blending the curry paste ingredients together.  vietnamese-ingredients

curry-paste

You can keep the spare curry paste in an airtight sterilised jar in the fridge or freeze it for future use.

Fry the onion and garlic in the oil for a few minutes and then stir in 3 tablespoons of the curry paste.

Cook it out for a couple of minutes and add the sweet potato, palm sugar, fish sauce and coconut milk.

Reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 20 – 30 minutes until the sweet potato is tender.

Taste the curry, you may want to tweak the flavour with a dash of fish sauce or sprinkling of palm sugar.

Add the green beans and spinach and cook for another 5 minutes until the beans are tender.

vietnamese-s-p-curry

I serve this dish with cauliflower rice, fresh red chillies, fresh coriander leaves and a wedge of lime, but it would work well with rice or even noodles.

You can add chicken to this recipe if you like, but to be honest, I really don’t think that it needs it.

Enjoy!