Why do I start things
and don’t finish them? This goes for a lot of things. I started a painting of
my dog roughly a year ago, so far on the canvas there is just charcoal outline
of my fur baby. Sometimes I start cleaning and I just get distracted or annoyed
so I half clean (it drives my boyfriend crazy; I think he might have clinical
OCD with cleaning). This occasional half ass’ed-ness also goes right into the
kitchen, into the vegetable crisper to be precise. I don’t know what it is,
when I go to the grocery store (my favorite being T&T) I look at all the
fruits and vegetables and they remind me of the precious jewels at Tiffany
boutiques, delicately encased in protective cellophane and lit up in all their magnificent
colourful glory. It just looks so damn tantalizing, it doesn’t matter what it
is called or what weird plant it may have come from, I will try to eat it to
the best of my abilities. My affinity for vegetables came, no doubt, from my
parents and my heritage.
I am a Bengali; my family is from west Bengal in India.
We are primarily pescatarian and vegetarian. Meat was an afterthought as we
mostly ate a crazy amount of various fish and vegetables and I just assumed
this is how everyone eats. Well, then we moved to Canada where I soon realized
people LOVE their meat here. It felt to me that if it had aerobic respiration
and lived on land North Americans would eat it! Don’t get me wrong I do enjoy
the occasional steak cooked mid rare (incidentally, I have only truly ever been
satisfied with the steak at Auberge Du Pommier. All other steak places just
don’t taste that great.) But what my body craves are my mother’s magical
lightly spiced vegetable medleys and her fish curries.
When I started writing this blog I was just on ramble about
how I don’t finish things and how currently there are vegetables in my fridge
yearning to be eaten.
Currently I have water spinach, half a pound of Brussels
sprouts, a head of cauliflower tons of potatoes and one lonely daikon. I could
probably make my mom’s “chorchori” which is a Bengali vegetable medley mildly
spiced and flavored with cracked mustard seeds. It’s my comfort food, my
equivalent of a meat loaf or shepherd’s pie.
However I decided to go with something I know the Russian would love
equally as much.
He’s a huge fan of Asian foods specially curries with Kefir lime
flavours. so I set off on a journey to make some kind of a curry with kefir
leaves.
500 grams shrimp
1 red onion brunoised
One lemon grass stick smashed
4 kefir lime leaves
Pint of brussels sprouts halved
2 garlic cloves
½ tbs of shrimp paste
¼ cup water
¼ greek yogurt
1 star anise
1 inch ginger
4 cardamoms
Salt and pepper to your likings
Brunoise the onion, which basically means super small square
cuts of onions. Almost like it’s been pulverized but not quite. Do the same
with the garlic.
Wash and halve the sprouts, take off any wilty or weird
looking outer leaves
Peel and devein the shrimp if they are not already done. In
case you didn’t know the vein in the shrimp isn’t used for circulating vital
body fluids, rather it’s the garbage chute.
In a pan temper the spices in hot oil, be quick on this because
if you let it temper too long it will burn and everything will taste like it
had grated charcoal on it.
After a quick tempering, toss in the onion julienned ginger,
garlic, kefir leaves and lemon grass and sauté it off so the raw flavour is no
longer with us.
While most of the pan is still fairly dry toss in the
sprouts and let them caramelize and make friends with the flavours, this helps
reduce the odd flavour sometimes associated with these baby cabbages.
After 5-10 minutes of this add in the shrimp and ¼ cup of
water so that the water can steam and cook the shrimp cover and let it steam itself
done. Also, don’t forget to salt it to taste.
Off the heat add the yogurt and stir until you achieve a
nice creamy texture. I added a bit too much water so my curry turned soupy.
I
served it with rice but if the sauce is thicker I assume itd be great with
noodles.
That’s my rambling on lonely vegetables living in the bowls
of my fridge waiting to be eaten. Eat your vegetables!
