Bounty Bar

Bounty bars are very simple. They're like Almond Joys but they lack the almond, and they have their logo and palm trees stamped on their bottoms. I guess they're the Commonwealth equivalent to Almond Joys. They have different ingredients, too. I like their wrapper more, though.

Chicago Food!

More about Chicago Food during the IFT Conference! Man, how I wish I could've stayed here longer to eat more!

1. Giordano's - Special Deep Dish Pizza

Here I was, jumping around excitedly like a 5 year-old at the planetarium! "Oh deep dish pizza! I've stalked you on Wikipedia and Google Images for years... and now I can finally have you!" For a busy, famous restaurant on a sunny Friday afternoon, Giordano's managed to squeeze the 12 of us into one large booth, without reservations and only a 15 minute wait. The food did take a while to arrive, which was completely acceptable. Although there were various other foods on the menu (Italian roast beef sandwiches, soup, thin crust pizza, etc.), we were all set on ordering deep dish pizza. We ordered three medium pizzas and 2 plates of fried calamari + lemon + green beans + onion(?). The calamari was good (but isn't it always?) while I found the green beans to be really soggy. After one is done with the appetizers, the waiter/ess comes and whisks away your plate. We learned this the hard way after JT's plate was nabbed, even though he had already sprinkled herbs, parmesan, and other condiments onto his plate, ready for sticking to his slice of pizza.

The medium pizza was meant for 3-4 people, so we divided ourselves up according to preferences. My group and I ordered the "Special", which was mushroom, green pepper, onion, and sausage. The other two pizzas were pesto + chicken(?) and half mushroom, half something else. Ah, I appear to have not paid attention.


The pizza arrived on a metal plate that fit over a plate-chair, underneath which there was a cake pan full of condiments. RN joked about taking away the cake pan for cooking back at Cornell.

I consumed a wondrous quarter of deep-dish pizza (with one issue)! The bottom was a thick, bready crust, topped with plenty of onions and peppers and exactly 5 measly chunks of sausage, topped with a thick layer of cheese, topped with tomato sauce. The cheese was extremely stretchy and the crust was perfectly doughy and crusty (with the bottom being noticeably undercooked and floury). However, I did not encounter any sausage until I was 3/5 done with my slice (or 4/5, if you consider only the saucy part, and not the crust). I guess they only sprinkle the sausage on the perimeter. I am not entirely happy with the fact that there were only about 20 grape-sized chunks of sausage in the entire wheel of a pizza, but otherwise, I was satisfied and rotund.

[UPDATE 7/26: My brother's friend agrees with me regarding the dearth of sausage on the pizza]

That evening, I found another pizza place but I didn't try any because I was still digesting my luncheon.

2. Portillo's - Chicago-Style Hot Dog



The next day, I went out exploring all the great grocery stores and streets of Chicago. Chicago really likes revolving doors. I happened upon Portillo's on my way to the Doughnut Vault. Portillo's is in this indoor courtyard-type place, with old-style interior design which was part barn, part street, and part sqalid close-knit neighborhood. There were ribs, frozen custard and Italian roast beef sandwiches along with the classic Chicago hot dog. Portillo's opens at 10:00, and I chanced upon it at 10:08am. By that time, there had already been 17 previous orders! 20 to 30 people were milling about, eating or waiting for their food, while cheerful swing(?) music pranced around in the background. At one table, a group of 4 ate hot dogs and drank beer from giant goblets. The person in front of me asked for ribs, only to be told that one could only get ribs at the adjacent food stand.

The hot dog sausage was very normal. Boiled. Boring. The intriguing parts of the Chicago hot dog are the poppyseed bun, the pickle spear, and the various plant items in it. Overall, the hot dog was underwhelming. Just ok.

There was also an advertisement for garbage salad.

3. Doughnut Vault - Chestnut Yeast Doughnut and Coconut Old-Fashioned Doughnut

I love the Doughnut Vault! The entire setup is perfectly comical. Outside the literal hole-in-the-wall, painted on the brick is this a bright and humble menu. I arrived at about 10:45 am. As I walked in, the letterbox on the door facing the wall had two slots - Love Letters and Hate Mail. Cute, I thought absent-mindedly, as I heard a voice say that I had just beaten the Saturday morning crowd. It turns out that the Doughnut Vault gets pretty busy in the morning, and their opening hours are determined by whether they still have doughnuts. Look at this line from two years ago! Fortunate for me, by the time I had arrived, ther were only about 6 people relaxing at the table outside the store.

To the left of the letterboxes, there was a small countertop. To the right of the countertop was a glass/mirror menu and a shelf of doughnuts hidden in a cubby. The two people at the counter were extremely friendly! The woman let me halfway past the counter to look at all the doughnuts. For a small shop, they had a wide selection of doughnuts! There were chocolate, vanilla, and chestnut yeast doughnuts, and coconut, gingerbread, and possibly some other "old-fashioned" doughnuts. I asked which kind Dunkin has (because I'm not a fan of Dunkin's Doughnuts), and she said that she didn't know.

I got the coconut doughnut, and after a small deliberation, also got the chestnut one because I've never had chestnut-flavoured non-Chinese products. I brought the doughnuts to Millenium Park to eat (but I ended up saving the Chestnut one for breakfast the next day). The smothering icing on the coconut doughnut was really good, even though I know it was probably just powdered sugar and water. There were a few shreds of coconut mingled with the icing, but the doughnut was not overall coconutty. There were small black specks throughout the icing, which could've been vanilla or some other flavouring, but whatever it added was decidedly undetectable.

It turns out that Dunkin probably does the yeast doughnuts, because I didn't particularly enjoy the chestnut doughnut texture, while the "old-fashioned" coconut doughnut was fantastically fatty and cakey.

The chestnut doughnut icing had stuck itself to the paper bag (what a pretty paper bag!) There was no chestnut flavour, so I was not a huge fan.

4. Grocery Stores! As you may know, whenever I go to a new place, I enjoy visiting their grocery stores to see what regional things they sell.

1. Some small convenience store near The Wit, near under a bridge and possibly around some milkshake place. Here, there were Dill Pickle Lays Potato Chips, Limon Lays Potato Chips, and Honey BBQ Lays Potato Chips. I bought the Honey BBQ ones because I have tried Dill Pickle ones before in Montreal. They were a bit sweet but did not taste like honey. Overall, they weren't as salty or dark as normal BBQ chips.
2. Dominick's
   
   Here, I bought some Limon Cheetos because I'm pretty sure the East Coast doesn't really have them. I have yet to try them though. Dominick's was pretty nice, overall. It's still hilarious to me that one strolls in and out of the store through a revolving door.
3. Fox & Obel - This was a fancy gourmet market where there were gummy pandas as opposed to gummy bears. The entire place was dimly lit and there were so many confections.
4. Trader Joe's - Felt just like the Trader Joe's in NJ and in Philly. Bought a peach because I anticipated eating no real fruit or vegetables in Chicago. While eating the peach, I got mistaken for a local. Why, thank you!
5. Jewel Osco - I got a guacamole sample, noted the ordinary chip selection, and left.

5. The Blommer Chocolate Factory

I purposely got "lost" in Chicago. I wasn't actually lost, because I knew that if I walked towards the tall towers (specifically, the Willis tower), I'd end up in the touristy business district. On the way there, on Kinsie Street, I saw a Chocolate Factory! As I walked towards it, the I noted a bunch of trucks, and the smell of chocolate wafted towards me. A real chocolate fragrance. Unbelieveable. At the intersection (directly opposite Jewel Osco) was the chocolate shop, open to the public.


I wonder if they change the banner every year.

The shop had so many chocolate and non-chocolate items. The shopkeeper was really friendly. When I asked whether they sold dark chocolate by the half-pound and he said no, he went into the back and gave me a large chunk of the dark chocolate I had been eying. It was pretty good, and I was satisfied. He also said that all the chocolate-covered things are not manufactured by them, but they do cover the things (Oreos, nuts, dried fruit, espresso beans) in their chocolate. They had quite a selection of chips, chunks, blocks, bars, and sugar free delicacies.

I was debating between (dark?) chocolate-covered espresso malt balls or chocolate-covered brownie chunks, and ended up buying half a pound of the malt balls because I can make chocolate-covered brownies myself! They are thickly covered with this soft, compound chocolate coating that doesn't taste very much like coffee. There is only a faint coffee aftertaste. texture is more like hardened ganache than chocolate. It's not bitter at all, which is uncharacteristic of dark chocolate. The bright side is that the malt balls are NOT like Whoppers (i.e. they lack that bizarre waxy mouthfeel).
Incidentally, I met the Blommer company at the IFT Expo and they gave me (and everyone else) an ice cream bar.

6. IFT Reception and IFTSA Mixers
My take on the Chicago hot dog.

My take on the Italian roast beef sandwich. It was good.

Had my first jalapeno popper. 

Coconut Bread!

One year later. 
I am now very confident when baking with yeast. It's simple! Fun! I haven't bought bread in a year. This is weird because I used to go through a loaf of sliced bread a week.
Today I made coconut buns without following a specific recpie. It just looked right. I wish Algorithms were this easy. I've read that baking bread has to be very exact, but I think I use more intuition than measurement when I make successful bread. Perhaps I'm just not very particular about my bread?



The recipe goes something like this:

Ingredients
750 g flour (I used 650 g white flour, 100 g whole wheat flour)
20 g active dry yeast
100-150 ml whipping cream (can possibly substitute with cow or coconut milk)
100-150 ml water (not really sure)
Unsweetened shreds of 1 actual coconut (see note below)
100 g white sugar (make it 200 g if you like sweet buns)

Note: My mum bought a coconut and my sister and I drank the coconut juice. After throwing the coconut (in a plastic bag) onto a brick repeatedly until it cracked, we cut up the flesh into bite-sized chunks, and blended it with 2 cups of warm water (60 degrees C?). After straining the slurry, we ended up with some delicious fatty coconut milk and a lot of shredded coconut. The coconut milk separated in the fridge, and it seems sensible to make coconut buns with the coconut milk, but I had to use up the whipping cream that had been in the freezer for a while. The coconut milk will probably be used for curry tomorrow.

Method

1. Microwave water for 15-30 seconds, or until it feels a bit warmer than finger temperature.
2. Mix everything except coconut shreds together in an enormous bowl.
3. Knead for some 10 minutes. At first, your situation will seem hopeless as there does not seem to be enough liquid, and flour will start sticking to the side of your bowl. After a few minutes of vigorous kneading, however, you will realize that the dough ball has actually become sticky! Now, it will suck up all that flour!
4. Throw in coconut shreds. They add a bit of moisture so you might want to throw in some more flour too.
5. Leave to rest (in a plastic bag if you want) for 2 hours. If it's a bit chilly indoors, you can leave it in your car. If you do not have a car, leaving it out for 2-3 hours is fine.
6. Scoop out lumps of dough, roll (without squeezing too hard), and put onto a foil-lined baking sheet. The bread I make apparently never sticks to foil after it's done baking, which is pretty neat. You can keep the balls of dough about 1 cm apart from each other if you want the buns to touch. If you don't want them to touch, keep them 5 cm apart.
7. Let rise for 1 hour.
8. Paint on some coconut milk and sprinkle more coconut/sugar/sesame/whatever on top.
9. Stick a small container of water (50 ml) on the bottom rack of oven. This makes steam.
10. Bake at 350 F for 25 minutes in an unpreheated oven, middle rack.

Results

SO FLUFFY!! Look at the wonderful crumb!



My mum said it rivals the buns sold at the Asian supermarket nearby. Or, you know, in those Chinese bakeries in Chinatown.



Here is a bun. It is beautiful.



Had a cookie butter (from Trader Joe's) sandwich. You can taste a hint of coconut texture in every bite. The bun is not very sweet, which is fine.

Portal Cake!

Today I made a Portal cake but failed at making jelly. This is a very sad day.

My brother finished his AP exams today, and as he is going to college next year, this is a graduation/belated birthday/end-of-high-school/congrats on [college name]! cake. I wanted to make a Team Fortress 2 cake but I couldn't figure out what object to make. Pyro? Sandvich (in other news, I got a Dalokohs bar yesterday!)? Natascha?

So, I stuck with Portal's black forest cake, even though none of us like fake cherry flavouring or maraschino cherries. My brother likes orange juice though, so there's orange juice in the cake and jelly. He also likes coconut, so the whole cake is covered in chocolate coconut ganache.

Unfortunately, he has not eaten the cake (and I don't think he will) because he had a bad day with bad news and dinner was ruined.

On the bright side, this means that the cake is now mine. Look at the lush back yard. It's been barely a week and the lawn needs mowing again.

The cake recipe is from here.

Changes I made:
1. I substituted 100 g flour with whole wheat flour, and 15 g with wheat germ. No one will notice!
2. Instead of 240 ml of milk, I used 120 ml milk + 120 ml orange (put in LAST--acidic, reacts with baking soda).
3. I used 1 tsp baking soda instead of 1/2 tsp.
4. Less sugar! ~250 g instead of 400 g.

I made three layers because I only have 17-cm diameter cake pans (6.69-inch, as opposed to 9-inch). Later, I realised that the Portal cake only has two layers!! Boo. I used all three layers in the end though. My cakes weren't flat, so I shaved off the cake tops until they were parallel to the bottom of the cake, meaning that each layer was thinner.

The first and only "black forest cake" I've ever had was on my 10th (or 11th?) birthday. We bought it from ParknShop, and although it was labelled as "black forest cake", it was actually a chocolate swiss roll with jelly and cream filling. I wanted to emulate that, so I made cherry orange jelly for the filling of the Portal cake. However, although the jelly set, it was extremely watery and had the consistency of thick jam. A lot of it oozed out so I ate it. I'll just pretend it's chocolate cake "infused" with cherry orange flavouring...

The chocolate ganache recipe is from here, although I changed it up a lot.

All you have to do is simmer the heavy cream and throw in all the chocolate, and then all the coconut.

100 ml heavy cream (but maybe fatty milk will suffice?)

150 g dark chocolate chips

150 g shredded coconut (sweetened...but you should use unsweetened)

You MUST wait for this to cool down as much as possible before you spread it on the cake or else it's just going to drip/fall off. As it was super sticky, I couldn't figure out how to ice the cake with it. It turns out that you can scoop some ganache onto the back of your giant spoon, and spread it UPWARDS onto the sides of the cake. After an hour or so, the ganache will be solid enough that when you poke it, only some oily substance gets onto your finger (as opposed to a glob of ganache).

This coconut ganache gives a great "Portal"-esque texture to the cake. Initially, I was going to make a zillion chocolate shavings to press onto the cake. I am EXTREMELY glad I didn't have to endure that tedious task.

The white icing is fat free yogurt + powdered sugar + coconut, in a ratio of 1:6:6. You only need a tiny bit. The red blobs, which are supposed to be maraschino cherries, are actually gum balls that we are never going to eat. We only had 7, so I cut one in half (to make two halves).

We don't have real candles so I used a peppermint stick thing taped to a paper flame that says "congratulations!" on it. I took a lot of pictures because this cake looks really pretty (and tastes good, according to me and my sister, who ate a lot of cake scraps and icing).

Ginger Pepper Coconut Cakies

Today, the kitchen is overwhelmingly nutmeggy. Urg. I'm not sure why I dislike the sweet smell/taste of nutmeg. I was going to make gingersnaps but we don't have molasses. We've never bought molasses before...so instead, I sort of invented ginger pepper cookies/cakies, which I am sure exist elsewhere in the world. They look more like mini scones/cakes than cookies, mainly because I did the whole orange juice citric acid+baking soda thing again. Using this recipe as a basis, I flung around ingredients and burned down the kitchen. Luckily, I am going back to UPenn today, so I'll have somewhere to live while my family live in a kitchen-less house. Just kidding, I'm not Chowder. But we did have a 90 minute power outage yesterday.

They are cakey, slightly gingery, are a bit moist and textured due to the whole wheat flour and coconut, and lack crunch and buttery-ness. Not gingersnaps at all...more like a spice cake?

INGREDIENTS --makes 25 pretty big cakey cookies.
75g white sugar
75 g brown sugar
1 stick butter
1 egg
3 tbsp orange juice

some cinnamon
some nutmeg (I put in 1 tbsp, which was too much, as I'm not a fan of nutmeg).
some tablespoons of ginger powder
some tablespoons of ground black pepper (add dried chili flakes if you want?)
300 g whole wheat flour
50 g dried coconut (I used unsweetened, local)

1 tbsp baking soda

METHOD
1. Cream sugars and butter. Throw in the egg and orange juice.
2. Add the dry ingredients, ~80 g at a time. Fold.
3. Add the baking soda. Fold.
4. Scoop onto pan-greased-with-butter-wrapper.
5. Bake at 350 F in an un-preheated oven for 15 minutes on the middle rack. Let sit for about 10 minutes, or more. Just keep checking with your fork (it should come out clean, and the cookie should look solid).

Potato Cake/Bread

With sundry scrumptious potatoes, what better thing to bake than potato cake/bread?! Banana bread and pumpkin bread exist; surely potato bread (NO, NOT THE LOAF/SLICE VERSION AT THE STORE) is the next best thing ever? Carbs on carbs? I found a banana bread recipe and used it as the basis for my potato bread/cake. My sister says that it looks more like a brownie than a bread (true, because it doesn't really rise), but it has banana-bread-like crumbs, and is very moist, so I would be inclined to say that it's a muffin... even though it's not muffin shaped.

The best part? Everyone in the family, INCLUDING MY SISTER, eats it. My sister, the most fastidious person in the house when it comes to food (she has to have her dinner arranged EXACTLY, has to eat certain foods with a FORK ONLY, won't eat in the presence of the smell of mustard etc.) eats potato cake/bread. Whoo!!!

Below are two versions; the normal version, and the lower Calorie version. The lower Calorie version... surprising tastes the same and has a similar texture to the higher Calorie version!! Wonderful! I've made four of these breads/cakes so far, so I've had time to experiment and make adjustments.

INGREDIENTS for a 3 cm tall x 20 cm square pan of cake (1200 cm^3)

120 g butter

30 g brown sugar

40 g white sugar (more if you want something sweeter)

300 g freshly mashed potato

0.75 tsp baking soda

cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

vanilla

pinch of salt

40 ml water from the pot you used to boil potatoes

1 tbsp vinegar (optional but highly recommended)

100 g whole wheat flour

100 g nuts, chocolate, dried fruit etc. HIGHLY OPTIONAL.

METHOD

1. Boil water and potatoes. Mash potatoes with baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, and salt. Keep hot water in pot.

2. Cream sugars with butter. The result is a soothing, creamy, beige substance.If you feel like it, throw in an egg BUT IT IS NOT NECESSARY, and DO NOT ADD WATER in STEP 3.

3. Mix creamed butter with mashed potato, water, and vinegar. Note that the butter melts.

4. Fold in 25 g flour. Do this 4 times. You should have a rather light, gooey batter the consistency of pudding. Throw in OPTIONAL nuts/chocolate etc.

5. Spread evenly into a baking dish (greased with the butter wrapper).

6. Bake on the bottom shelf of an un-preheated oven at 177 degrees F/350 degrees F for 22-25 minutes.

7. Let bread/cake sit in oven for an hour or two or whenever you think it looks cooked.

8. Eat, or freeze it for later.

ALTERNATIVE METHOD if you are running low on time

1. Mix everything in a bowl. It will look ugly and lumpy. Just keep mixing. It will get much smoother.

2. Bake on the bottom shelf of an un-preheated oven at 177 degrees/350 degrees for 25-28 minutes.

3. Stick a fork into the bread/cake and if it comes out clean, it's done.

Because I'm kind of upset with the celerity of butter consumption due to this recipe (120 g of butter within 2 hours...), especially for my mum, I tried to make a lower calorie version that would still neatly crumble, stay moist, and be bready/cakey-textured. It looks the same:

INGREDIENTS FOR THE LOWER CALORIE VERSION (20 cm square pan)

60 g butter

20 g brown sugar

6 sachets of artificial sweetener

300 g freshly mashed potato

0.75 tsp baking soda

cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

vanilla

pinch of salt

120 ml water from the pot you used to boil potatoes

1 tbsp vinegar

100 g whole wheat flour

100 g nuts/chocolate/etc. (OPTIONAL)

METHOD

1. Boil water and potatoes. Mash potatoes with baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, and salt. Keep hot water in pot.

2. Cream sugar and artificial sweetener with butter. The result is a soothing, creamy, beige substance.

3. Mix creamed butter with mashed potato, water, and vinegar. This will look ugly.

4. Fold in 50 g flour. Fold in another 50 g flour. You should have a rather light, gooey batter the consistency of pudding. Throw in OPTIONAL nuts/chocolate etc.

5. Spread evenly into a baking dish (greased with the butter wrapper).

6. Bake on the bottom shelf of an un-preheated oven at 177 degrees F/350 degrees F for 22-25 minutes.

7. Let bread/cake sit in oven for an hour or two or whenever you think it looks cooked.

8. Eat, or freeze it for later.

Again, the lower Calorie version tastes the same as the higher Calorie version, although it looks uglier when you're mixing the ingredients together. Both have similar textures; if you get something that's more gooey than crummy (so, more like coconut pudding than like a cake), you should bake it for a few more minutes.

I made a coconut version, which wasn't as tasty as the plain version, surprisingly (too chunky). The walnut/pumpkin seed version was pretty good, though, and I enjoy encountering chunks of potato, so my next potato recipe will most likely be something sweet with huge chunks of potato.

I know that my opinion doesn't count for this, but the potato bread/cake looks, tastes and feels like banana bread. I think it's the nutmeg, vanilla, and potato texture that sort of... give off a banana-y aura. Neither my mum nor my brother agree with me. Maybe I'm just going bananas. (haha!)

Coconut Pudding!!

I adore pudding.

I intended to make some Hawaiian haupia today, but in retrospect, it seems that I've made a chunky Puerto Rican tembleque instead, purely by accident. It doesn't really matter, because it's still creamy, delicious, fantastic coconut.

Haupia is supposed to be more solid, like a jelly, and is served in cubes. However, my coconut pudding wouldn't set (not that it matters, since it's still really gooey and delicious) and I also had added vanilla (my sister wanted it) and cinnamon (I wanted it) to the concoction, thus making it more of a tembleque. I also wanted to add nutmeg but my sister opposed that idea. Either way, I stupidly put the hot slurry into a plastic container, so maybe my tembleque is now infused with plastic fumes. Fun.

The pudding's also not really photogenic, especially with indoor photography (it's been raining on/off for the past 64 hours).

The original recipe is here, but I modified it (figures...)

INGREDIENTS for about 500 ml of tembleque

400 ml (1 can) coconut milk

100 g (or more) fresh coconut

50 g sugar

0.5 tsp salt

vanilla

part of a cinnamon stick

20 g cornstarch

40 ml fat-free milk

METHOD

1. Roughly chop coconut. If you're really finicky, you can shred coconut but it takes a lot of time. Chopping coconut chunks into pieces ranging from shreds to pea-size is perfectly acceptable.

2. Mix coconut, coconut milk, sugar, salt, and however much cinnamon and/or vanilla you want in a saucepan.

3. Plop saucepan on medium heat, and stir. You'll start to see bubbles on the side of the pan. Dissolve the cornstarch to the fat-free milk in a non-plastic container.

4. Keep stirring the mixture in the saucepan until you see huge gloopy bubbles form in the middle of the mixture, which will start to foam and rise. This took me about 7 minutes in total.

5. Pour all of the mixture from the saucepan into the milk/cornstarch mixture and stir quickly! Remove cinnamon pieces (optional. Just remember you have them there).

6. Let goo cool. Stick it in the fridge.

7. SLURP UP THE DELICIOUS FRESH&CANNED COCONUT FLAVOUR!

For me, the tembleque had the consistency of really thick porridge/gruel after refrigeration, but it did not adhere to other materials very easily (unlike yoghurt) so it was probably 70-90% the texture of haupia, since it wasn't entirely solid. It tasted mildly of cinnamon, which was really great. The pudding part tasted pretty light, which complimented the fresh chunks of coconut.

UPDATE: Actually, leaving the pudding in the fridge overnight meant that my pudding is solid, can be cut into cubes, and looks more like chunky haupia.

UPDATE (26 August): I made coconut pudding again today without coconut milk; I just grated fresh coconut, added 800 ml of water to it, threw in some cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla, and let it simmer on the stove for about 20 minutes. Then I mixed some cornstarch with a few tablespoons of cold water and then added the hot coconut slurry to it. Cornstarch clumps when it's added to hot water (from my experience).

Curry!

I made some curry today with potatoes and squash from the garden. I also added in two carrots and two pieces of coconut. It was delicious!! Even my brother agreed, and he even wants to eat it again (with rice, this time)!!! My sister didn't, though, because she just wanted to eat candy/pancakes/chips. The curry wasn't too spicy, because I didn't add any chilies (but my sister STILL thought that it was spicy. Sigh.) This goes perfectly on its own, with rice, with noodles (yes, noodles), and even with whole wheat bread! Mmmm.

Ingredients - serves 5 to 6.
1 tbsp oil
1 clove garlic
0.5 onion
2 tsp curry powder
3 tsp coriander
(1 packet chili powder/flakes or chili)
Around 300 g potatoes
2 carrots
300 g squash
350 ml liquid (I used 250 ml water and 100 ml milk)
2 chunks of coconut for fun
A lot of tofu.

Method
1. Cook spices, garlic, onion and oil in a BIG saucepan for a few minutes.
2. Add chunks of potato and liquid to the curry mixture and stir on high heat until liquid starts simmering.
3. Add chunks of squash and let everything simmer on medium-high for 10 minutes.
4. Add carrots and let everything simmer until the vegetables are at the consistency that you prefer. We wanted something slightly mushy, so we simmered for about 20 minutes in total.
5. Pour curry into a bowl that has cubed, fresh tofu.

I'm just glad we don't have to ever buy the ready-made curry sauces from the vacuum packages that have globs of oil. I ought to add shredded coconut next time.