Recipe: Japanese Curry Sauce Plus

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

Figured it’s time I get back to posting my cooking experiments.

This sauce came about after seeing an Indian mini-cafeteria on my job.  It had some lovely thick sauces that looked like a complete meal on rice, and there was a dish that was a bed of greens, then rice, then curry.  These came together in my head to make me ask “can I make a curry sauce that is largely a meal?”

This is the result.  This sauce’s body comes from squash and garbanzo beans and tastes very much like my Japanese Curry sauces.  Each serving has a about serving of legumes and a serving of vegetables in it.  Throw it onto rice with a side dish – or rice and a bed of greens, say shredded spinach, and you have a very complete meal.

Makes 6-8 servings

Ingredients:

  • 1 small butternut squash (about 2 pounds unpeeled), peeled, seeded, cut into cubes.
  • 2 tomatoes, diced.
  • 3 cups cooked garbanzo beans (2 14.5 oz cans)
  • 2 cups low-sodium vegetable stock
  • 2/3 cup red wine (shiraz and zinfandel are good)
  • 4 tablespoons curry powder.
  • 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
  • 1/4 tsp black pepper
  • 1 tbsp maple syrup
  • 4  tablespoons soy sauce (If you use store-bought not-quite sodium free vegetable broth, use 1 Tbsp)
  • 4T bsp garlic
  • 4 1/2 tsp cocoa powder
  • 4 Tbsp peanut butter

To prepare:

  1. Place squash, tomatoes, garbanzo beans, vegetable stock, wine into a pot, bring to boil, simmer.
  2. While bringing to boil, add other ingredients one at a time, stirring.
  3. When the squash is soft, mash with potato masher to break it and the beans and tomatoes up.
  4. Either puree with immersion blender or let cool and puree in regular blender.

Notes:  This sauce is a bit thick, may need more vegetable broth – I’d say ½ to 1 cups.  it’s also hot so you might want to tone the curry powder down a bit depending on taste

– Steve