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Curried Vegetables No. 2
1 small cauliflower 1/4 pound of carrots 4 ounces butter 1/4 pound mushrooms Salt 2 potatoes 1 1/2 pounds onions 1 tablespoon of curry powder 1 apple 2 tomatoes Chop and fry the onions, apple, mushrooms and vegetables in the butter until tender. Then add the curry, salt and enough water to moisten, cook a few minutes longer and turn out with a wall of boiled rice around it.
A straightforward Anglo-Indian vegetable curry, though the ingredient list is given as a jumble and the method compresses three different cooking times into one line. A little sequencing is all it needs.
- Cook in stages, not all at oncePotatoes and carrots want 15-20 minutes; cauliflower about 10; mushrooms, apple and tomatoes only a few. Start the onions and root vegetables, add the cauliflower partway, and put the mushrooms, apple and tomato in near the end so they do not collapse.
- Fry the curry powderThe recipe adds curry powder at the end with the water, which leaves it raw and dusty. Commercial curry powder needs 30-60 seconds in the hot butter before liquid goes in; that is the difference between a fragrant dish and a gritty one.
- Proportions1 1/2 lb onions against 1/4 lb carrots and 1/4 lb mushrooms looks lopsided, but it reads as intended rather than as a misprint. The onions cook down to the body of the sauce. Slice them rather than dicing so they melt.
- The butter4 ounces is a half cup (one stick) for something over four pounds of vegetables. It is period-appropriate for a meatless dish meant to satisfy, but half that amount will fry everything perfectly well if you prefer.
- Weights and sizesA small cauliflower is about 1 1/2 lb untrimmed. "2 potatoes" is vague; take about 3/4 lb of a waxy variety, which holds shape in the pan. Peel and dice the apple, and a tart one works best against the spice.
- "Enough water to moisten"Start with about a half cup. The onions and tomatoes give up a good deal of liquid, and this should finish thick enough to hold its shape inside a rice border, not soupy.
- The wall of riceSpoon boiled rice into a ring around the edge of a warm platter and mound the curry in the centre, or pack the rice into an oiled ring mould and unmould it. Allow about 1 1/2 cups of raw rice.
- YieldServes four to six as a main course with the rice.
Meatless cookbooks of the early twentieth century leaned hard on curry, and for a practical reason: curry powder was already familiar in British and American kitchens, cheap, and strong enough to carry a plate of vegetables that would otherwise taste like a side dish. The apple is a marker of the Anglo-Indian style that reached these books by way of British India, where cooks working for English households built a sweet-sour note into curries with apple, mango chutney or sultanas; it is not a feature of Indian cooking as practised in India. The ring of boiled rice around a mounded stew was standard service for anything saucy in this period, along with borders of mashed potato or duchesse potato. The fact that this is "No. 2" tells you at least one other curry recipe was expected to sit alongside it.