I thought perhaps a simple pasta dish with salad but then I changed my mine when I had some butter rice at a friend's place earlier that week. Seeing I had some lovely organic basmati rice (housewarming gift from SM), I thought I'd like to try making the butter rice.
Butter rice goes well with some form of curry. So I decided perhaps a vegetable curry. I also had some watercress which I turned into a soup (which was another challenge as it's normally double boiled with pork bones but I had to make a vegetarian version).
Anyway, the final menu turned out as follows:
Organic Basmati Butter Rice
Cooked the basmati rice as per normal, then put some butter, unsalted cashew nuts and raisins in and mixed it all up.
Vegetable CurryIngredients: Shallots, garlic, ginger, lotus root, carrots, zuchini, aubergine and potatoes.
Method:
1. Brown the chopped shallots and garlic in oil. Add ground ginger.
2. Mix 1 1/2 tablespoon of Watch Brand Curry powder (it's actually a product of England!!!) with some water into a paste. Pour into shallots/garlic mixture.
3. Put in the lotus root and carrots. Add some water. Boil
4. After a little while, add in rest of vegetable. Boil.
5. Add salt and pepper to taste.
The final product looked like this:
Watercress Soup
Ingredients: Watercress, garlic, some vegetable stock, Knorr Tom Yum cube
OK, so I had to cheat on this. Brown the bruised garlic in some oil. Add 2 tablespoons of vegetable stock powder and 1/2 cube of Tom Yum cube. Add water and watercress. Wala, instant soup! The tom yum cube (or you can use paste too) added a little sour, tangy flavour which complemented the strong flavour of the watercress.
CM, my other guest, also brought some tofu. Nice cold Japanese tofu with oil, thick black sauce topped with fried shallots.
