Creamy Veggie Curry

Creamy Veggie Curry

Jenna Zaffino:

Welcome back to the Empowered Kitchen. I'm Jenna Zaffino, your resident health coach for the Patient and Caregiver Network Wellness Hub. And today, we're going to be making a soulful, nutritious, and delicious dish called creamy quinoa and vegetable curry. Let's get started. For this dish, you'll need a large pot or a pot and a smaller pan, and you'll also need some quinoa. We'll talk about how to cook that in a moment. I've got mine precooked for our purposes today. You'll also need some garlic, onion, ginger, vegetables of choice, olive oil, vegetable broth, coconut milk, and finally some turmeric, cumin, and coriander, which I have already prepped here ready to go.

We also will be using some cilantro for a garnish if you choose to use it. So let's begin by placing our already warmed pan onto our burner, and we're gonna go ahead and add in about a tablespoon of olive oil. Here, we'll let that heat up for a moment. Now with the quinoa, I cook it very easily. It's a 2 to 1 ratio, so 1 cup of dry to 2 cups of water or liquid of your choice. Some people love making the quinoa in vegetable broth or with chicken broth even. Some people like to just make it with water and a little bouillon cube, and honestly, that's my favorite. It just gives it a kick of flavor.

We're using a red quinoa today, which is the alternative to the white that we've used in other sweeter recipes. The red just has a little nuttier flavor and is generally, a little more savory, just slightly. So we're gonna start by putting our ginger, our garlic, and some of our onion into our pan, and we're going to make sure we stir that up. We'll also take our rest of our onion too. We're gonna wait until the onion softens, We're gonna start to smell those aromatics very very quickly. Now in my kitchen, it's important that we practice a level of imperfection, meaning that it doesn't matter if your onions are chopped perfectly. It is not the bare. We're not gonna be yelled at by the chef.

We're just trying to make something yummy that really goes along with our flavor profile, our palate, and, you know, something that interests and excites us. So I'm sure you can see that my onions are not prepped perfectly. That's just the way it goes when we're making good food. That's just the way it goes. So we're gonna let that clarify for a moment, and in the meantime, I'm gonna get ready to heat up my other burner just a little bit. This is very interesting cooking in these kind of, situations because of course it's portable and your heat is gonna differ from one kitchen to the next. So it's always just on the side of being a little liberal with your heat initially, and then you can turn it up later on. Now once these onions start to clarify a little and soften up, what I'm gonna do is add some of my aromatics, some of my spices in there.

It's going to start to smell really good in here and it's gonna give you a sense of what that curry is going to offer you in terms of a little kick. So for this recipe we're going to be using turmeric and cumin and coriander, which I've already prepped in here. You have your recipe printed out as you go through, and you should be able to see a few of the measurements on the screen. So actually, I'm just gonna start sprinkling some of these spices over the top. Remember the rule in the empowered kitchen is always imperfection rules. Oh, that smells delicious. You smell the cumin. Alright.

In the meantime, these are softening up pretty well, so I'm going to go ahead and add just a splash of my vegetable broth. Yeah. Give me about half or so just to get those guys to simmer, and then in the meantime, I'm gonna take the rest of the vegetable broth over here along with the coconut milk. There's about 2 cups or a full can of coconut milk rather over here and we're gonna get this one simmering up a little bit more. So we'll turn the heat up on that. And then in just a minute, we'll add them both together. I just like to do it this way. So first of all, you can see the beautiful yellow color and then secondly, we can just easily combine them when the time is right.

By the way, you can use any onion that you like. I simply have more red onions on hand than I did white, so I just decided to use red. Simple as that. And as we get ready for our liquid mixture over here, we're going to it's just almost ready to boil. Are we up to the top? Yeah, we're up to the top. Okay. So we're gonna turn down 1 burner here, and then we're gonna get ready to add our vegetables into the mixture, the liquid mixture over here. So when it comes to the vegetables, you can add absolutely whatever you like.

You can do a mixture of 1 or 2 vegetables, or you can do a ton like I've done. In this bowl, I have some sweet peppers, I have some carrot, and I have some tomato. Oftentimes, when I'm making a vegetable based dish, I'm just gonna throw in whatever I have left over in the pantry to make sure that I'm using it all up, and And then, you know, it all kind of takes on the flavor of those spices and ends up tasting really, really delicious. So we're gonna go ahead and Just go ahead and put those all in there. Give them a little stir. And then I've also got some zucchini, one of my faves, great source of fiber. It's gonna be a very, very thick curry, but I'm okay with that. And then finally, I added some celery.

I'm always aware that people who are, you know, professional cooks might be like, but the reason why I feel comfortable cooking with you here is that we're just trying things out. We're working to see what works for our own flavor profile. We're working to see what works for our own, like, pleasure center. I want you to be excited about what you're cooking and be willing to fail because that's the only way we're going to get better and more confident. So as we're ready, I'm gonna go ahead and transfer these onions over to my vegetable mixture and then we'll get the party started. While these veggies are simmering, let's talk a little bit about the benefits of the ingredients we're using. First of all, we're using turmeric, which is a great antioxidant and anti inflammatory food. It can be helpful for things like joint inflammation and gut health, and it's really been having a moment over the past few years as something that you want to include regularly into your diet, especially if you suffer from things like joint pain, and just general inflammation overall.

Okay. We have our simmer going. We're gonna let that simmer for a few more moments. Now, I mentioned I added zucchini to my curry. You may have done the same. Zucchini is one of those vegetables that has ample benefits. First of all, it's adaptable, and it can take on the flavor of lots of different dishes. Secondly, it is hydrating because it has a good water content, albeit the water will probably be part of the curry once we're finished with this.

But thirdly, it has a high deal of dietary fiber. And as we age, we wanna make sure that we are getting enough fiber in our diet to help with digestion and motility. Our objective is to keep our gut moving smooth so that everything we eat can be absorbed, the nutrients can be used, and then we can get rid of what we don't need. So I like adding zucchini into a lot of different dishes because it just works well for, for me, and I like the health benefits as well. Now I've also got tomatoes, peppers, and carrots in there. We've got vitamin c in there from the tomatoes and peppers. We've got vitamin a in there. We've got some potassium.

We've got some dietary fiber again. And, also, if you like those flavors, we've got just a good little pop of flavor from those different veggies. We're getting to the point where I'm starting to see those zucchini soften up a little bit. Everything's looking really good, and it's time to add our quinoa. Now with this red quinoa, I cooked it almost all the way knowing that I was gonna go ahead and add it into the soup mixture, the curry mixture afterwards. So I oftentimes suggest to folks that you cook it almost to done and then maybe save it for when you're going to use it. Because if you're gonna mix it with lots of different things, it will often soften up, especially if there's liquid in whatever you're mixing it with. So we're gonna add 1 cup of the quinoa into the curry mixture.

Let's get in there. Again, quinoa is a great alternative to things like rice and barley, buckwheat, anything that you might put into a soup or a curry. This is gonna be a really thick vegetable curry. It's interesting you know like I like it this way, I like a lot of chunky veggies in there and if you don't you can add less vegetables. I tend to get a little zealous when I'm making food that I know is gonna taste super good. I don't I wish you could smell it. It's it's just heaven right now in this space. That's largely because of the coconut milk, but, also because of that turmeric.

And I should say, if you haven't worked with turmeric before just be aware that it can stain some white things in your kitchen. So I always put down just a napkin or a dish rag to make sure that anything that I don't want yellow won't be yellow. Speaking of that coconut milk, coconut milk is also high in vitamin content as well as fiber. So we're kinda getting it from all sides, and I'm not mad about it. And then going back to the quinoa, we've added in some meat free protein into this dish that will help to keep us more full. If you are eating a plant based dish, sometimes what happens is those good vitamins, those flavors, everything comes into your system, and because there maybe isn't a higher fat or protein content in the dish, you can sometimes run a little low on energy after a little while. So I always like to couple my plant based meals with some healthy fats like our olive oil as well as some source of protein whether that's meat based or plant based or otherwise that is what I like to do. Now this is looking really good all the veggies are softening up.

So after you add that quinoa you're gonna want to let it simmer for between 10 and 15 minutes until all the veggies really soften up and you get a nice consistency. Now between the bouillon that I use to cook the quinoa, plus the spices. There's quite a bit of spice in here already. I'm a person who tends to like a little more salt, so we're just gonna give it a little taste test. We're getting close to done, but I think these carrots need just a few more moments. Okay. So delicious, so good. I kinda wait for this, and I'm gonna add a little salt and pepper.

Now I always tend to get jealous when the chefs, like, just do the very fancy when my grandmother taught me how to cook, she said, just bung it all in. That's the way we do it in my house. The more the better. And, you know, that's a good thing to remember about cooking your food. Oftentimes, it is influenced by your family for better or for worse, and some of the habits are gonna be really wonderful for you to bring on and create your own traditions with, and others are gonna be different than what other people do. But, you know, I always think fondly of my grandmother when I think of just throwing things in. She rarely measured. She just did it by hand.

It was messy, but it always tasted good. Alright, my friends. It's time to taste. Well, to serve and garnish and then taste. I like to put a good deal of the good stuff in first. We've got a good amount of veg, and then we'll pour a little liquid in seconds. That beautiful color. Yum.

Okay. We've garnished, and it's time to take a taste. I'm famous for not waiting until it's cool enough, but what are you gonna do? There's something about that punch of turmeric, and cumin, and coconut, and veg. It's just so good. Okay. I'll be right back as I finish this. I hope you enjoyed making this one with me. And stick around I'll show you how I intend to meal prep this dish for a few lunches and dinners throughout the week.

Remember you are strong, resilient, and the small moments matter. Thanks for joining me.