korma korma korma chameleon

Tonight we had vegetable Korma from my new cookbook. I was going to cook this tofu stir fry dish from this cookbook cause I am horrible at stirfrys, but everyone always says they are so easy etc. etc. but they are hard to put flavor into if you ask me. This recipe had its own seasoning for the tofu, which was really hard for me because it took so many years to prefect the tofu seasoning recipe I have, I just can't believe if I put a tablespoon of paprika and a teaspoon of cumin on some tofu its going to be enough. Clyde looked over the recipe and said he would eat it, but wouldn't order it in a restaurant. Me neither. Tofu in restaurants suck. Rubbos friend lydia that was visiting told me all of her experiences with tofu are restaurant ones, and so her opinion of tofu was bad. She said she didn't know it could be another way. Damn restaurants. so I went to another item on the list for the week: vegetable korma. This is also a chance because ever since I stopped cooking lentils (because I read they inhibit iron uptake ) I make bad curry. This was a good one. My tofu flavors are more mexican than Indian though, so I used beans instead of tofu. I need to adjust the seasonings for it later.

Vegetable Korma:
1/4 cup butter
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon ginger or 1 inch ginger root
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon coriander (they call for a tablespoon, but I ran out and this amount worked well so I would hate to advocate more and it not taste good)
1 teaspoon cardamom (they call for six cardamom pods)
2 inch cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon ground tumeric
1 and 1/2 cup mushrooms
1/2 can chickpeas
about 6 pieces long green beans cut (not from can, farmers market kind)
about 1/2 zucchini cut
1 Japanese eggplant, first cut into length size pieces and covered in salt for about 1/2 hour before cooking, and rinsed before adding.
1 carrot
1/4 cup water
4 tablespoons yogurt
2/3 cup heavy cream
salt and pepper
If you like spicy add a red chili, I didn't try this

Melt butter, cook onion until it gets the clearness you want. I like mine super clear. Then add garlic and ginger and stir fry for 2 minutes. add the rest of the spices and let cook about 30 seconds.
This is where you decide how mushy you want this dish to be. Especially if you are changing the vegetables and adding potato, you want to put that in now. I decided to add my eggplant and mushrooms and 1/4 cup water. Boil this and turn down to low and simmer with top on for 15 minutes. Then add all the crisp vegetables. Thats when I put in my carrot and zucchini and beans, so there would be some crunch. I cooked this without the top for five minutes. Then you scoop out the vegetables with a slotted spoon and put them in a baking dish in a low heated over. On the stovetop in the remaining sauce add the yogurt, milk, salt and pepper and heat up. Pour this over the warm vegetables.
No, its not a complete protein, so we had roti (see falafel recipe) with it for the accompanying whole wheat. It was pretty good, and clyde liked it a lot.