Japanese Vegetarian Curry is a recipe requested by a reader. The consistency is just like the store-bought Japanese curry roux. It’s nothing like Indian curry or any other curries in the world!
- 1 potato (200g / 7.1oz), halved and cut into bite size pieces (about 12 pieces in total)
- 100g/3.5oz carrot , cut into 2cm / ¾" thick discs (note 1)
- 100g/3.5oz Zucchini , cut into 2cm / ¾" thick discs
- 100ml/3.4oz dry white wine
- 400ml/0.8pt water (note 2)
- 2 tsp vegetable stock powder (note 2)
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 1 sweet red apple , grated (optional)
- 1 tsp tamarind
- 2 tbsp oil (note 3)
- 30g/1.1oz butter (note 3)
- 2 onions (450g / 1lb), very thinly sliced
- 25g/0.9oz ginger , grated
- 2 cloves garlic , grated
- 2⅓ tbsp flour
- 2 tbsp curry powder
- ½ - 1 tsp red chilli powder (note 4)
- 2½ tbsp tomato paste
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Put oil and butter in a large frying pan over medium high heat and melt the butter.
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Add ginger, garlic and onion to the frying pan and sauté for about 10 minutes until the onion becomes yellowish and very soft with some browning around the edge (note 5).
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Reduce the heat to medium and sprinkle flour over the onion. Sauté to cook flour for 1 minute.
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Add the remaining Curry Base ingredients and cook for another 1 minute, mixing the ingredients well.
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Add potato and carrot to the curry base and cook for a couple of minutes.
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Add wine, turn the heat up and mix well.1. When it starts boiling, add the remaining ingredients and mix.
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Place a lid on and cook for about 7 minutes, then add zucchini. Cook further 8 minutes or so with a lid on until the vegetables are cooked through and the curry becomes a béchamel sauce consistency (note 6). Mix the curry occasionally to ensure that it does not stick to the bottom.
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Serve with hot rice (not in ingredients).
1. If the carrot is very thick, halve it vertically, then cut into half discs.
The size of the carrot pieces should be slightly smaller than the potatoes so that they will cook in the same time.
2. I used Vegeta stock powder. Instead of 400ml water and stock powder, you can use vegetable stock, preferably salt reduced. In this case, you may need to adjust the amount of salt to add as the stock already contains salt.
3. If you cannot have butter, use 4 tablespoons of grapeseed oil or palm oil instead of oil and butter.
4. If you like spicy food, you may want to increase the hot chilli powder to ½ teaspoon. This will make the curry pretty spicy. You can also reduce the amount of chilli powder or use mild chilli powder instead, if you prefer milder curry.
5. If the onions are sticking to the frying pan, add a small amount of oil.
6. If the curry is still too watery, remove the lid and cook to condense the sauce.
7. The curry can keep in the fridge for several days. Reheating every day will keep it better. You can freeze the vegetarian curry but the texture of potato and some other vegetables will be slightly deteriorated.
8. In addition to examining ingredients of store-bought Japanese curry roux, I referenced the recipe by Masaru Doi in the Japanese magazine called Japanese Homemade Recipe.
9. Nutrition per serving, assuming 6 servings. Rice is not included.
serving: 215g calories: 176kcal fat: 7.2g (11%) saturated fat: 1.6g (8%) polyunsaturated fat: 1g monounsaturated fat: 4.1g cholesterol: 5.2mg (2%) sodium: 428mg (18%) potassium: 418mg (12%) carbohydrates: 23g (8%) dietary fibre: 4g (16%) sugar: 9.2g protein: 2.5g vitamin a: 30% vitamin c: 26% calcium: 3.1% iron: 7.3 %