Devandra Banhart was made for indoor recesses. I wonder at the percentage of indoor recess in Belgian schools? Rainy rain. How can I complain? They are rocking in rocking chairs, doing extra (EXTRA!) math work and eating Swedish Toast.



I made a really fantastic dinner last night (If I do say so myself), and if only for personal posterity sake I wanted to record it in this, my electronic recipe box. But if you are going to make this dish you have to make it to the sounds of Santa Maria Da Feira, the best track form Banhart's Cripple Crow C.D.



This curry was originally conceived to be a stir fry....but with the absence of any tofu in the friendly neighbourhood Delhaize and the find of the night (a new coconut and lemon grass curry sauce) the curry was really the only choice.



Ingredients:

1 onion - chopped

thai curry paste (red - I used the OX brand)

1 courgette - cut in diagonal slices

3 carrots - cut in diagonal slices

5 fat brown mushrooms - sliced

cilantro (I might bend on the whole aubergine/courgette thing, but screw you and your coriander)

1 can of chickpeas

generous amounts of coconut/lemon grass curry sauce (you could totally substitute this for coconut milk)

soya sauce

olive oil

chili pepper

I heated the olive oil up in the wok (the one without the burn marks all over the bottom), and added the onions, using K's trick of letting them sit for about 20 minutes before adding anything else. In this time I busied myself by dreaming about buying some thia-ish/Chinese-ish tool to turn my carrots into little flowers, wilst having to settle for diagonal slices. I added some soy sauce occasionally to the onions. I added the carrots next, waited about 10 minutes, covering them for some steam.

At this point I threw in the various sauces, in about tea spoon amount quantities - adding, tasting, adding.....adding. I finally threw in some chilli and became immediately worried about the level of heat ("an 'owwwww I burnt my tongue' dance was performed in the living room) and upon the ever oracle-like advice of my very own nigel slater I began a hunt for citrus. With a lack of lemon (a direct result of our holiday...the apartment is drastically low on a variety of items that are only discovered to be drastically low in mid-cook) I went for the juice of half a grapefruit.

I let it sit for quite some time - cracking open a really nice white wine (thanks to Jim and his Old Mill choice, I have a new addiction) and staring adoringly out of my apartment window.....when the wait was over...it was so worth it. Oh my god. It was delicious. I ate mine with some multigrain rice cakes, but it would have been equally as tasty with some jasmine rice or some soba noodles.

Make it Make it Make it.