Malaysian curry

This might seem like an obvious kind of dinner to post about, but before I met my husband, I had no idea about making curry like this. To me, curry was all about dahl, vegetables, chickpeas and the like (Indian is probably my favourite cuisine in fact).

The curry described below is a straightforward kind of meal to make, using sauce from a tin. Doesn’t sound so appetising…but it’s pretty tasty.

Ingredients:
Tofu (I often use the Soyco Japanese Tofu sold in the supermarket), cut into small pieces
1-2 eggplants, cut into cubes
1-2 sweet potatoes, cut into large cubes
Several tomatoes
Buk choy/ green beans/ other green vegetables, chopped
Yeoh’s curry sauce
Rice to serve with

Put the rice on pretty early, as this recipe is very quick to make!

Fry the eggplant lightly – then I put a bit of water in the bottom of the saucepan to cook it a bit more before other ingredients are added.

Mix in the sweet potato, cook a little further.

After about 5 minutes, pour in the tin of sauce, and maybe a tin’s worth of water. Stir in the tomatoes. Bring it all up to a good heat and then simmer for around 10 minutes.

Malaysian curry
Add in the green vegetables on top of the curry mix, and then cook for around another 10 minutes or so, tossing in the tofu in for the last few of these minutes, just to warm it. See how cooked the sweet potatoes are, then use that as a guide as to when to turn the stove off.

Serve the curry over the rice (of course).

There you go. Fussy eater version of this dinner = rice, plain tofu, plain vegetables with a taste or two of the curry (if and when requested)!

Weekend Places: Garden world

I’ve been meaning to write the next in my ‘Things to do on the weekend’ series for a while. Finally, here it is. We’ve been spending a lot of time at nurseries lately, and there is one which is my favourite: Gardenworld in Braeside. So here’s a post about the fun things we like about this nursery, and why it’s a great place to visit for those in the outer eastern suburbs.

Flowers 3Gardenworld 2Peacock and cyclamen

  Firstly, the range is huge! We have been looking for some particular kinds of proteas lately, and not many places we checked had the kinds we were after, but Gardenworld had heaps! The only difficulty was choosing. We ended up with a trolley full of susaras and pink creams, and now we’re looking forward to their colourful blooms in our garden next Autumn and Winter.

Gumboots
Anyway, the plants are gorgeous and plentiful, and there are homewares, succulents, pots…all kinds of things.

And…dinosaurs! Lots of fun for kids (although the giraffe
was our daughter’s favourite on our last trip). But the best nursery fun (for toddlers) would have to be jumping up and down…in muddy puddles…so do bring gumboots…

Finally, the cafe – it’s fantastic, with a variety of sweet and savoury options, and they make a good babycino!

Babycino     Gardenworld cafe      Cakes