What will you do with the flesh you’ve hollowed out of your Halloween pumpkins? You can make this easy green bean and pumpkin curry recipe. It’s perfect for keeping you warm during the chilly October nights. Actually, it’s perfect for any night of the year.
Pumpkins are great at soaking up the flavour. This pumpkin curry recipe has a heady mix of fragrant spices combined with a creamy coconut sauce. And interlaced throughout are green beans for additional goodness and an extra shot of colour.
Ingredients for making your autumn curry
Spices
For this recipe, I have used cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and fenugreek, with a little turmeric for additional colour. This gives the curry a fragrant flavour that soaks through into the coconut sauce.
Green beans
I like to use fine green beans, they cook quickly. My tip is to chop the beans into 2cm pieces cut at an angle.
Vegetable stock
I dissolve half a cube of vegetable stock in 200mls of water and add this to the curry while it’s cooking. I’ve found that pumpkin can cook quite quickly, and the addition of a little vegetable stock helps to build the flavour of the curry.
Tempering
Tempering is a technique used in Sri Lankan cooking to bring a final burst of flavour to the dish. Onion, garlic, ginger, curry leaves, chilli and spices such as mustard and cumin seeds are fried in heated oil. I use this technique when I make dhal.
Lime
This is the final addition to the dish, a squeeze of lime to bring out all the flavours.
Easy green bean and pumpkin curry recipe
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Easy green bean and pumpkin curry recipe
- Prep Time: 30
- Cook Time: 20
- Total Time: 50 minutes
- Yield: 4 1x
- Cuisine: Sri Lankan
Description
An easy and delicious pumpkin curry the perfect recipe to use up leftover Halloween pumpkins.
Ingredients
- 100g green beans, top tailed and sliced into 2cm pieces cut at the diagonal
- 1 tbsp coconut oil
- 750g pumpkin (chopped, deseeded peeled and diced)
- 1 red chilli crushed
- 1 sprig of curry leaves
- 1/4 tsp turmeric
- 0.5 tsp fenugreek seeds
- 2cm stick of cinnamon
- 4 cardamon pods, 4 cloves
- A pinch of salt
- 200mls coconut (unsweetened)
- 1/2 cube vegetable stock dissolved in 200mls of boiling water
- Juice of one lime
For the tempering
- 1 tsp coconut oil
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 1 tsp mustard seeds
- 1 tsp Maldive fish (optional)
- 1 sprig of curry leaves
- 1/2 onion sliced
- 2 garlic cloves (chopped)
- 2cms ginger (peeled and finely chopped)
Instructions
- Boil a pan of salted water, and blanche the green beans for two minutes, drain and set aside.
- Pop the coconut oil a saucepan, and gently heat until melted
- Add the peeled and diced pumpkin and fry gently until the pumpkin starts to brown on the outside
- Throw in the remaining dry ingredients followed by the coconut milk, stock cube and the cinnamon stick and the blanched green beans.
- Continue to cook on a gentle heat for around 15 minutes
- While the pumpkin is cooking, you can start to temper the onions, garlic, ginger and spices
- In a small frying pan heat the coconut oil
- Add the cumin and mustard seeds, curry leaves, chilli, Maldive fish.
- When the seeds start to pop add the garlic, ginger and onions
- Cook until the onions start to brown
- Take off the heat and stir into the pumpkin curry
- When the pumpkin and beans are soft and tender, take off the heat and serve with rice because that’s all you’re going to need!
Notes
- For a vegetarian / vegan option simply omit the Maldive fish
Keywords: Sri Lankan pumpkin curry