Oven Baked Vegetable Curry with Lemon Turmeric Rice

We’d bought some butternut squash a couple of weeks ago to make a soup, but I didn’t get round to making it…Needing to use up the squash before they started to turn bad (although, to be fair, they last for ages in a cool, dry place), I decided to make a vegetable curry.

For more recipes using rice, check out these Rice Salad Recipes. Right click and open these other recipes in a new tab so that you can read them after this one!

This is a “leave it in the oven and forget about it for a couple of hours dish” – the kind I like!

I used various veggies that I had to hand: butternut squash, sweet potato, field mushrooms, red onions, cauliflower, new potatoes and aubergines. I also threw in some frozen peas towards the end of cooking.

I had a jar of tikka masala curry paste in the cupboard, so that became my curry sauce along with a few cans of chopped tomatoes – but you could use you favourite curry paste flavour.

First, cut up the vegetables into chunks – I kept mine quite big. I did this because I didn’t want them to turn to mush during the long cooking time.

Depending on the volume of vegetables that you are using, use enough paste to cover the vegetables. I used 2 butternut squash, a sweet potato, a couple of new potatoes, 2 red onions, a small cauliflower, 4 field mushrooms and medium aubergine. I ended up just using the whole of the jar. Give a good mix with a spoon (or get you hands in – easier to make sure everything is covered!). Cover and place in the fridge for about an hour.

Since there is usually some oil in a jar of curry paste, I didn’t add any extra. I dumped all the veggies in a large roasting dish, poured over some canned chopped tomatoes (I used 3 regular sized tins) and covered with foil and put in the oven for an hour at 200C.

After an hour, I took the dish out of the oven, gave everything a stir (water starts to come out of the veggies to make a sauce), and added a handful of frozen peas. Back into the oven, uncovered for another hour.

With about 15 minutes to go, I cooked my rice. I am useless at cooking rice. I mean, really bad…and decided to follow Jamie Oliver’s advice on how to cook perfect rice…O.M.G…it worked! The rice was perfectly cooked, and I just couldn’t believe it!

Now, for all I know, you may cook perfect rice every time, but me, I don’t, and if you also don’t, this is how it’s done…

1 part rice to 2 parts boiling water, boil for 7 minutes with a lid on. Remove from the heat, and leave to steam for another 7 minutes with the lid on. I also added a pinch of salt and a drop of olive oil at the start of cooking. Fluff up with a fork! Enjoy perfect rice!

To make my lemon turmeric rice, I use 100g basmati rice (it filled up half a coffee mug) and placed into a pan. I added a teaspoon of turmeric and a pinch of salt then gave it a mix around, before halving a lemon and placed cut side down into the rice. A drizzle of olive oil and then a full mug of boiling water.

On with the lid for 7 minutes…then off the heat with the lid still on for another 7 minutes. The fragrance from the cooking rice was amazing!

When cooked, I removed the lemon – you could squeeze some of the juice into the rice, but we found it lemony enough without having to do this.

Check that the vegetables in your curry are tender, and serve with a portion of rice…delish!

There’s enough for left overs for a couple of days, so we’re looking forward to eating this for dinner again this evening :D

Please Share This Post!