Thai-Style Vegetable Curry

Here's an all-vegan curry with Thai-influenced flavors. As a rule, Asian cuisine is very vegetarian-friendly, but if you take it one step further to vegan, it isn't always so simple - there's a lot of fish sauce and, in Indian cooking especially, a lot of butter. But it only takes a little tweaking to make something vegan!

Do all the prep work for this recipe ahead of time, because there's a lot of chopping.

Start out by heating one and a half teaspoons canola oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add 1 1/2 cups chopped onion, a teaspoon and a half minced fresh ginger and 2 minced garlic cloves, and saute for five minutes.

Add 1/2 cup vegetable stock. Use your own homemade from yesterday's recipe, or you can always buy it at the store ;) Along with the stock, add 1 tablespoon soy sauce, about 1 1/2 tsp. of red thai curry paste (the one from Thai Kitchen is certified vegan http://www.thaikitchen.com/), and 1/4 tsp salt. Add 3/4 cup chopped carrots and let cook for 2 minutes.

Add 1 cup chopped red bell pepper, one cup cherry tomatoes, 2 cups thinly sliced zucchini, 3/4 cup thinly sliced yellow squash, and 4 oz sliced mushrooms (about a cup and a half). Cook another two minutes.

Add another cup and a half of the vegetable stock, along with 2 cups pre-packaged fresh spinach. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer another five minutes.

While all that's going on, make the noodles in another pot. The original recipe called for rice noodles which I couldn't find (even at Whole Foods!) so I substituted udon instead, and the resulting recipe was delicious anyway. Cook whichever noodles you buy according to package directions.

On each serving plate, ladle 1 1/2 cups of the vegetable mixture over 1/2 cup of cooked noodles for 190 calories a serving.

Cost:
onion $1.00
red curry paste $3.39
red bell pepper $2.00
cherry tomatoes $1.50
zucchini $1.20
yellow squash $0.75
spinach $2.50
udon $3.49