Mushroom curry

Lent is in full swing and I’m scratching my head each day wondering what curry I should cook? I’m struggling hard to please my husband with veggie dishes! ( he is a meataholic)

During one of my summer holidays in my ancestral home, after a heavy thunder storm at night milk mushrooms popped up all over our back yard! In the cold and wet morning my grandma’s maid and I went to collect them in a bamboo basket. She warned me to be silent while picking them because mushrooms don’t like sound and so won’t crop-up the next day!!

But I couldn’t keep silent and I was shouting “over there…over there another bunch!!”

But she always warned me “Shh…keep quiet…keep quiet!”

That day grandma prepared a delicious ‘mushroom thoran’. She prepared it in a large earthen pot; and its taste still lingers on my tongue! It had a lovely pale and greenish yellow colour!!

Ever since I never had mushroom back home because they are so expensive!

But after coming Australia I find them quite cheap but still they lack that flavour that I experienced earlier!

Yesterday I cooked a dish with button mushrooms and wanted it tastes similar to a chicken curry to appease my husband and keep the lent! Yeah…it was not bad! He really enjoyed it!!


Ingredients

1. Button mushrooms (sliced) – 25 nos
2. Desiccated coconut – ½ cup
3. Tomato (chopped) – 1 no
4. Ginger (cut into long pieces) – 2 cm long piece
5. Onion (sliced) – 2 nos
6. Chilly powder – 1 tsp
7. Coriander powder – 2 tsp
8. Turmeric powder – ¼ tsp
9. Garam masala – 1tsp
10. Oil – 3 tbsp
11. Salt - as required
12. Water – 1 ½ cup

Method

1. Heat a pan and dry roast grated coconut and half of a sliced onion.
2. When it changes its colour to golden brown add all the spices.
3. With out burning fry them till dark brown.
4. Grind this into a fine paste by adding 1 cup of water.
5. Heat oil in a pan and fry onion and ginger.
6. When onion is soft add mushroom, tomato and salt.
7. Fry till mushrooms are tender.
8. Add the ground paste and the remaining water to the mushrooms.
9. Bring to boil and simmer for few minutes till gravy thickens.