Fragrant Summer Bean Curry

We are big curry fans in our house, so at this time of year there is a lot of bean curry being made. The heat of the curry is where we differ, but this is easily remedied by adding homemade, hot haberero chilli sauce to the individual serving.

Lots of curry is made all year around – always from scratch – in large portions to freeze. This makes for super easy week-night meals.

It’s also a great way to use the produce from the garden, as most things can go into a curry.

July is the beginning of the main harvest time in the veg garden, but now as we enter August the bumper harvests begin!

Beans

There are certain crops, that once they start producing, they are difficult to keep up with and this is definitely true of beans.

As a little girl, I remember sitting in the garden, whilst dad picked the beans, mum sliced the beans and I helped bag the beans.

I can still remember the smell and thinking to myself, who on earth would choose to eat them. How things change!

Rather than just bag the beans individually, I find it far more beneficial to turn them into homemade ready meals.

The first bean curry I made, was from Yotam Ottolenghi’s book ‘Plenty’ and over the years I’ve made it time and time again, altering it ever so slightly to my own taste. That’s what we are making today.

It’s so light and fragrant and so suits the new fresh summer beans really well!

Kitchen Garden

As we are lucky enough to have a greenhouse, which enables us to grow enough tomatoes to make our own tomato sauce. This does make this curry particularly sweet. Although I have made it with good quality tinned chopped tomatoes, I just add a little more honey.

We also grow onions but this year I’ve grown shallots so that’s what I’m using today.

With all recipes, you can swap ingredients around, depending on what you have in the garden or the fridge.

As ever, gather the ingredients together.

Pick and wash you beans.

If you have cardamom pods, place them in your mortar and bash them with the pestle, then picking the seeds out, discard the husks. Grind to a fine powder.

Fragrant Summer Bean Curry

Ingredients

600g of mixed garden beans. This can include all flat beans, such as runner & Borlotti, french beans, broad beans and peas, sugar snaps or mangetout.
Onion or 3- 4 shallots
1-2 sweet peppers
3 garlic cloves
1 400g tin of chopped tomatoes or equivalent of garden tomatoes
2 tbsp Tomato Purée
1 tsp ground cardamom – around 15-20 pods crushed.
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp ground cloves – be careful, too much will spoil it
2tbsp rape seed oil or other oil that doesn’t burn.

Method

Chop the onions and peppers finely. Add the oil, onions, and peppers to the pan.

Fry very gently for around 15 minutes with the lid on.

In the meantime chop the beans into reasonably sized pieces, weighing as you go. Today I’m using Borlotti, and french beans, fresh from the garden and some broad beans I froze a few weeks ago.

Once the onions and peppers are done, add the garlic and fry for a further couple of minutes.

Measure out the spices: Ground Cardamom, Cumin, Coriander, Turmeric and Cloves.

Add to the pan and stir for another couple of minutes.

Next add the chopped tomatoes and tomato purée.

Stirring every 5 minutes, bubble for 15-20 minutes until the beans are just cooked. Slightly less if you are freezing as the beans always soften more in the freezer.