ROASTED VEGETABLE COCONUT CURRY

Serves 8-10.

For the paste, you will need:

1 tablespoons coriander seeds 2 teaspoons cumin seeds 2 teaspoons garam masala 50g (2oz) fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped 8 cloves of garlic, peeled 4 red chillis, deseeded

200g (7oz) onions, peeled and quartered 50ml (2fl oz) sunflower oil 1 tablespoon ground turmeric 2 teaspoons caster sugar 2 teaspoons salt

For the curry, you will need:

2 x 400ml (14oz) tins of coconut milk 600ml (1pt) vegetable stock 400ml (14fl oz) natural yoghurt 4 carrots, peeled and cut into 2cm (1in) cubes 4 parsnips, peeled, cores removed and flesh cut into 2cm (1in) cubes 700g (1½lbs) sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 2cm (1in) cubes 4 red onions, peeled and cut into eighths 150g (5oz) spinach leaves

To serve, you will need:

Rice Large bunch of fresh coriander, chopped 100g (3½ oz) cashew nuts, toasted and chopped 200ml (7fl oz) natural yoghurt

Preheat the oven to 200°C, 375°F, Gas 5. First, make the paste. Put a small frying pan on a medium heat and add the coriander seeds, the cumin seeds and the garam masala. Cook, tossing frequently, for about a minute or until the seeds start to pop, then remove the spice mixture from the pan and crush it in a pestle and mortar.

Put the roughly chopped fresh ginger, the garlic cloves, the deseeded chilli, the quartered onions and the sunflower oil in a food processor and whizz everything for 2-3 minutes or until the mixture is smooth. Pour the ginger, garlic, chilli, onion and oil mixture into a large saucepan or casserole pot and stir in the freshly crushed spices, along with the ground turmeric, the caster sugar and the salt. Put the saucepan on a medium-low heat and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes, or until the mixture has reduced slightly.

Remove the saucepan from the heat and pour half of the mixture into a large bowl.

Pour the tinned coconut milk and the vegetable stock into the remaining half of the mixture in the saucepan, stirring to combine. Set aside.

Add the natural yoghurt to the bowl, then add the cubed carrots, the cubed parsnips, the cubed sweet potatoes, and the red onion eighths and stir the mixture to thoroughly coat them. Tip the contents of the bowl into two roasting trays and cook in the oven for about 45 minutes to 1 hour or until the vegetables are tender and lightly browned.

While the vegetables are cooking, prepare the spinach. If you’re using baby spinach, slice it roughly. But if it’s perennial spinach — the larger leaves — then you’ll need to destalk the spinach first, see my Tip, above left. Once you’ve destalked the spinach, finely slice the stalks and roughly chop the leaves, keeping them separate.

Remove the vegetables from the oven and add them to the sauce in the saucepan that you set aside earlier, scraping all the spice paste from the trays. Put the saucepan on a medium heat to simmer for a few minutes to warm through. Then, if you’ve prepared larger spinach leaves, stir in the spinach stalks first and cook them for a few minutes until they are tender, then add the chopped spinach leaves, or the chopped baby spinach, whichever you’re using, and cook for just a minute until the chopped spinach is wilted. Serve with rice, a sprinkling of chopped fresh coriander, a scattering of the chopped toasted cashew nuts and a spoonful of natural yoghurt over the top.