Trendy superfood kale is teaming up with Maitland pumpkins to create a dish that will send delectable aromas through the city’s heart.
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The team hosting Maitland produce market in The Levee on Thursday will cook up a huge batch of pumpkin curry and sell it with rice and a kale salad.
The hot meal gives shoppers an extra incentive to drop into the market between 3pm and 7pm and buy fresh veges before rewarding themselves with the healthy dish. They can eat it in The Levee for $10 or take it home for $15. They can add a boiled egg to the dish from Just Been Laid farm for an extra $2.
Maitland is bursting at the seams with a bumper pumpkin crop. Slow Food Hunter Valley leader Amorelle Dempster wants to make sure the crop isn’t wasted, so the dish has been added to the menu.
Shoppers can buy the fresh ingredients at the market and find the others in their pantry or the supermarket.
“Cooking it at the market makes food so real and it’s showing people how to take raw materials and turn them into a tasty meal,” Ms Dempster said.
“We had a vegetable curry for sale at the last market and we sold 60 serves of it; it also sent a lovely smell through The Levee.”
The cost of the meal goes to Slow Food Hunter Valley so it can buy equipment to make the market even better including lighting, market umbrellas and signage.
The $496 raised from the vegetable curry helped buy another marquee to extend the market.
Shoppers can expect a wide variety of seasonal produce from cauliflowers, spinach, winter salad mixes, and Sebago potatoes which are perfect for roasting and mash.
There’ll also be lemons and limes on offer as well as free range chicken, beef and pork and free range eggs and honey.
Shoppers must bring their own bags to the market.
Get pumpkin curry cooking in your kitchen
Serves 4-6
INGREDIENTS
3 tablespoons of toasted desiccated coconut
1 teaspoon cumin powder
1 medium brown onion diced
4 cloves of garlic
2 green chilli’s (optional)
Turmeric (for colour)
Salt
2 kg diced pumpkin, butternut, Jarrahdale, Queensland blue
1 cup of lentils
5 cm piece of cinnamon stick
10 curry leaves
1 lemon grass – all parts
¼ teaspoon of fenugreek
2 cup coconut milk/cream mixed with 4 cups of water
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 large onions sliced
1 teaspoon brown mustard seeds
1 tablespoon crushed chillies
METHOD
1. In a food processor, make a paste, by combining desiccated coconut, cumin powder, onion garlic green chillies, turmeric and salt. Add ½ cup water if the mixture is too dry.
2. Place the paste, along with the pumpkin, lentils cinnamon stick, curry leaves, lemon grass, fenugreek seeds and coconut milk and water.
3. Cook until the pumpkin is soft.
4. In a separate frying pan, heat oil and sauté onion until caramalised. Add mustard seeds and chillies and cook for a further 2 minutes. Keep stiring to avoid burning. Add this mix to the cooked pumpkin.
5. Simmer for further fifteen minutes and then garnish with Corriander leaves.
Serve with brown rice, boiled eggs and kale salad.
Get trendy with a kale salad
INGREDIENTS
5 kale leaves, trimmed, stalks discarded and leaves washed and cut fine.
1 teaspoon sea salt
Juice of 1 lime
1 teaspoon of Olive oil
METHOD
To make salad mix the kale and salt with the tips iof fingers until well combined and kale is bruised. Add the lime juice and olive oil and stir to combine.