A friend left on Monday for a month long cruise round Canada, lucky her! I keep an eye on the house for her while she is away (she is very generous and has already given me a massive golden chrysanthemum, and always brings me back edible goodies from wherever she goes) and as part of the preparations for her long trip, she stripped her tomato plants and gave me all the green fruits.

Normally, I have lots myself at this time of year and keep them piled in a huge bowl where they gradually ripen. We usually have the last few wrinkled, but red, ones around Christmas. But my tomato crop has been abysmal this year and I am leaving my few fruits on the vine as long as possible. And def haven’t used any whilst green.

I have been looking up recipes for green tomatoes and decided to do one today. Completely ignored all the recipes I’d found and made this up instead!

I thought they would work well in a curry. I added some of our numerous apples as we have so many, I almost added some plums too, but thought it might make it too fruity – in the event, they would have worked fine. We have lots of lovely pink fir apple potatoes that I grew, so in some of those went. Some of the coconut milk powder that I bought so much of from Approved Foods, and a huge courgette from the garden.

I also have several packets of mini nans stashed in the freezer bought ridiculously cheap from AP, so I thought I’d have my curry with one of those, rather than rice.

I have lots of packets of dried butter beans from the same place too, so cooked up a whole packet. I shall use what’s left in a beany dip, flavoured with lemon zest, tahini and good olive oil.

My curry used up loads of what I had available. But if you have green tomatoes you want to use for something other than the usual suggestions of chutney and fried ones, this is delicious, and a good place to start.  I’ve never seen any green tomatoes for sale in a shop, so probably one for those who grow their own tomatoes, or know someone who does.  Use it as a base recipe and inspiration for whatever you have knocking around. The Pataks paste is what gave it the lovely curry flavour, the other contents are very variable. I have become a great fan of their pastes and use them often.  Please note that that is a curry paste, and NOT a sauce. A  paste will make half a dozen curries or more from the one jar, and has whopping flavour.

I used

240g value mushrooms, leftover and going brown
Tblsp veg oil
450g green tomatoes, from a friend
320g apples, Discoveries from the garden
230g pink fir apple potatoes, from the garden
A large carrot
A huge courgette, from the garden
50g coconut milk powder
300g cooked butter beans, for a protein hit
3 tblsp Pataks biryani curry paste

Cut the mushrooms up small and sauté in the oil. Add the chopped up tomatoes.

I used the very smallest potatoes, if yours are bigger, chop them up. Any potatoes would work, waxy ones would hold their shape better. No need to peel. Add them to the pan.

Chop the carrot into fine dice and the courgette into bigger pieces and add to the pan.

Core the apples, no need to peel, chop and add to the pan.

Once the vegetables have softened well, add the curry paste, stir well and leave to bubble for a few minutes with the lid on.

Add the coconut milk powder to a mug full of water, stir until dissolved in and add to the pan.

Now leave to simmer gently and meld together with the lid on for about half an hour. Curry always improves in flavour over time, so try not to hurry it. You may need to add a little salt, taste it and see.

It’s done when everything is well softened and cooked through, without reaching the stage of falling to pieces.

To give you an idea, this particular mixture in total came out to
1434 cals, 43g protein, 176g carbs, 57g fat, 32g fibre. It weighed 1942g and will make 6 or 7 portions, along with one of the cheapy nans.

It was absolutely delicious, I had some for lunch today. I’ll probably have some tomorrow too. It’s a fasting day, but I can have some of the curry, without the nan. Having something strong flavoured on a fasting day works well for me.