I really like this curry sauce. A lot. I’ve been working on my baked cauliflower curry for a while now and I’m so pleased with it! Baking the cauliflower gives the curry a delicious nutty taste. The flavour and texture of the sauce when it’s blended is really similar to a sweet korma sauce, but all the sweetness here comes from vegetables. It’s a really flexible recipe too; there are some suggestions for changing it up at the end.
Ingredients
You will need (for four):
- 1 small cauliflower, cut into florets
- 1-2 tbsp olive oil, for cooking
- Salt and pepper
For the curry sauce:
- 1 small onion, finely chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, crushed
- 2 generous tbsp curry paste (I used a korma paste for this curry)
- Olive oil for frying
- 200g red lentils
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 500ml water
- 400ml (one tin) coconut milk
- 350g (approx) butternut squash and/ or sweet potato, peeled and diced small
- Salt and pepper
- 2 nuggets frozen spinach
Method
Start by getting an oven on at 180C. Add the cauliflower, oil and seasoning to a baking tray and mix everything together well with your hands.
Put the cauliflower in the oven and roast for 20-30 minutes or until nicely browned.
While the cauliflower cooks, make the curry sauce.
Get a large lidded saucepan on a medium heat and add a glug of oil and the onion. Fry for five minutes until the onion is starting to soften.
Add the garlic to the onion and continue to fry for a few more minutes.
Then add the curry paste to the onions and fry for another couple of minutes, stirring often.
Tip the lentils, water, tomato paste and coconut milk in to the pan. Stir well and then bring the pan to the boil. Reduce the heat to simmer and leave to simmer for 10 minutes with the lid on.
Add the sweet potato and butternut squash to the pan and continue to simmer for another 10 minutes with the lid slightly off.
Finally add the frozen spinach to the pan along with the cauliflower from the oven and bring everything to a gentle simmer, without a lid.
Or, if you prefer (as I did), blend the sauce until smooth once the sweet potato is cooked and then add the cauliflower and spinach to the sauce.
Check the seasoning and serve with rice or bread.
The beauty of this curry is that you can use whichever curry paste you like to suit your taste. I have also tried this curry with Thai red paste and it worked really well. You can add almost anything to the curry sauce: chicken, vegetables, toasted nuts or whatever you have! Blending the sauce gives this baked cauliflower curry a thick, glossy sauce to stir through rice or scoop up with bread.
Sounds great Caroline, we love Thai red curry so I’m glad to see it works well in this dish. When you say a nugget of frozen spinach, what size is yours over there. Ours is like a big ice cube.
Hi Ron, yes ours are like big frozen ice cubes too. If you want to add a bit more or less spinach to suit your taste then that would be fine!
This looks excellent! Love curry in all its forms, and this is definitely a form of it I want. 🙂 Thanks!
Thanks John, it’s a really great base sauce that can be used for all sorts of things.
I could drink that creamy curry sauce! This is a mouthwatering dish, Caroline.
Haha! Thanks Angie! It is a great sauce!
This sounds really good, Caroline – and I was just cleaning the cupboard (what else can we do these days?) and found both Korma paste and and a Masala paste. Lucky me! And they weren’t expired! So amazing that I actually have all the ingredients in home to make this. I will have to use a Romanesco cauliflower, but you won’t mind, will you?
That’s great timing David! I think it would be great with a romanesco cauliflower, the pale green will give such a lovely colour to the finished dish.
I love any type of curry, too, Caroline! this sounds really tasty, and since cauliflower is so inexpensive, this is definitely on my must-make list! lovely recipe!
Thank you Laura, I hope you enjoy it!
Ooh, this looks really good! I might substitute fresh spinach for the frozen, since American frozen spinach makes me gag.
Thanks Fran. That would be no problem, if you quickly steam or wilt the spinach first and then chop it up you can add it in at the end like I did with the frozen spinach.
Your curry with red lentil sounds wonderful and adding baked cauliflower to it is just great!
Thank you Balvinder, any roasted veg would work I think!
This looks really delicious, it looks really creamy too. I love curries.
Thanks Alida, it is really creamy but it all comes from the coconut milk.
I’ll have to try this recipe with curry paste. I have always tried curry powder and truthfully, despite loving most spices, I could never seem to like it. Didn’t realize there was a curry paste. Thanks- the recipe looks delicious.
Hi Judee, I think curry paste is far better for texture and flavour. And it certainly works well in this recipe.