Pumpkin Curry

Today was a very exciting day - there was a pumpkin at Ngossi Market. I bought it straight away - best AUD$2 ever - and got cookin' curry.

Simple Pumpkin Curry

One diced onion 
About 4 cloves garlic
Chunk of ginger
Lime/lemon
A s**tload of chillis (that's the technical term) 
Pumpkin
Cumin, turmeric, salt, pepper

I'm rediscovering the beauty of a mortar and pestle, so I smashed together the garlic and ginger. I put that together with the onion and, because I ran out of olive oil yesterday, threw them in a pan with the chopped birds' eye chillis, squeezed lime and a bit of water to steam cook. After peeling and cubing the pumpkin (a pain in the arse), I threw that in with the cumin, turmeric and salt, sauteed, covered with water and let it go while I drank a few glasses of wine.
After remembering I was cooking dinner, I came back and it was all nice and mushy. Added pepper and ate with Solrice (godawful cheap white rice, but what can ya do). Nom.
 

Veggie Chap Chap

At some point a few weeks ago, I decided it would be a good idea to buy a "serving" (pile?) of ginger. It cost next to nothing and I've barely touched it. Time to embrace the ginger...
(only amusing if you know me, therefore knowing I'm a ranga.)

Vegetable Chap Chap
1 tbsp oil
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp grated ginger
1.5 kg greens - bok choy, cabbage - whatever was lookin' good
2 tbsp soy sauce
1/4 cup water
1 tbsp brown sugar (I use raw)
2 tsp crushed chilli (I've currently got a massive bundle of birds eye chillis... about 5 of those)

Heat oil in the pan and fry the garlic and ginger. I add onion, cos I like onion.

Add everything else. All of it.

Serve!



One thing I'm loving about Solomon kukim... simplicity.  

I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts...

While in the Solomon Islands, I've committed to learning how to make my own coconut milk. Despite my apprehension, or any encouragement from friends who don't understand why I don't ask my housemaid to do it (oh it's a hard life here), I want to learn how to make this funny looking fruit into creamy white deliciousness, the only white deliciousness here that I'm not dependent on a shipment from Australia from (on a happy note, the last boat brought in chocolate soy milk! JOY!).

I'm the proud owner of a coconut scraper - a wooden board with a jagged circular metal saw thing on the end. This weekend I will be purchasing a bushknife, and a strainer, and then we'll see what happens!

For anyone else who wants to take this journey/cluck in sympathy at my stupidity... here's what my Solomon Islander friends told me to do (in between giggles and asking if they could come and watch):

Step one: whack the coconut open with the blunt edge of the knife. Do this over a container to try and capture as much of the water/juice inside as you can.
Step two: Scrape, scrape, scrape. I've been assured this will take me, the weak white novice, up to an hour to do. I've also been told that I will probably cut my hands with the scraper multiple times and put blood in the coconut, therefore ruining it for anyone else to eat.
Step three: Put all the coconut "meat" into a strainer (with a container underneath) and push, push, push. Mix with the coconut juice if you want it stronger.

Tadaaa... coconut milk.

Now let's just see how brave I am...

Pawpaw goodness

Pawpaw (or papaya for you Americans) is simply amazing. Rich in Vitamin A, Vitamin C, B vitamins, minerals and fibre, you can't really go wrong with a good pawpaw! And they're plentiful and cheap in the Solomons.

Sometimes you get sick of them as a fruit - and that's when it's time to turn it into a vegetable.

Curried Pawpaw

2 pawpaws, de-seeded and cubed
1 onion, finely chopped 
Milk from one coconut (get out that coconut scraper...)
1 tbsp curry powder
(I also add garlic, but I add garlic to everything.)

Fry the onion (and garlic), add the pawpaw and coconut milk and curry powder. Boil and eat. Tadaaaaaa. 

Edit: I made this the other night and only had one pawpaw; I added chilli, capsicum (bell pepper) and tomato. All cheap Sols ingredients! Tasted delicious. (Eventually, I will start taking photos and adding them here too - but as we know, internet runs somewhere between turtle and snail speed here, so maybe that can be done after I go to Australia on holidays!)