Kick-ass Curry

(Percolator Style)

Technically, the curry itself isn't done in a percolator. On a Fourth of July weekend trek up to Blocksburg years ago, I was staying in a cabin with a gas stove and no electricity with a bunch of friends. When it came time for eating time, I'd picked up a bunch of stuff to throw together for a possible curry, only to discover there was only one pot in the cabin. That's fine for the curry, but what about the rice? Looking around, I saw an old percolator on the back of the stove. So I cleaned that out and used it for the rice, and thus "kick-ass curry in a percolator".

For 6

Ingredients

1½ Inch + Piece of Ginger Root (loosely diced)
1 Cerrano Pepper (finely diced)
5 Cloves Garlic (loosely diced)
½ Yellow Onion (loosely chopped)
1+ T Sesame Oil
3 T Vegetable Oil
5 Dashes Soy Sauce
2 t Chili Powder
3 t Cumin
3 t Ground Ginger
6 t Curry Powder
Salt
Pepper
1 Eggplant
½ # Fresh Green Beans
1 Zucchini (julienned)
1 Red Pepper (julienned)
¼ # Pine Nuts
½ (12 oz.) Can Coconut Milk
½-ish Cup of Water
1½ Cups Rice

Directions

Put your ginger, cerrano pepper, and garlic, into a pot with the vegetable oil, sesame oil, and soy sauce. Loosely chop your onion, throw that in the pot, and set over a medium flame, cooking for about 10 minutes or so, until the onions start to become translucent, stirring occaisionally.

While that's going on, peel and chop your eggplant, cut the ends off the zucchini, cut it in half, and julienne it. Julienne the red pepper.

Once the 10 minutes or so are up on the ginger and cerrano pepper and garlic and onion, add your eggplant, zucchini, red pepper, and green beans to the pot, add all your spices, and pour in the ½-ish cup of water (this prevents your ingredients from burning to the pot, as well as helps cook them). Once this hits a boil, turn it down to a simmer.

Enter the percolator. Make sure it doesn't smell too too much like coffee, and take out the piece that typically holds the coffe grounds (and the piece that that sits on), and pour 4 cups of water in and a dash of salt. Put this over a high heat, and bring to a boil. When it boils, add your rice, give it a stir, and drop the heat to low. Take a piece of tinfoil and put it over the top of the percolator (not over the spout though, so that the rice doesn't cook too quickly), and stir frequently with a long spoon (be careful so as to not get steamburned). This is going to cook for roughly 10 minutes.

While your rice is cooking, you want to finish up your curry. Shake your can of coconut milk, and pour half of it into the stock pot with all your veggies. Stir and allow to simmer for a couple of minutes and taste it - you might want or need to add a little more curry powder, you might not. If you do need to add more curry powder, be sure to add half as much cumin and chili powder to balance it out. Then sprinkle in some of your pine nuts (not all of them, as you'll want to keep some out to garnish with).

After the "roughly 10 minutes" is up on the rice, kill the heat, and cover the top of the percolator (including the spout) entirely with the tin foil to allow the rice to completely absorb all of the excess water that might be towards the bottom. Let this sit for like 5 minutes.

And then it's time to serve - a little rice on each plate, a couple of spoonfuls of the vegetables, and a spoon of the sauce over the top, sprinkle some pine nuts over it for garnish, and you're all set for some fancy backwoods' eating.

Enjoy!