Vegetable Balti

This recipe is an old WeightWatchers recipe from quite a few years back and one I looked up in my current crusade for low-fat, low-carb dinners. It was a successful meal - and for once it turned out exactly as the picture in the book, that never happens! I thought that Mr M would have a freakout about the general lack of meatiness and the high vegetable content but in fact, he loved it. Result!

I will say however it didn't really taste like a Balti to me, not as I know it, and living on the edges of Balti-land, I've had more than my fair share. That's not to say it wasn't nice, on the contrary. It was a lovely spicy (could take a good bit more spice though) vegetable dish. I just perhaps wouldn't call it a Balti myself.

This dinner was quite labour intensive as there was a lot of peeling, chopping, crushing, mincing and so forth. It suggested using cumin and coriander seeds but having wrestled with these in the past, I skipped that and used ground spices instead, much easier on the wrists!

The recipe says it serves four but as we like a bit of rice on the side (I know, controversial in both terms of low-carbing and Balti-eating) I've stretched this out into six potions, with four of them nestling in the freezer ready for some easy dinners in the next few weeks.

One of the best things about this dish is that it counts as 3 of your 5-a-day and in terms of WeightWatchers points, in the old school days this would have equated to 1 point per serving. It's been a few years since I've done WeightWatchers though so couldn't tell you what it is now, but not much different I should imagine.

Vegetable Balti

Ingredients

low-fat cooking spray

2 large onions, finely sliced

4 garlic cloves, minced

2.5cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated

1 small red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

1/2 tsp ground cumin 

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tbsp garam masala

200g potatoes, diced

4 medium carrots, sliced

1 small cauliflower, chopped into florets

400g chopped tomatoes

300ml vegetable stock

200g green beans, chopped

150ml fat-free plain yoghurt

small bunch fresh coriander, chopped to garnish

Method

Heat a large non-stick frying pan, then spray with the low-fat cooking spray. Stir-fry the onions for 5 mins, season, adding a little water to stop them sticking and help soften them. Mix in the garlic, ginger, chilli and spices, then cook for a further 2 mins.

Add the potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, tomatoes and stock, then bring to the boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for 20 mins. Add the beans and simmer for a further 5 mins or until the sauce is thick.

Remove the pan from the heat and sallow to cool a little before stirring in the yoghurt and fresh coriander, then serve.

Hope you enjoy!