I Tried Half Baked Harvest's Recipe, and Didn't Botch It.
For those who follow me on Instagram, @kirby.wolf, you know that my husband, Andrew, is the main cook in our house. He prepares dinner for us both at least four nights a week and I usually hang out in the kitchen dancing and drinking wine to offer the very best moral support I can. It’s not that I’m a terrible cook or don’t understand the basics of cooking, it’s more, if I’m being honest, out of laziness and a lack of inspiration. BUT, in an effort to just be a more productive and healthy person, I’ve been easing in to taking over one dinner a week for the both of us. For me, to make it enjoyable I need to go out of my comfort zone and try something totally new (also this way, if it’s not good, I don’t feel as bad), which led me to this Tuesday’s meal of Slow Cooker Thai Butternut Squash Curry from Half Baked Harvest.
It was pretty cold on Tuesday so even though this is a great Fall dish, I thought the rich, cozy flavors would be great for one of the last days of Winter. You can get the full recipe here, from the master Tieghan herself, and I’m just going to share my minor tweaks and thoughts on the dish!
First off I did a few minor ingredients adjustments. We had these twisted egg noodles already at our house so I opted to use these instead of a more traditional Thai noodle. Tieghan also gives the option of either topping with cilantro or basil, I went with basil because we had it growing in our garden, and Andrew isn’t the biggest fan of cilantro. And lastly, I decided not to add the pomegranate arils as I was already going way out of the box with a vegetarian dish I didn’t want to scare Andrew out of trying it altogether.
I was led to this recipe by searching easy, Instant Pot recipes - since we recently purchased one and I thought that would be my fast track to cooking more often. But after having the option for either Instant Pot or slow cooker, I liked the idea of slow cooking because I could start it in the afternoon and jump back in later. Aside from making the curry and letting it cook for a few hours, there isn’t much to do later except add your garnishes and cook the noodles so it was very quick and easy to serve.
My general assessment - the flavor of the curry was delicious, however mine didn’t quite thicken as much as I would have liked. Serving it over noodles it was a bit runny so next time I would probably use less than one cup of Vegetable Broth so the Coconut Milk would be the main liquid helping to thicken it up. Also, it’s very new for us to eat vegetarian, so I would maybe like to try it again with some chicken - mainly for a little texture to feel like there was really something to bite into it. I think for Andrew it left a little something to be desired having this as his entree. Most of the time when we order Thai out we have curry as a starter with rice and a Thai noodle dish as our entree, so this may have been a better starter for him. But overall such a wonderful experience to make curry from scratch, and what a beautiful dish it was to eat! What have you been cooking lately? Would love to know in the comments below!
