, Step by step

Cauliflower and root vegetable curry

Simple yet delicious, mildly spiced curry, packed with flavor and seasonal vegetables.

Mark Stower, Director of Food and Service

Preparation Time: 15 mins

Cooking Time: 30 mins

Serves: 4

Ingredients

Step 1

In a thick bottomed saucepan, warm the oil over a medium heat and sauté the onions, with a pinch of salt, for 5 minutes until they start to soften and colour.
Step 2

Add the garlic, ginger and spices. Continue to cook for a further minute.
Step 3

Add the cauliflower, carrots, potato and butternut squash to the pan and mix well, ensuring the vegetables are covered with the spices. Cook for another minute.
Step 4

Add the tomato purée, chopped tomatoes and the vegetable stock and stir well. Place a lid onto the pan and simmer for approx. 20-minutes, until the vegetables are tender.
Step 5

Add the fresh coriander just before serving.
Step 6

Serve with rice and warm naan bread.

Mark’s great curry recipe is packed full of plant-based ingredients and one serving would provide 2-3 portions of your 5 A Day.
There is good scientific evidence that eating more plant-based foods, including vegetables, fruit, seeds and nuts, herbs, spices, and wholegrains, is particularly important for a healthy gut and can improve health in the longer term.
It has been suggested that eating as wide a variety of these different foods as possible – as many as 30 different types each week – is a target to aim towards.
These foods all encourage the growth of a healthy gut microbiota – the name for all the microbes in the gut, which are present in their trillions, and include not only bacteria, but viruses and fungi too. Eating more plant foods is associated with greater gut microbe diversity which in turn is linked to better health.
Thirty different plant foods may sound a little daunting at first but when you realise that every plant ingredient counts and that Mark’s curry includes good quantities of six different vegetables and potatoes and smaller amounts of seven others (the garlic, ginger, herbs, spices and oil), then you are well on the way!

DR JULIET GRAY, NUTRITIONIST