Yellow Curry and the Farmer's Market

About a month ago, while I was approaching the end of my sophomore year of school, I visited the Bloomington Farmer's Market on a drizzly, gray Saturday morning with my sister. I've been living in B-Town for the past two school years and I can't believe that I haven't been to more of these! I have been seriously missing out of some good, local stuff. They had everything from local eateries that had samples out, to hand-picked coffee beans, to beautiful (and pricey... $6 a carton! [i am a poor college student]) strawberries, to fresh flowers. Despite the not-so-beautiful weather, it was so wonderful to see so many people out enjoying the local offerings and supporting a homegrown community. I really need to go to these kinds of things more often!

Anyway, to get to my point... That Saturday they were having a special "Asian Culture" fest type of thing and had a live cooking show going on and other events throughout the day. While we were there, an elderly Asian woman was hard at work making this yellow curry dish. Now. I have never been a huge fan of curry, so I was skeptical about this recipe, which also included tofu and cooked carrots and I've never really been a huge fan of those either. But, since the samples were free, I gave it a try.

I have never been so incredibly mistaken about a dish of food in my life. Oh my dear goodness, was that little plate of food delicious.

The dish was comprised of the yellow curry sauce mixed with cooked carrots, potatoes and sweet potatoes, served over a bed of steamed white rice.

So I picked up the recipe (they were freely giving it away!!) and three weeks later I had the worst craving for this dish ever. So I dug out the recipe and gave it a try. And I found out that it is so incredibly difficult to find some of the international ingredients without the help of the little old Asian woman who made the recipe. But with some minor changes, I made my own yellow curry dish. It wasn't quite the same as it's origins, but according to my family (whom I forced to try and critique despite some of their lack of interest) it was really quite delicious. So, here it is!

(I am in the process of figuring out the proportions of the ingredients is used, but for now here is a basic description of what I did.)

Combine about 1/2 cup of yellow curry sauce (not yellow curry powder) with about 1/2 cup of coconut milk. Add 1-2 cubes vegetable flavoring, or a 1 tsp of vegetable seasoning. Add 2 cubed potatoes and 1 cubed sweet potato, as well as a bunch of carrots (I didn't actually end up putting these in). Add 1/2 yellow onion, minced. Add in pepper to taste. Add cubed tofu (or chicken if tofu isn't your favorite), let cook until potatoes are soft-ish and tofu is warm. Serve over a bed of white rice or whole grain rice.