THS CWT PINEAPPLE CURRY 2017 11 30

Hey everybody, Chef Trevor here, Chef de Partie of the Canadian Food and Wine Institute's

Benchmark Restaurant and we are here at the beautiful Winekeller restaurant in Niagara

Falls and today we are going to make curry. But we're not going to make your average curry, we are going to make a sweet potato

and pineapple curry. Something very delicious, something very fall seasonal and something very stick to your

ribs good. To get started, we are looking at the following ingredients right here

Very simple, very easy dish. Should come together in a half an hour and be delicious and ready to eat

So what we have is one regular new potato, two regular sweet potatoes, one beautiful

golden white onion, a half a cup of coconut milk, one tablespoon of yellow curry powder

one beautiful delicious cup of golden sweet pineapple that I have just peeled and cored

and two cups of organic baby spinach. What we need to do to start this curry off is we need to add some flavor to those sweet

potatoes and potatoes because if we were to just throw them in the pan as they were, they

would be bland. So what we're going to do is we're going to give them a quick roast in the oven before

we fold them through our curry. To start with our sweet potato, all we're going to do is using a beautiful peeler

I have a wide peeler here today just because it's easier for long vegetables

All we're going to do is take that first layer of skin right off the sweet potatoes

Next thing we need to do is take our knives and we just need to cut that end off of the

sweet potato. So our finished product looks like that and we're ready to start processing

I'm just going to do that one more time with our other sweet potato

I always like to have a little bowl around me so I'm not traveling back and forth to

the garbage can and dropping peels all over the floor. So we always get a bowl over the counter and we sweep off any of the excess that we're

working with so that way we have a brand new clean surface on our cutting board to

peel our potato. Same thing, just going to work nice and quick so we don't oxidize that potato

Just making sure when we're peeling that potato that we're getting rid of any unsightly black

eyes or black bits. It looks nice and clean. There's nothing unsightly on the outside

So for our curry, because the sweet potatoes and the pineapple are the star of this dish

and we don't have a protein like chicken or beef or lamb, we really want the chunks to

be nice and big and fill up our fork when we eat it. So what we're going to do is we're going to make nice big cuts, okay

Nice big cubes here. So what we're looking for in the end is a cube that's really nice and big

Now please, please, please, when you're at home, don't feel like every cube has to be

perfect like this, like Chef Trevor says. If you have an angled side cube like this, you're making this at home for your own guests

and friends. We don't need to be perfect like a five-star fine dining restaurant

Remember, this is equally delicious even though it doesn't look like a cube, okay

Same thing with our sweet potatoes. We're just going to make one cut down the middle and another and we're going to get

some nice big cubes out of that as well. So when we're finished, we've got two sweet potatoes and one beautiful white potato all

cut the same size, all ready to be roasted in the oven. And to do that, we need to take a parchment-lined baking tray and we're just going to put all

that sweet potato and potato goodness onto that tray. And remember, when we're roasting, we don't want everything piled up in the middle like

this or else the bottom pieces are going to stew and the outside ones aren't going to

get that awesome roasting happening. But first, before we spread them out, give that a drizzle over top and we're going to

season with just a little bit of salt and pepper. And then using your hands, you just want to kind of work that through all the potato and

the sweet potato, making sure the outsides of each of them get coated

And then we're just going to simply fan them out until they are all in one layer

And at this point, we are ready to go to the oven

So we've put our squash and sweet potato in a 350 degree oven and we're going to let

it roast for 20 to 25 minutes. And while that's happening, we need to finish building the base of our curry

So to do that, we need one white cooking onion and we're just going to peel it by cutting

it in half, taking off the root, taking off the top, peel off that outside layer of skin

We just want a large dice on this onion and what we do is we make three cuts

One, two, three. We make three cuts. One, two, three

And we're going to make three more cuts. One, two, three, because we want a nice large dice on that onion

We're frying our onion. We're trying to get it to caramelize a little bit. We want our pan turned on to a medium heat here

And we want a pan here with a thick bottom. A stainless steel nonstick pan works best here because we don't want the onion to burn quickly

So a thinner pot here would actually make our onion burn. All we're going to do now is we're going to add two tablespoons and we're going to just

let that warm up nicely and then we're going to add our onion

If you don't hear that sound when you're putting your onion in the pan, you know that the oil

in the pan is not hot enough yet. We need to hear that sizzle every time we put something in a pan

We're just going to let that onion saute for about five to ten minutes until it starts

to get soft and it starts to brown nicely

All right. It's been about ten minutes and we start to see some of that awesome browning happening

on the outside of our onions. That's how we know we're ready to proceed to the next step

You've got a beautiful layer of flavor happening there that's only going to add to the richness

of our curry. So once we hit that point, we're going to add two tablespoons of yellow curry paste

Now this is something you can find a recipe for on your own, but it requires a lot of

patience and a lot of skill to really press and mash all of those ingredients together

Your best option is to buy a bottled product from the supermarket. I would suggest the Thai Kitchen Line

It's a fantastic product and it uses all natural ingredients. The yellow curry paste, just like when we're using tomato paste, we want it to go into

the pan first and we kind of want to swizzle that around with our onions and you are going

to notice immediately that your kitchen will start to smell like a Thai food restaurant

and you will be in heaven. Once we've got our onions coated like that and our curry spices toasting nicely, we just

want to add in our spinach and we just want to quickly stir that around, making sure that

nothing gets burnt and we just want to kind of quickly wilt that just a little bit and

then we would like to add our water. Three quarters of a cup of water go in, as well as one half of a cup of coconut milk

At this point, we need to reduce the heat to low and add in our pineapple

Now you're saying that's not a lot of liquid, but as this pineapple cooks, it's going to

release that pineapple juice into the pan. So we want to add that in and we just kind of want to let that all come together and

simmer nicely. Alright, so it's been about 20 to 25 minutes in our 350 degree oven and we've got nicely

browned, sexy roasted potatoes and sweet potatoes and at that same time, our curry has been

bubbling nicely, it's gotten nice and thick, that pineapple's lent its juice to the sauce

Now all we need to do to finish that curry is just fold in our sweet potatoes and our

regular potatoes. So just all at once, we're going to add those into the pan and you'll notice that the one

layer and a little bit of oil on our vegetables has created this beautiful kind of browned

roasted color, but nothing is overcooked and mushy. Turn the heat to as minimum as possible and just kind of toss all that together and what

you end up with is a really nice, rich, beautiful curry that will sit perfectly on top of any

kind of leftover rice you might have, basmati rice, jasmine rice works very well and at

this point, we are ready to go to the plate. We've got just in the bottom of our bowl, a little bit of steamed basmati rice, okay

I'm not saying you have to use basmati here, any rice is fine

I like basmati just because of the fragrance that it gives. We're just going to then take our beautiful pineapple curry and we're just going to top

it right on top of that rice. Just to finish it off, because I can and I'm here, I'm going to use a little bit of raisins

just to add that extra residual sweetness and of course, because I'm a chef and I can't

do anything without color, a little bit of micro radish and onion sprouts right on top

just to give it a little bit of a peppery texture. And there you have it, pineapple curry ready in less than 30 minutes using fresh sweet potato. Enjoy