Sri Lankan Runner Bean Curry

As summer rolls into autumn here, we’ve got one last summer veggie recipe for ya, and it’s a belter from Sri Lanka. 

Actual veegs.

30 mins | serves 4 | easy

Ingredients 

1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped 
¼ tsp turmeric
large thumb sized piece of ginger, peeled and chopped  
4 cloves garlic
2 tbsp veg oil 
2 tbsp black mustard seeds  
5 fresh curry leaves 
1 tbsp curry powder 
1 can coconut milk
4 cloves 
1 cinnamon stick 
1 whole dried red chilli – you could use chilli flakes
300g runner beans, stringed and sliced
1 lime, juice 
1 tsp garam masala 
decent handful coriander, stalks and leaves  
sea salt 

Method

Get the onion, garlic cloves, ginger, turmeric, roughly chopped coriander stalks, large pinch of salt and 1 tbsp oil in a blender and whizz to a course paste.

Heat the remaining oil in a frying pan, add the mustard seeds and curry leaves and cook until they begin to crackle, then add the onion paste and cook until it’s sticky.

Stir the curry powder in and add the coconut milk and stir through. Add the cloves, cinnamon and chilli and bring it all to a simmer. Gently simmer for 15mins.

While that’s simmering away, blanch the beans in boiling salted water for 2 mins, 3mins if you take your runners thickly sliced. Remove them from the pan with a slotted spoon and plunge them into a bowl of iced water. Drain and set aside.

With 2 minutes of cooking time left, add the beans into the sauce to heat through again, then add the garam masala and squeeze in the lime juice, give it a stir and serve garnished with coriander leaves.

Recipe found on the BBC Good Food website by Barney Desmazery.