Recipe: Creamy Courgette Curry

This creamy courgette curry is delicately spiced but packed with flavour. A great way to use up a glut of courgettes.

Ah, courgette season. Every year we plant too many. Every year we wait and wait and then they all come at once and we scour the internet for increasingly exotic and inventive recipes to use them up. Well here’s my exotic and inventive recipe to add to the mix… a deliciously light and creamy Courgette Curry.

This isn’t a punch-packing, lip-burning sort of curry. More a delicate and fragrant one, bursting with fresh flavours, green vegetables with ginger and roasted garlic. Perfect for all the family, mopped up with some fresh naan bread.

Courgette Curry: Variations

This is a great coconut curry base to play around with depending on what you have in the fridge / storecupboard, and what’s in season. How about some of these variations:

• Make it lighter by using reduced fat coconut milk and omitting the cream/coconut cream. It will still be delicious!
• Make it quicker by pan-frying the courgettes instead of roasting them. Add them to the pan once the onions have softened, and cook until golden brown and soft, before adding the tomatoes. You can use ready-chopped garlic and ginger from jars or tubes, and even, if you’re really in a rush, use a spice mix (eg. curry powder) in place of the individual spices.
• Make it with whatever is in the fridge – this is a great way to use up leftover vegetables. Boil or roast anything that will take longer to cook, (root veg, pumpkin or squash, green beans, runner beans etc), and fry anything you would usually fry (peppers, mushrooms, etc). Any leafy greens (spinach, chard, kale) can be stirred through right at the end of cooking. Just have a go, you really can’t go far wrong, I promise!
• Make it with storecupboard ingredients if you don’t have many fresh ingredients to hand, this would be lovely made with a tin of chickpeas and a tin of lentils in place of many of the vegetables. You could use garlic and ginger from a jar or tube, and a pinch of dried chilli flakes rather than fresh.

Freezing your Courgette Curry

This curry does freeze well in individual portions, and if you’re trying to get through a glut of home-grown courgettes this is a delicious way to stock your freezer with warming suppers for the winter months.

If you’re making a batch to freeze, I would suggest slightly under-cooking the green vegetables, and roasting the courgettes for a shorter time – perhaps 15-20 minutes, as they can turn a little soggy when defrosted.

Hold back on the fresh coriander and lemon juice, and try to have some on hand when you’re defrosting and eating this. Together they give a burst of freshness that you will lose if you freeze them in with the curry.

I love hearing from you! Do send me pictures of your very own courgette curry on:

tagging me @thevegspace or using the hashtag #thevegspace to show me how you got on!

How else can I use up my courgettes?

If you’ve found this page because you’re desperate to use up a big batch of home-grown courgettes, you might also like to take a look at:

• My Roasted Courgette Soup with peas and basil (lots of great feedback from readers who have tried it!)
• For the more adventurous, a recipe for Courgette Kimchi that my blogging friend Kavita reviewed from a new cookery book. I’m definitely trying this, it looks epic!
• This Courgette and Freekeh Salad by another blogging friend Emma looks totally delicious. I’m a recent convert to Freekeh and this is the sort of ‘substantial salad’ I love in a lunchbox in the warm summer months.