and speaking of moms, i recently rewatched julie and julia which is the cutest lil movie and there’s a part where she’s excited about receiving her very first comment on her blog, and then it’s from her mom. that’s where i’m at right now but honestly, what’s better than a mom?? this blog might not have more than three followers at the moment but 100% of the comments it has received have the words “i love you” in them and that’s how you know you’ve really succeeded. right?
my parents are in the process of packing up/getting rid of (i.e. trying to palm off on me) all their belongings and moving to mountainous virginia. the views from their new house are unreal. i’ve been told. the long and winding road that led them to this point was dark and full of terrors but at long last it’s happening.
one thing i made sure to do before saying goodbye to all my parents’ wordly belongings was snag a few recipes from their ever-growing-even-after-all-these-years recipe file. filled with 25-year-old clippings from Gourmet magazine and recipes for mac and cheese scribbled on the back of Past Due notices, it’s what we’d always turn to when we needed to put together a grocery list at 10 pm the night before Grocery Shopping Day when everyone was crabby and half asleep and ready to eat toast for dinner every night if it meant forgetting this whole thing and going to bed.
and so, i turned to it one last time.
i carefully photographed the recipes for my grandmother’s aforementioned mac and cheese and for my dad’s blueberry muffins that i’ve loved and loved since i was a little girl, and copied down my mom’s 5th or 6th revision of a recipe old enough to be the big sibling i never had. or something. and i was ready to get back to procrastinating on sorting through box upon box of elementary school yearbooks and old valentines.
my mom’s curry vegetable pie. a curious combination of curried vegetables (which we’re apparently doing a lot of around here), gruyere cheese, and flaky pie crust. based on, i believe, a dish my parents ate at a restaurant 20-something years ago. written by my dad on the back of the recipe:
we had the dish on the other side [of this page] at a wonderful little cafe we discovered called BeniNina’s*. Everything there was superb, but especially the curry pie. yum, yum. Also, they had this really nice, big black dog sitting in the back room. I don’t think the Health dept. knows about her**. Anyway, try the pie. It’s de-lish.
*my parents names are Ben and Nina!
*I hope the health department is not reading this blog
so yeah, here it is, just like the curry veggie pie your mom used to make (or not). but it could be. print out the recipe or scribble it on the back of a receipt for vodka (um, that’s another story…) and make it a part of your family’s regular meal rotation. i hope you enjoy it as much as i have over the years.
-kara
- 1 small onion
- 3 medium carrots
- ½ medium head of cauliflower
- 1 medium zucchini
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1½ tsp curry powder
- ½ tsp cumin
- ½ tsp turmeric
- 1 tsp dried basil
- salt and pepper to taste
- 2 eggs
- ¼ cup milk
- 4 oz. gruyere cheese, grated
- 1 pie shell (homemade or store-bought***), pre-baked 8 minutes at 350 degrees f
- preheat the oven to 375 degrees f.
- chop the veggies into small pieces. heat the oil in a pan over medium heat. add the onion and saute until brown. add the rest of the veggies, spices, basil, salt, and pepper. saute 5-7 minutes. pour veggies into the pre-baked pie shell.
- in a small bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk. pour the mixture into the pie shell. top the pie with cheese and bake 30-40 minutes until the crust is brown and the cheese is brown and bubbly. enjoy!!!!
***this is my favorite gluten free pie crust
soundtrack:
So I was almost afraid to comment lest you think I was commenting only in hopes of a mention in some future blog post, but this was so precious that I just had to mention how much I loved reading it (especially after a long day of driving).
I’m happy you enjoyed reading it!! I want to post one of your recipes one of these days but I guess it will have to wait until you unpack the recipe file 🙂