Inspired by this Reddit “gif” recipe, I decided I wanted to make a huge pot of Caribbean veg curry for the weekend, and maybe some work lunches too.

To enable a really huge pot of curry, I decided to invest in a new huge pot. A really nice Le Creuset enamelled cast iron pot.

While I’m waiting for that to arrive, I made a avocado, mango & tomato salsa.

I’m also doing roti to go with it. These are flatbreads with olive oil rolled into them, then fried rather than baked.

According to my calculations, this dinner should take an hour to make. But as it’s me, and Soph needs to leave the house, I’m giving myself two hours. Most of which I use prepping all the veg:

First prepped is the onions and garlic.

Then sweet potatoes, which I part microwave before cooking, as I don’t want them being hard after 30mins simmering and delaying Soph leaving the house.

Peppers and tomatoes.

And of course the star ingredient: plantains.

And I prep a bouquet garni of thyme, allspice berries and scotch bonnet chillies, in a new toy I bought that avoids things like allspice berries having to be fished out of the pot in case someone accidentally chomps down on one.

Finally time to start cooking. And… the new pot still hasn’t arrived from Amazon, oo I’m having to use a an old smaller one, that isn’t all cast iron. So not all the veg are going to fit :(

Anyway, first things first I’m going to ruin this dish’s vegan credentials by starting with an anchovy fillet to add flavour depth.

Then the onions and garlic.

Then spices: coriander, ginger and curry powder.

Then peppers & tomatoes.

Plantains and sweet potatoes.

Then a couple of cans of kidney beans and a couple of cans of coconut milk, topped up with hot water.

While that’s bubbling away I prep coriander, limes and spinach, which go in at the end of cooking.

Before that goes in, the bread needs doing. The rolled up dough gets sliced up, and rolled out.

Then into the frying pan and yay it looks like proper roti!

Things get hectic around this point as I’m making bread, adding spinach and limes, and getting ready to serve.

The hectic finishing up resulted in two problems. One: I forgot the salsa! It’s still sat in the fridge. Must remember that today!

And two: I forgot to take a picture of the finished dish! I did however remember this while eating, so here’s an ‘action’ shot of the meal being eaten.

It’s really good! Very happy with the flavours and spice level. And the roti is great — too great in fact, I ended up eating way too much of it. And will eat more again today!