Sweet Potato & Spinach Curry with Desiccated Coconut!

If you're cooking on a tight budget, substitution of ingredients is fairly standard. You tend to use what you have in the cupboard no matter how compelling Nigella may be when she's adding a pinch of dried mosquito posing pouch into the pan (I'd use smoked paprika as a near enough replacement).

I'd not cooked this dish for a long time and had always used coconut milk, but not having any and being unwilling to shimmy along to the Earlsdon Co-op to make a purchase, my thoughts went to the desiccated coconut on the shelf. 

A quick bit of googling and it appears that you can get coconut milk and flour from boiling desiccated coconut! I couldn't be bothered to go the while hog, but thought that a short cut of boiling the desiccated coconut would add both flavour and texture to the curry. I think it worked rather well, and was a lot cheaper. 

Ingredients

3 sweet potatoes

Spinach (I used frozen)

Large cooking onion

3 cloves garlic

Red pepper

Peas

Cherry tomatoes

Medium curry powder

Stock cube - vegetable 

Sweet paprika

Celery salt 

Black pepper

Cooking oil - I used olive

Fry the onion and garlic slowly, add the curry powder to taste, start with teaspoon. Add in a decent pinch of sweet paprika and of the celery salt. 

Stir well, then add the sweet potatoes, chopped into smallish pieces, and the red pepper. Another good stir and then in goes the stock. Cover everything.  

 After about fifteen minutes add the spinach, the cherry tomatoes and the peas. Cooked for another five or ten minutes until the sweet potatoes are nice and soft. 

I served this with homemade flatbread