Recipe for Burmese Curry Base

JWise Food

Red Onions

Call me the experimental chef as I attempted to prepare Burmese curry base for the first time in years. I had a rough idea about the amount of ingredients I needed to make a batch but it seems I was a bit off. You see, I started with 8 pounds of red onions, 3 bunches of cilantro, and 3/4 cup of paprika, and well, that made 3 quarts or nearly 3 liters of this essential ingredient. It is enough curry base for us to make more than 12 Burmese dishes over the coming months, not that that’s a bad thing.

There are four main dishes for which I’ll be using this: jack fruit curry, pork belly curry, oxtail curry, and mango coconut squash shrimp curry. These dishes were taught to me a dozen years ago by Elizabeth Chan at the Little Rangoon restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona, before they closed shop. It continues to be a tragedy to this day that the people of Arizona will never know her amazing recipes and the variety of foods she brought to the dining table.

To make the curry base I’d recommend you start with maybe 3 pounds of red onions peeled (instead of 8), cut them in half, and slice them into about 6 large slices. Use only 1 bunch of roughly chopped cilantro and about 1/3 cup of paprika. Cook these ingredients over medium heat for about 90 minutes in 1/2 cup of oil; I prefer corn oil but use what you want. After everything has softened and quite liquidy, either use a wand and puree this mixture or place it in a blender to puree it. You can now freeze it in one-cup portions; I use Ziploc freezer bags.

Granola

JWise Food, Photo of the Day

Granola

Ten ingredients and a lot of time are needed for my homemade granola. First up, why go through this much work to make my own breakfast cereal?

I have diabetes, but I still love a nice crunchy cereal from time to time but it’s near impossible to find healthy cereals, including the incredibly boring Keto-friendly taste-of-cardboard stuff. I said this takes a lot of work, it also requires a significant amount of time, 72 hours to be exact.

The reason for the long process is that I soak a number of the ingredients for 24 hours before I put the mixture into our dehydrator for 2 days until it’s finished.

Here’s the recipe:

  • 10 ounces raw pumpkin seeds
  • 10 ounces raw sunflower seeds
  • 20 ounces whole oat groats
  • 16 ounces raw almonds
  • 12 ounces raw walnuts
  • 13.5 ounces rolled oats
  • 5.5 ounces whole flax seed
  • 4.5 ounces hemp hearts
  • 1 cup coconut oil
  • 2/3 cup raw honey (I use Eucalyptus honey from HoneyPacifica)
  • 2-3 tbsp vanilla extract (I make my own using vodka and vanilla beans that I age for as long as I can)

Using 4 mason jars (quart size) I soak the pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, groats, almonds, and walnuts for 24 hours. The nuts and seeds have to be covered with water at all times and I rinse them and refill with fresh water from time to time.

After 24 hours I start placing small batches of the nuts and seeds into a blender and grind them to a rough mixture that I place in a large bowl, and continue until the pumpkin, sunflower, walnuts, and almonds are ground. I do not grind the oat groats as they are already of a good size.

I add 1 cup flax seed, 1 cup hemp hearts, and 3 cups rolled oats (13.5 oz) along with the coconut oil, honey, and vanilla. After mixing thoroughly the wet, sprouted granola should look something like the photo above.

I divide the mixture onto 4 dehydrator trays that have the Teflon sheets on them, set the drying temperature to about 130 degrees, and allow it to dry for 48 hours. After about 12 hours I find I can slip the Teflon sheets out from under the granola which allows it to dry more evenly.

This concoction makes about 96 ounces or 6 pounds of granola at a price of $45 per batch. This equates to .47 cents per ounce while the cheapest big brand granola costs about .14 cents per ounce and specialty brands range from .30 cents to $1.00 per ounce. I know this sounds expensive but I’ll have a large bowl with 4.5 ounces of granola in it which costs us $2.12 per meal, which isn’t too bad compared to a bacon and egg burrito at Filibertos which costs $7.20

The nutritional value of this homemade granola is a magnitude different than commercially sourced cereals.

My recipe looks like this per 4.5oz serving:

  • 52g carbohydrates
  • 24g protein
  • 13g fiber (more than 50% of daily requirement)
  • 9g sugar
  • 540 calories

In addition, the nutritional values per serving:

  • 80% of Vitamin B-1
  • 63% of Vitamin E
  • 48% of Vitamin B-2
  • 51% of Vitamin B-6
  • 40% of Iron
  • 140% of Omega 3
  • 50% of Omega 6
  • 122% of Magnesium
  • 138% of Phosphorus
  • 184% Copper
  • 60% Zinc
  • 171% of Manganese

I’m well aware I could cut out a lot of the coconut oil and eliminate the honey but then I have a bowl of nuts and seeds covered in soy milk and let’s get real, there’s got to be some yum-factor to our meals and as long as I can maintain good blood glucose levels, I’m good.