It’s Friday Night – Try a Curried Vegetable and Feta Cheese Tart

It’s Friday night, the fridge is looking kind of bare, and you’ve already used up this week’s motivation to serve healthy meals for your family.

• Option 1: call the delivery guy and order a few pizzas
• Option 2: dig out one of those frozen dinners from the deep freeze; plan to supplement with some popcorn in front of the tv later
• Option 3: clear out all of the vegetables sitting in the crisper-section of your fridge, and make this delicious, and nutritious, curried vegetable tart!

I used to make this all the time! And then I had kids. And for a while they seemed like pretty picky eaters. So I put this sort of recipe aside. And then I forgot about it totally 🙁

Luckily, my kids have gradually become willing to eat a wider variety of foods, and they’ve always loved curries, so when I recently happened across this recipe, I decided it was time to start making it again.

While the vegetables I include in this recipe tend to vary a lot, depending on what I have in my fridge, I make a point of having cauliflower on hand when I make it. For such an unassuming vegetable, cauliflower packs an incredible nutritional punch! To begin with, it contains a lot of protein – and although vegetable protein tends to be ‘incomplete’, lacking one or more of the essential amino acids, cauliflower has them all. It’s also high in dietary fiber, and an assortment of vitamins and minerals, including surprisingly large amounts of vitamin C. Cauliflower contains phytonutrients called glucosinolates that can help activate detoxification enzymes and regulate their activity, and a broad assortment of antioxidants, including beta-carotene, beta-cryptoxanthin, caffeic acid, cinnamic acid, ferulic acid, quercetin, rutin, and kaempferol, which make it a great way to prevent / combat cancer. And that’s not all – its Vitamin K and Omega 3 fatty acids help make cauliflower wonderfully anti-inflammatory. All this for next-to-no calories – what’s not to love?

Curried Vegetables and Feta Cheese Tart Recipe (makes 2 tarts, enough to serve 8 people):

1 tbsp olive oil
5 cloves of garlic, chopped
8 cardamom pods
1 tsp mustard seeds, whole
1 tbsp cumin seeds, ground
1 tsp coriander seeds, crushed
1 tsp coarse black pepper
1 tsp chili powder
1 tbsp curry powder
1 tbsp turmeric
1/2 tsp cayenne
1 medium onion, sliced

1/4 head of green cabbage – thinly sliced
1 medium zucchini – thinly sliced
1/2 small head of cauliflower – separated into small flowerettes
1 stalk of broccoli – separated into small flowerettes, with the stem thinly sliced
2 medium parsnips – thinly sliced
2 medium carrots – thinly sliced
1 cup of green beans – cut into 1 inch pieces
796ml can of diced tomatoes

1/2 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup Feta, cut into small cubes
2 Pie Shells (I buy the frozen pre-made ones, but you could make your own as well. One deep-dish pie shell might fit this whole recipe, but you’ll need two of the smaller pie shells that I tend to buy)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees fahrenheit.

Heat a large frying pan, add olive oil, garlic, onion, and spices, and fry until the onion and garlic are soft and slightly browned. Add the vegetables and the diced tomatoes, cover, and simmer over medium heat until the vegetables begin to get soft (15 minutes). Take lid off, add the yogurt, and simmer some more to burn off some of the liquid (another 15 minutes or so). Stir periodically.

Pre-bake the pie shells til slightly browned (5 minutes or less).

Once vegetables are mostly ready, stir in feta. Pour mixture into pie shells (if you have too much to fit, put it aside – it’s great served on rice or quinoa). Put in oven, bake 15 minutes. Take out, let cool for 5 minutes. Serve.

Note: if you want to save time, you could pre-cook the vegetables in the microwave (5 minutes on high). If so, skip the 15 minutes covered cooking.

Nutritional breakdown (per serving) [nutritiondata.com]

This food is low in Cholesterol. It is also a good source of Vitamin K and Manganese, and a very good source of Vitamin A and Vitamin C.

– glycemic load ~20 (very low – that’s good!)
– inflammation factor ~240 (high – that’s good too!)
– calories 325
– fat 16 grams
– protein 9 grams
– dietary fiber 7 grams
– Vitamin A 71% DV
– Vitamin C 90% DV
– Vitamin K 47% DV
– Thiamin 20% DV
– Riboflavin 21% DV
– Niacin 17% DV
– Vitamin B6 23%
– Folate 27% DV
– Calcium 16% DV
– Iron 18% DV
– Magnesium 14% DV
– Phosphorus 18% DV
– Potassium 22% DV
– Copper 15% DV
– Manganese 34% DV
– Phytosterols ~13mg

Note: if you’re aiming for a low-fat meal, the majority of the fat in this recipe comes from the pie-shell. Serving the vegetable mixture on top of quinoa instead will drop the calories, and the fat, and add extra fiber and protein.

Why didn’t I do that to begin with? Because this recipe, in the pie-shell, is just so darned delicious! That said, when I made it this evening for supper, my daughter preferred the vegetable mixture on its own. So I guess it’s a matter of preference.

Try it both ways, and see which you prefer.

Or, try it some other way, and let me know how it works out.