pumpkin and peanut curry

You know you're getting into the thin end of the month when you find yourself looking in a sparse cupboard wondering whether there is a recipe out there which uses three different sorts of pasta, some stem ginger, a can of tomatoes and a packet of dessicated coconut?

Fortunately the site of the crunchy peanut butter - usually the preserve of this summer's recipe du jour, Sesame Chicken Salad - reminded me of some sort of curry I'd seen during one of my Delicious culling and sticking sessions. Sure enough the Parsley Book comes up trumps. Not only that we're only missing lime juice to finish the dish off, which is never a key ingredient anyway. It's a garnish really...

... Or it's a quite essential element, used mainly to balance the cloying peanut butter and slightly dull pumpkin flavour of the dish, giving it a zesty lift I would imagine. Without it, the end effect is a bit like a woolly satay - it's nice, but it lacks some oompf.

I think it's one to be filed under "To be used in emergencies", and you'd definitely need the lime juice, and maybe some coriander.

Food of the Milos
It seems I don't know my son that well afterall. Having predicted last night he'd wolf down the macaroni cheese like no tomorrow, I return to discover he's spurned the lot. He didn't like the bacony-rosemary-y crust, he didn't like the cheese flavour and he didn't like the spiral pasta tubes. He's hateful. Instead of my lovingly crafted uber-Macaroni cheese, he only eats the steamed carrots and broccoli side-dish Ana makes, and a yoghurt. Philistine!

sources
pumpkin and peanut curry - Delicious 2005, now in The Parsley Book