Vegetarian hot pot

It's been a hard week to say the least!

Hubby flew out to Italy on Friday morning for some archive digging, by Friday afternoon I get a phone call from Alex's daycare telling me he isn't to well and if I could come early that would be great. Friday was also the first day of our cooking school kitchen install- a very exciting day and one I really didn't want to miss.
I managed to see the unravelling of the benches, listen to a few choice words from the builder and then decide I really wasn't going to miss anything today so off I went to get Alex.
He had a bout of Gastro which managed to stay for a few days longer than usual; he then happily passed it on to his brother, all before Grammie stepped off the plane to come and help me out for the next two weeks.
Poor Grammie, I have been starting work at 5am these past few mornings so I have left her in charge of to sick little boys and not much else. Tonight I am happy to say has been the first night everyone has kept their food down and temperatures low...it is the small achievements in life I get excited about these days.

Because the boys are still eating dried toast with Vegemite or stewed apples, I thought I had better pull out a delicious meal for G and I, after all I wanted/needed to keep us healthy and germ free!
As usual I had forgotten to go to the butcher, so it was to be a vegetarian meal which G didn't mind at all. I decided on a curry but when I went to the fridge all I could find were bunches of mint, coriander (cilantro) and ginger. Not really the curry flavour I was heading toward but then I remembered the chilli paste I had left over from my mussel dish I made a few weeks ago and thought I'd use that as a base.

I decided to grind up the ginger, garlic, mint and coriander leaves with a bit of fish sauce and pop that in after the cooking process (that was my Indian inspired curry idea put to use!).
As a result of the ingredients in my fridge and a quick twist of fate, I made a beautiful potato, corn and broccollini dish served with steamed rice and finished with bean shoots and fried onion flakes. The end result was pretty dam tasty. Of course the depth of flavour came from lightly cooking the chilli paste with shallots and pre cooked potato, then once the potato was nicely coated with paste I added some fresh tomato and corn. I had some chicken stock left over so I added that and reduced it all down to a lovely thick sauce. Just before serving I added the broccollini to lightly steam through as I like it a bit crunchy.

Last but not least, I took it off the heat, poured in my mint and ginger concoction, stirred it and rested the dish for a few minutes before adding the fresh bean shoots.
It's dishes like this that keep me going back to the kitchen and playing around with herbs and spices from all over the world. If I didn't think of an Indian curry for dinner, then I would never of come up with this  delicious Thai/Malay inspired dish.