STEAMED SQUASH SHRIMP CURRY

Let's start this blog by taking a good look at the picture below.

What do you think? Does it look steamed? No right! That's what my hubby thought too. Recently I have been steaming my butternut squash a lot. Usually what I do is season the squash with some turmeric powder, red chili powder, and salt, spread it on the steamer that comes with the rice cooker, and steam it with rice. I was quite skeptical when I first tried that, especially second guessing the cooking time. But it did cook thoroughly by the time the rice was done. So this time I wanted to step it up a notch and try steaming a curry. Since I already knew squash steams really well, I kept it safe and went for squash shrimp curry. So let's check out how it went.

First off, I prepared my curry mixture by taking my squash and shrimp in a mixing bowl and adding in the rest of the ingredients necessary for a curry. I will list them down below. After mixing everything thoroughly, I wrapped it up in aluminum foil, placed it in a steamer, positioned the steamer in a pot filled with water, and placed the pot on the stove with medium heat. It took about an hour to cook thoroughly, especially because I double wrapped it to avoid any leakage and this time the amount of the curry was for two meals, way larger than usual steamed squash. I couldn't guess the timing properly, so for lunch I left it on for about 30 minutes but there were a few pieces of squash undercooked. So before dinner, I steamed it for another 30 minutes and this time was close to perfect. I sided with steamed rice and it tasted really good but something was off. By the last bite, I realized some of the spices weren't well incorporate with the curry, overpowering the taste a little. So, I would make some changes for my next trials. Firstly, I would definitely reduce the amount of spices, especially the coriander and cumin powder which were overpowering the taste. I believe just turmeric and red chili powder works fine. Secondly, I would definitely caramelize the onions and green chili separately before adding it to the mixture. Steamed curry does miss that oomph of the caramelized onions.

Ingredients: