mascot

Awhile back, when I made curry, my blog friend Martin, told me about Mascot's Indian style curry paste.

I am always interested in finding products that make life in the kitchen a little easier without having to give up flavor while not having to eat a lot of preservatives or additives.

This curry paste doesn't use lard or shortening like the boxed roux I've seen (and used) in the markets. And it also doesn't use pork or beef in it, making it vegetarian.

Since they do not use meats to flavor their paste, they do instead use shiitake mushroom and kombu (seaweed) to up the flavor.

The label says that one bottle makes 3 servings of curry, but we had 6 "Kat sized servings" (about 1/2 a cup each) from this.

The directions on the bottle say to dump the paste into your pot and with the empty bottle, measure the water (total 2 bottle fulls--roughly 1 cup each).

Instead, I browned some onions, carrots, red bell pepper with some ground chicken in some olive oil. Then I added 2 cups of water, some garbanzos, potato and some spinach.

I let everything come to a boil then simmered it for 20 minutes (to cook the potatoes), then added the paste.

The result, a very flavorful spicy curry in about 30 minutes (give or take).

At 680 yen (about US$6.80), this curry paste is higher than those boxed roux, but for healthy choices, I'd say this is worth it.

Thanks for the heads-up Martin, this was delicious!