Butter Bean Tikka Curry Recipe from East Meets Vegan

This post is in partnership with The Experiment Publishing but all opinions are mine.

There’s an Indian grocery store that’s close enough to my house that I can walk there.

It’s in an awkward little shopping plaza, nestled between a donut shop and a tiny local bar. The donut shop has been there forever, and in the mornings, you can smell the freshly baked donuts for blocks.

As the day wears on, the donut smell isn’t as prominent. Even so, the parking lot of the awkward little plaza always faintly smells like glazed donuts.

That all changes once you open the doors to the Indian market.

The air is thick with the smell of incense and freshly cooked samosas; shelves are overflowing, and there are entire aisles of spices.

It’s heaven.

So, when The Experiment Publishing asked me if I’d like to review Sasha Gill’s new cookbook, East Meets Vegan, I quickly agreed.

No one needs to ask me twice.

I love going to my local Indian market.

Let’s talk about the East Meets Vegan cookbook. There’s a lot to like.

The Book

First, it’s a beautiful book.

The photos are vibrant and enticing, and I’m particularly fond of the use of color pages throughout the book.

This cookbook is one of those cookbooks that you can sit down and pass some delightful time reading.

In the introduction, you’ll get to know the author and learn about her journey towards veganism.

Covering the best of Asian cooking, you’ll learn about each new cuisine in a brief introduction at the beginning of each section.

Next, as for more practical matters, the book is broke out into the following sections:

• Introduction
• Recipe Notes
• Pantry Essentials
• Equipment
• Basic recipes and techniques
• Recipes
  • India
  • Thailand
  • Singapore & Malaysia
  • China
  • Japan
• Mix-and-Match Leftovers

As an aside; whoever designed the layout of this book deserves a pat on the back.

The recipe pages are in a clean, easy-to-read format and the color contrast between the font and the pages is perfect.

And even though the font throughout the book is a bit small for those of us with poor vision, it’s clean and pleasant to view.

The Recipes

One of the nice things about this cookbook is its wide variety of recipes.

From chutneys to pancakes to noodles to sushi, there’s a little something for every taste bud.

Although the methods aren’t complicated, I wouldn’t call this is a beginner cookbook.

All of the recipes in East Meets Vegan are Asian-inspired, so unless you have cooked with each cuisine before some of the cooking techniques might be unfamiliar to you. Luckily, the author does a great job of walking you through advanced techniques like how to roll sushi or a spring roll; there’s a diagram on each recipe that needs it.

In regards to prep and cooking times, you’ll spend an average of 25 – 40 minutes preparing these dishes, sometimes longer depending on the recipe. 

Finally, let’s talk about the ingredients.

Obviously, the recipes in this book require Asian products or spices that you may or may not already have in your pantry.

While you might be able to find most of the ingredients at a large grocery store, I encourage you to check out your local Indian or Asian markets.

Not only will they have what you’re looking for, a lot of the times you can find them at much lower prices than other places.

Plus, you’ll be supporting a small local business which is good for the community.

If you don’t cook with beans often, you should.

They are the richest plant sources of protein available and especially abundant in the amino acid lysine, which is essential for bone health.

Ginny Messina, a dietitian specializing in vegan nutrition and the author of many vegan health-related books, recommends three servings per day of beans or four servings for people over 50.

According to Messina, one serving is equivalent to one of the following portions:

• 1/2 cup cooked beans
• 1/4 cup of peanuts
• 2 tablespoons peanut butter
• 1/2 cup tofu
• 1/2 cup tempeh
• 1/4 cup soynuts
• 1-ounce vegan meat
• 1 cup soymilk

I have good news; this recipe is a great way to eat more beans. It calls for butter beans, which is just another name for a lima bean.

Lima beans were cultivated in Peru for more than 7,000 years. The explorers of South American took the beans back to Spain and Portugal where they made their way to Africa, the Caribbean, and finally to North America.

Names of these velvety beans have many names depending on the region: Lima, Madagascar, Gigantes, or Butterbeans.

After spending some time with the book, I decided the first recipe I would try is the Butter Bean Tikka Curry. It took me 45 minutes to make the dish from start to finish, and that includes prep and clean-up time.

The recipe was easy to follow, though there was some confusion about one of the ingredients — rice syrup specifically — that I’m still not 100% on.

The recipe calls for rice syrup but does that mean brown rice syrup or clear rice syrup? It’s not clear, so I used brown rice syrup, and it worked out fine.

Let me tell you; this dish was a spicy hit.

The yogurt-marinated beans were velvety and had the right amount of spice, but it wasn’t overwhelming at all. This Tikka curry was warm, vibrant, and heavily spiced just the way it’s supposed to be. A dollop of tangy vegan yogurt and a handful of cilantro made the whole dish better.

I chose to serve my curry with rice, but naan would be great too.

Maybe next time because I’m definitely going to make this again.

I couldn’t talk about this new vegan cookbook without also allowing you to get a copy for yourself, so here’s your chance to win. All you have to do is enter via the Rafflecopter below. Yup, that’s it. Easy.

Before you enter here’s the fine print:

This giveaway has ended starts on April 24, 2019 ends on May 5, 2019, and is made possible through The Experiment Publishing Company.  

1. This giveaway is open to United States & Canada residents only.
2. There’s only one (1) entry per person.
3. The winning cookbook will arrive directly from the publisher, which means that any mailing address provided as the result of this giveaway will be shared with them for shipping purposes.

That covers it. So, don’t wait. Enter now!

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