Vegetable Vindaloo in Monterey, California by Ruth Paget
Vegan visitors to Monterey, California might want to try the vegetable vindaloo at the Ambrosia India Bistro located in downtown Monterey by the historic Casa Munras Hotel and on Cannery Row.
Vegetable Vindaloo is a dish from the southern Indian city of Goa, a former Portuguese colony. The website www.epicurious.com gives a recipe for pork vindaloo that covers the sauce or curry ingredients. I have left out the pork and list the spices below:
The spices make the vindaloo curry hot, pungent, and delicious. Epicurious.com lists the following spices that go into a good vindaloo:
-Kashmiri chiles which can be replaced by guajillo chiles
-garlic
-ginger
-cinnamon stick
-vinegar
-sugar
-tamarind paste
-peppercorns
-cumin seeds
-turmeric
-cloves
-salt
The seasonal vegetables for a vegetable vindaloo are stir-fried in an Indian wok called a kadai. Ambrosia tends to always use potatoes, cauliflower, sweet red peppers, green beans, and onions in its vegetable vindaloo with additions from the 200+ crops grown in the Salinas Valley just east of Monterey.
The spicy vindaloo curry tastes great with basmati rice. I order naan bread as well to soak up every last bit of the vindaloo. I like to think that the vegetables used in Ambrosia India Bistro’s vegan dishes are all organic and come from the Salinas Valley just east of Monterey.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
