Turn summer’s best vegetables into a colorful, gently spiced korma

Toward the end of last August, when the melons and peaches at the market mingled with gigantic heads of broccoli and plump plums, friends and family came to visit. Among them was Granny Kathy. Though Kathy was excited to meet little Cyrus, she made sure to clarify that she wasn’t much of a baby person. “But let me know if there’s anything around the house I can help with,” she said in a text exchange, noting that she had worked as a plumber in an earlier stage of her career. My partner, Joe, and I were excited to see her regardless, and I thought about how I could make her feel welcome. “What can I cook for you while you’re here?” I texted.

“Vegetable korma,” she wrote back.

I love when people know what they feel like eating, and, when I ask, don’t hesitate to tell me. It’s so much easier than guessing or prodding. It also gives me more time to plan and experiment.

In my experiences eating korma at restaurants and in the homes of cooks from the Indian subcontinent, the dish can look a lot like other Central or Southeast Asian stews, with a rich sauce enrobing meat and/or vegetables. In my mind, kormas were nutty and creamy. I couldn’t remember making it before, so I started flipping through my cookbooks. But the more I read about korma — also spelled kurma, qorma or qurma — the more befuddled I got.

Some korma recipes contained coconut flesh or milk, others used cashews, and still others called for almonds. In “Quick & Easy Indian Cooking,” Madhur Jaffrey adds heavy cream to her quick chicken korma; in a recipe for the Wall Street Journal, Floyd Cardoz based his korma sauce on yogurt.

All of them had a mix of spices, but I couldn’t tell whether there was one flavor, texture or ingredient that was essential to a korma.

Feeling overwhelmed, I decided to cook. The first korma recipe I made was Meera Sodha’s, with roasted cauliflower and blackened raisins, from her second book, “Fresh India.” (She published an adaptation of the recipe in her Guardian column some years ago.) I fell in love with the velvety consistency of the sauce, which was the result of pureeing cashews that had been soaked in boiling water.

Sodha wrote that, until she tasted a particularly good korma at an East London restaurant when she was 18, she had dismissed the dish as “the curry for people who were scared of curries.” I decided to ask her what makes a korma a korma. “I’m not a purist,” she told me, “but if you break down what really makes a curry-house korma taste like a korma, it’s the slow-cooked sweet onions, plus the sweet spices and creamy nuts.”

That was the kind of gentle guidance I needed to begin tinkering. I started by dicing a sweet Vidalia onion. As it browned in a Dutch oven, I turned to my spice cabinet, and I pulled out a jar of garam masala that was heavy on the cardamom and black pepper. I added chopped garlic and fresh ginger to the onions while I considered what else to include.

It was a Sunday, and I’d just returned from the farmers market with so much produce in tow: sturdy ears of corn, hefty zucchini, colorful string beans, ripe tomatoes and shiny sweet peppers. I decided to chop a colorful variety of summer’s best to add, along with a can of chickpeas.

Then there was the question of the nutty base, and I didn’t have any cashews or almonds on hand. What I did have — what I always have — was a jar of cashew butter. Sometimes I make a sort of cheater cashew milk by blending water and cashew butter, and I thought maybe I could do something like that here. As I stirred cashew butter into the aromatics in the pot, I added a can of light coconut milk. Its looser consistency helped the cashew butter melt into the vegetables, forming a creamy, sweet-smelling sauce.

Later, I asked Sodha whether she’d ever used cashew butter in her korma. “I haven’t,” she said, “but I think it’s a clever idea, and would add instant body and creaminess, and remove a lot of the faff of soaking and blending your own cashews.”

Indeed, it does streamline the process. After a taste, I added more ground pepper and a touch of maple syrup, to pull out the sweetness in the onions and peppers. This was a fine dish on its own, but I decided to add a garnish of Sodha’s almond and blackened raisin topping. The colorful, softened vegetables in the nutty, creamy sauce beneath the crunch and pop of toasted almonds and sweet raisins were marvelous. I made the dish a few more times before our visitors arrived. And when I finally cooked it for Granny Kathy, it felt like a fitting and proper feast. After eating a bowlful, she pronounced it “great!” and served herself seconds before washing all the dishes with her signature, dazzling smile.

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Summer Vegetable Korma

For the korma:

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium yellow onion (8 ounces), diced

4 garlic cloves, finely chopped

One (2-inch) piece fresh ginger, minced or finely grated

2½ teaspoons garam masala, store-bought or homemade

4 cups vegetables, such as bell peppers, summer squash, dark leafy greens, tomatoes, carrots, corn or peas, chopped or otherwise prepared as needed*

½ teaspoon fine salt, plus more to taste

2 tablespoons unsalted cashew or almond butter

One (15-ounce) can light coconut milk

Water, as needed

One (15-ounce) can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1 tablespoon maple syrup, plus more as needed

Freshly ground black pepper

Flatbreads, for serving

For the optional topping:

1 teaspoon olive oil

⅓ cup sliced almonds, preferably blanched

⅓ cup golden raisins

Flaky sea salt (optional)

Make the korma: In a large Dutch oven or 5-quart saucepan over medium-high heat, heat the oil until shimmering. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until just starting to brown, 3 to 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low, and stir in the garlic, ginger and garam masala, letting the aromatics warm up for just a few seconds. Add any hardy vegetables (see Notes) and the salt, and stir, scraping up any browned bits that are stuck to the bottom of the pan.

Stir in the cashew butter and coconut milk, swirling the nut butter into the vegetables so it melts into the sauce. Increase the heat to medium-high and bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce the heat to maintain a lively simmer, cover (see Notes) and cook, stirring occasionally and adjusting the heat as needed, until the vegetables are fork-tender and the broth thickens, 8 to 10 minutes.

Adjust the heat to medium. If the korma seems dry, add water, ¼ cup at a time, until it is as saucy as you’d like.

Stir in any frozen or tender vegetables (see Notes), plus the chickpeas and maple syrup. Simmer until all of the vegetables are warmed through and coated in the sauce, 2 to 4 minutes.

Taste, and season with black pepper and more salt and maple syrup, if desired. Remove from the heat.

Make the optional topping: In a small (8-inch) skillet over medium heat, heat the oil until shimmering. Add the almonds and raisins, and cook, stirring occasionally, until a few of the raisins blacken and puff up and the almonds are golden brown, 3 to 4 minutes. Sprinkle with flaky sea salt, if desired, and remove from the heat.

Serve the korma family-style, topped with the almond-raisin mixture, if desired, and with flatbreads on the side.

4 servings

Notes: In general, when using fresh vegetables for this recipe, the hardier the vegetable, the smaller it should be cut. Dice vegetables such as carrots, potatoes, cauliflower, bell peppers, summer squash, string beans or broccoli. Strip leafy greens such as kale, chard and cabbage off of their thick stems, and thinly slice.

Tomatoes, spinach and other tender vegetables can be roughly chopped. (Eggplant is not recommended unless it’s diced, salted and briefly pan-fried first.) Cut fresh corn kernels off the cob. Cherry tomatoes can be left whole, or halved if large.

If using frozen vegetables, there is no need to defrost. Keep in mind that frozen peas and corn take almost no time to cook, and should be added near the end of simmering to avoid overcooking.

If you use mostly dense vegetables, such as potatoes, carrots and cauliflower, you may need to add water to thin the sauce. If you use primarily watery or frozen vegetables, including summer squash, spinach and tomatoes, you may wish to simmer the korma uncovered to allow excess moisture to evaporate.

Nutritional information per serving (1½ cups, without the optional topping) | 383 Calories: 44g Carbohydrates, 0mg Cholesterol, 21g Fat, 9g Fiber, 12g Protein, 8g Saturated Fat, 638mg Sodium, 17g Sugar

— G. Daniela Galarza