Being part Japanese, curry rice is one of my stable meals wherever I live whether the US, Vietnam or here in Kazakhstan. I tend to eat this dish 4-5 times per week. How I make it tends to depend on the country I live in. Here in Kazakhstan, I found that I could make it into a high protein meal for after my workouts.
I bring the curry blocks from Vietnam on each trip there. I cannot find them in Kazakhstan nor do I want to make any curry dish from curry powder, I must use curry blocks as I had learned from my mother as a child. For me, I use Golden Curry but on my next trip, my Japanese friend, Hiro, recommended that I buy the Aeon brand since it is cheaper and tastes the same.
For this particular dish, I made the curry with ground beef, potatoes, cauliflower, and onions. I mixed them with olive oil, curry powder (small amounts), black pepper, and garlic powder. Sometimes I will just small Russian dumplings and other vegetables (such as carrots and peas). This part takes about 30 minutes to prepare and cook. It is quite an easy meal to make.
Now what makes my curry rice different is that I mix white rice with buckwheat kasha (grechka) and steam them together. This gives the curry rice a distinct taste which I love. It also adds a lot of protein to my diet crucial for after my workouts. It also is easy to prepare. I steam grechka/white rice at the same time I prepare the main curry dish.
After 40 minutes later, my curry rice is ready to eat. For the first serving, I normally pour the curry on top of the rice/grechka. After I am finished, I will mix the grechka/rice into the curry and then store the pan in the fridge (I do not have a rice cooker so I found this an easier way to store my curry rice). I can get about 4-5 days from each pot.
In the future, I will add honey and an apple to my curry rice. That is the normal for Japanese curry rice dishes in Japan. Eventually, when I switch to vegetarianism, I will stop adding the meat and just focus on grechka and vegetables as my main source of protein.
Since arriving in Kazakhstan, I have gained a lot of muscle strength which I attribute to this dish. See IronDevilDog.com to keep track of my workout progress. March/April tend to be my personal record months.
