Curry Night: A feast of curries from around the world
A global banquet of curries from over 25 beloved food writers
This Curry Night post brings together a global collection of curry recipes written by experienced food writers, spanning Sri Lankan, Indian, Bengali, Thai, Japanese, East African, Jewish South Asian, and plant-based traditions, offering both classic curries and thoughtful adaptations rooted in real home cooking.
This is a free post and will remain available to anyone interested in exploring global curries and discovering new ways to cook them at home.
I grew up in Mumbai though my parents are originally from the eastern part of Maharashtra (the state in western India, whose capital is Mumbai). Their meals even today are a full spread - roti, white rice, dal (pigeon peas) and two vegetable curries (dry and saucy) – not to mention chutneys, pickles, and diced salad. Although there are no western-style meal courses and everything is served at once, IMHO, curries are the entrees of this meal because everything else remains fairly same, but curries change according to seasons, availability and special days. So instead of asking “what’s for dinner?” I asked, “what’s the curry today?”.
That’s how important curries are in my everyday life. Over the years of cooking, my understanding of curries has evolved. Examining all the beautiful curries while curating this post has enriched my knowledge base. But it seems I have just scratched the surface. After reading and studying the fantastic curries in this post, it is my wish that you become such a pro at “currying” that you take one look at what is in your fridge and pantry, and eureka - you have whipped up a curry of your own. Happy Currying!
This Curry Night event took place because of Lisa McLean. She invited me to collaborate on this delightful project, which is well on its way to developing a bustling community of curry creators and curry lovers. Lisa also did all the heavy lifting - she whipped up all the images and collages, wrote the first draft and, in general, thought a few steps ahead. Thank you, Lisa, your talent, hard work and generosity shine bright!
You’ll find the full menu laid out at the top of the post, so you can see what’s on the table at a glance. Below, the recipes are grouped by region and style, making it easy to find your way. There is a great deal here. This is a post to return to, to dip in and out of over time, drawing inspiration from many kitchens, many voices, and many ways of cooking curry well.
This is a very long post so if you are reading it via email, it will be truncated. Just press the “Read Entire Message” link at the bottom and the whole post will open in a new window.
What Curries mean to Lisa McLean? In her words.
I cook a lot of curries. They are in constant rotation in my kitchen, not as special-occasion food, but as everyday cooking. I started young, helping my Sri Lankan friends after school. Back then, spices and curry powders arrived from Sri Lanka packed into tea chests. Curry leaf plants, pandan and lemongrass were eventually sourced locally and planted in gardens. I didn’t carry much responsibility in those early kitchens. There was onion and garlic chopping, potato peeling, lentil sorting, and plenty of washing up, while the curries themselves were orchestrated by older friends. I was there to help, to talk, and to learn without quite realising that I was learning how to cook curry.
In time, I became the older friend, the one showing others how to cook. Over the years, I’ve learned from every cook I’ve encountered, refining methods and deepening my understanding of how to build exceptional curries across many cultures. From Sri Lanka to India, Indonesia, and beyond, I’ve studied and practised traditions that produce deeply complex, generous food, often using remarkably similar spice boxes to arrive at entirely different outcomes.
Curry Night Menu
Breads
Vegan and Vegetarian
Sri Lankan Coconut and Potato Curry Leaf Curry (Pol Ala Kiri Hodi)
Rice, gently scented with curry leaves, pandan, and cardamom
Chicken
Seafood
Beef
Complete Sri Lankan Lunch or Dinner
Sri Lankan Coconut and Potato Curry Leaf Curry (Pol Ala Kiri Hodi)
Rice, gently scented with curry leaves, pandan, and cardamom
Let the festivities begin!
Vegan Curries
Creamy Vegan Curries
Jack McNulty - Vegan Weekly
Jack McNulty is a professional chef and food writer with decades of experience cooking, teaching, and thinking deeply about food. He has followed a vegan lifestyle for over ten years, approaching plant-based cooking not as a trend, but as a disciplined craft rooted in health, ethics, and respect for the environment.
Jack trained and worked in professional kitchens in Switzerland, Italy, and France, before spending many years teaching cooks at all levels. That background shapes his writing and recipes, which emphasize clarity, sound technique, and correcting the common mistakes that frustrate both home cooks and professionals. Through VeganWeekly, he treats cooking as a skill worth developing, with the aim of making healthy, satisfying food while respecting the planet and all living beings.
Creamy Tomatillo Coconut Curry with Spiced Chickpeas
Betty Rodriguez-Hakes - Gourmet Betty
Betty Rodriguez-Hakes is a cooking instructor and founder of gourmetbetty.com. She uses her Cuban roots and 30+ years of raising a family to simplify healthy eating. Her Curry Night feature is a vibrant fusion. It blends Thai red curry and Indian garam masala with the bright acidity of Mexican tomatillos, all finished with a signature Cuban flair. Betty calls chickpeas the “ultimate cultural chameleon” because they adapt to every cuisine. This dish is hearty, budget-friendly, and perfect for busy weeknights. It is also completely flexible. You can include the potatoes or leave them out to keep it light. Discover the secret to this creamy, global comfort meal below.
Kenyan coconut curry base, Kuku Paka–style
Elizabeth Pizzinato - The Delicious Bits Dispatch
Elizabeth writes The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly newsletter that finds magic in the small, beautiful details of everyday life, blending curiosity and reflection with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over. Her writing is shaped by close attention to what might otherwise pass unnoticed, a fleeting thought, a half-formed feeling, the particular texture of a day, and a trust that joy often blooms there.
For this Curry Night gathering, Elizabeth draws inspiration from African flavors and techniques, where richly spiced, slow-simmered dishes are built by layering aromatics with warmth, heat, and fat. Inspired by Rachel Adjei, her recipe is a versatile Kenyan curry paste designed as a foundation for coconut curries of all kinds. Adaptable to vegetables, legumes, seafood, or meat, it invites intuitive, flexible cooking.
Bangladeshi Curry
My Soul Sister’s Bengali Chicken Rezala
Sanaa Boutayeb Naïm - The Walking Palm
The Walking Palm is written by Sanaa Boutaueb Naïm a Moroccan French storyteller, home cook, and lifelong nomad who has spent more than three decades moving between worlds. From the United States to Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Serbia, and now Poland, she has carried the flavors of her roots while collecting stories from kitchens everywhere.
Through her Substack, she explores food as a bridge between cultures, weaving together flavors and stories of coexistence. She has been cooking since the age of five and now leads culinary retreats in Morocco, bringing people together through food.
For Curry Night, she shares Bengali chicken rezala, a gently spiced, yogurt-based curry made using the bhuna technique. She uses coquelet for its tenderness and depth, a practical choice inspired by what was in the freezer after returning from Morocco. This refined Mughal dish, beloved in Kolkata, has travelled with her for over twenty years.
Jewish South Indian Curry
Spayty – Bamboo Chicken Curry
Elli Benaiah - Beyond Babylon & The Jewish Curry Culture Club
Elli Benaiah is a former criminal lawyer, restaurateur, and culinary historian exploring how Jewish kitchens evolved along trade routes linking the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Through Beyond Babylon / The Jewish Curry Culture Club, he traces Jewish South Asian diaspora cooking not as nostalgia, but as living, adaptive cuisine.
Spayty, a chicken curry with bamboo shoots and coconut cream, comes from the Baghdadi Jewish kitchens of Kolkata. Rarely found outside family homes, it may sound Thai at first glance, but is something else entirely: Indian in method, Middle Eastern in sensibility, and Southeast Asian in ingredients. Documented by Copeland Marks and Mavis Hyman, and preserved through family memory rather than menus, Spayty reflects a pluralist community cooking with confidence and care. Kosher, dairy-free, quietly elegant, and deeply comforting, this is curry as migration made delicious.
Parsi Curry
Not! Thai Green Curry
Perzen Patel - Beyond Butter Chicken
Perzen is an Indian food writer, mother of two, and the voice behind Beyond Butter Chicken, a publication exploring Indian food beyond clichés. She writes about identity, motherhood, and third-culture life through the lens of everyday meals, the kind you cook when there is no one to impress.
Her fallback curry for curry night is a Parsi green curry. It shares a name with the Thai classic, but little else. There is no lemongrass or kaffir lime, just coriander, cumin, garlic, green chile peppers, and grated coconut blitzed into a paste and simmered with spices and fish. An overlooked Parsi curry, it is the one you make when you do not know what to cook, want comfort, and absolutely do not want dal again.
Indian Curries
Malai Soya Chaap
Harshita saxena - Epicurean Dispatch - My Spice Journal
Harshita Saxena is a chef, writer, and food historian exploring memory, migration, and Indian culinary heritage through her Substack, Epicurean Dispatch – My Spice Journal. She cooks from the quiet corners of her childhood kitchen and draws on the layered legacy of North Indian women who transformed everyday meals into ritual.
This malai soya chaap is her take on a vegetarian classic that mimics meat not in flavour, but in texture, intention, and patience. Slow-cooked with cream, kasuri methi, and a gentle layering of spices, it feels both familiar and quietly luxurious. Through Epicurean Dispatch, Harshita explores food not just as recipe, but as method, story, and inheritance.
Palak Paneer
Annada D. Rathi - ChutneyLovers
ChutneyLovers is written by a lifelong food lover Annada, raised in a family where conversation, cooking, and eating all revolved around food. That constant immersion sparked a love of flavors and food writing, and a desire to make Indian cooking feel as approachable for weeknight meals as pasta or stir-fries.
The bi-weekly ChutneyLovers newsletter is for anyone stuck wondering what to cook for dinner, or for those who love Indian flavors but feel intimidated by the idea of cooking them. With a focus on refreshing, off-beat combinations and practical methods, the goal is to help readers create relaxed Indian or Indian-inspired meals in 30 to 60 minutes.
The recipe shared here is palak paneer, a North Indian curry of paneer gently nestled in a silky, delicately spiced spinach purée. It pairs beautifully with paratha, naan, or spooned over rice the next day.
Chicken Livers in a Spice Onion Masala
Geetika - Ayurveda in Modern Life
Ayurveda in Modern Life is written by Geetika, a chef turned Ayurvedic Health Counselor and lifelong food lover. She discovered Ayurveda in her fifties, not in a retreat, but in the midst of a busy, overstimulated city life. What surprised her most was how practical, intuitive, and deeply relevant it proved to be, particularly for women navigating midlife.
Through her writing, Geetika translates Ayurvedic principles into real-world tools for better digestion, steadier energy, and calmer minds, without rigid routines or wellness clichés. Her work speaks especially to women over 40, though it resonates with anyone tired of chasing trends and ready for a more personal, sustainable rhythm. She believes wellness should be individual, not prescriptive, and writes the way she once needed someone to write for her about this ancient wisdom.
Cheat’s Paratha
Andrew and Donna from Vanilla Black
Andrew and Donna are the duo behind Vanilla Black, the groundbreaking vegetarian restaurant they owned and ran for 16 years. Long before plant-based dining was fashionable, they were serving dishes like brie ice cream, cheddar sponge cake, and mushroom fudge, earning Michelin recommendation and helping inspire a new generation of vegetarian and vegan cooking.
They now write a weekly Substack about what it was really like to run a vegetarian restaurant, sharing the funny moments, tough days, and behind-the-scenes realities.
For Curry Night, they bring a quick, unapologetically cheaty recipe. Paratha, while delicious, can be a faff, so they reframed it as what it essentially is: laminated dough. Enter puff pastry. Same layers, same fat, different method. One baked, one fried. Simple, clever, and very on brand.
Indian Inspired Chicken Curry
Sheryl O’Connell - Just Really Good Recipes
Sheryl shares food that earns its place through practice and pleasure. This Indian curry is one of those dishes. Discovered several years ago, it has been cooked often, gently tweaked, and shared widely.
The recipe is built in layers, with spices cooked slowly so their aromas bloom and deepen. That patient process creates a base that is rich and balanced rather than overpowering. The result is a curry that feels complex and full of character while remaining straightforward to cook. It is dependable, flexible, and deeply satisfying. A recipe you can trust, adjust, and make your own, whether cooking for one or feeding a table, and one you will return to again and again.
Walnut and Cauliflower Curry
John Gonter - On Food without Compromise
John is a Maine guide who teaches wild food foraging, angling, and hunting, alongside the skills of processing, cooking, and preserving. Through his Substack, Food Without Compromise, he writes about cooking with wild foods and carefully chosen cultivated ingredients.
For Curry Night, John wanted something a little different and was drawn to a spicy walnut and cauliflower curry. He adapted the recipe to use a whole cauliflower, converted it to metric measures, and softened the heat with just a pinch of cayenne in place of Thai chillies. The result is a mild, subtly spiced curry that pairs beautifully with a range of foods. He has served it with prawns, slow-cooked wild turkey, and oyster mushrooms, each bringing a different character to the dish.
Slow Cooker Butternut Squash & Lentil Stew
Nicki Sizemore - Mind, Body, Spirit, FOOD
Nicki is the voice behind the Mind, Body, Spirit, Food newsletter and podcast, and the author of the cookbook of the same name. A longtime culinary instructor and recipe developer, she explores cooking as a grounding, joyful, and deeply nourishing practice, creating adaptable dishes that support both body and nervous system.
Nicki’s recipes invite cooks to slow down, tune in, and find pleasure in everyday meals. This slow-cooker vegetarian stew captures that approach beautifully. Tender winter squash, protein-rich lentils, and silky spinach are gently spiced with curry, ginger, and cinnamon. Finely chopped dried apricots add subtle sweetness, while an apricot–cashew gremolata and a cooling swirl of yogurt bring contrast, balance, and quiet delight.
Quick Curry in a Hurry
Mira Dessy - Mira Dessy on Substack
Mira, known as The Ingredient Guru, shares practical, science-based strategies for holistic wellness that are supportive, realistic, and easy to put into practice. Her work focuses on helping people feel their best without getting overwhelmed.
Some of Mira’s favorite meals begin as leftovers and end as something entirely new, not because they are elaborate, but because they solve a very human problem: how to eat well without repetition. This quick curry is one of those quiet kitchen wins. Using already-cooked chicken and a handful of pantry staples, it comes together in minutes and delivers comfort, depth, and nourishment. It’s a reminder that good food does not need to be complicated to be genuinely supportive.
Vegetable Curry and Easy Naan Bread
Monika Milewska - Pantry Diaries
Monika is a cook and food writer based in London, exploring her Polish heritage through food while building a career one recipe at a time. She stages in restaurant kitchens, cooks on yoga retreats, and hosts supper clubs at home, experiences that shape both her cooking and her connection to people through food.
Her Substack, Pantry Diaries, documents this journey, charting the move from passion to profession. This recipe grew from craving a curry takeaway on a tight budget and reflects the heart of her cooking. It is an affordable curry built around simple spices and seasonal vegetables, served with quick, pan-cooked naan finished with butter and garlic. The result is comforting, practical, and deeply satisfying, the kind of meal that makes cooking at home feel achievable and rewarding.
Slow Cooker Chicken Curry
Therese Buchanan - Tessie’s Table
Tess is the creator behind Tessie’s Table. Born and raised in Ireland, she moved to Georgia in 2015 and now shares easy, flavor-forward recipes inspired by both her Irish roots and the realities of everyday cooking in her adopted home.
Through her Substack newsletter, Tess offers weekly dinner ideas, simple meal-planning inspiration, and practical, reliable recipes designed for busy days. Her cooking focuses on food that fits real life and actually gets made during the week.
Growing up in Ireland, chicken curry from Chinese takeaway shops was a regular Thursday-night ritual. After moving to Georgia and missing that familiar dish, Tess created her own slow-cooker version. It’s hands-off, cooks all day, and is ready by dinnertime—perfect for hectic weekdays.
Coconut Curry Soup with Salmon
Stephanie Hansen - Stephaniesdish Newsletter
Stephanie is a two-time Emmy Award–winning food writer, broadcaster, and Midwest home cook. She hosts the Emmy Award–winning television show Taste Buds with Stephanie, writes the True North Cabin Cookbook series, and publishes recipes through her Substack and online platforms.
Stephanie cooks cozy, seasonal comfort food inspired by the vegetables she grows in her Ely Hilltop Garden in Ely, Minnesota. In January last year, after travelling through Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam and returning to sub-zero temperatures at home, she found herself craving soup. Drawing on memories of spicy broths, herbs, and vibrant flavours from her travels, she created this dish while finishing True North Cabin Cookbook Vol. 2.
Whether you call it a soup or a stew, it’s deeply satisfying served with rice and finished with herbs, peanuts, and a generous squeeze of lime.
Japanese Curries
Japanese Omu Rice
Aki moroto - Aki moroto Substack
Aki moroto is a chef by trade who has found a like-minded community on Substack, sharing a deep passion for all aspects of cooking. His writing draws on life lived between two cultures, years spent in professional kitchens, and food-centered travel experiences.
Each post is anchored by a recipe shaped by what surfaced during those moments. This curry omu rice is especially close to Aki’s heart. He discovered it during a period when he had hit a wall in life, and it became a source of comfort and grounding. He invites you to the table for buttery rice pilaf, a softly folded omelette, and a rich, spicy curry and hopes you’ll stay for the story as well.
Japanese-Style Vegetarian Curry
Betty Williams - Betty Eatz Newsletter
A light, bright riff on the popular Asian restaurant staple, this Japanese-style Vegetarian Curry is delish! Plus, it has several protein sources, including tofu, edamame, mushrooms, and bok choy, making it cozy and nutritious. The Betty Eatz Newsletter is devoted to the bright flavors of California Cuisine and publishes every Friday.
Chicken Katsu Curry
Kerry Faber - Dish Lister
Kerry is a professional recipe tester, helping home cooks cut through the culinary noise with reliable advice and recipes that never fail.
Chicken Katsu Curry is one of her favourite winter meals. A Japanese-style curry topped with a crisp fried chicken or pork cutlet, it is deeply comforting and satisfying. Rather than making the curry sauce from scratch, Kerry often uses boxed Japanese curry roux cubes, favouring the S&B brand for their balanced flavour and ease. They significantly reduce prep time, though traditional curry roux recipes are widely available for those who prefer to make their own.
Thai Curries
Firecracker Thai Red Curry Vegetables with Chicken
Ellen Kornmehl MD - Eating and Feeding
Ellen’s Eating and Feeding newsletter is about a food adventure for your future. Increasing the ratio of plant to animal protein is well supported in reducing heart disease risk, and one way to approach this is by flipping the plate. The Culinary Institute of America Protein Flip reframes meat or poultry as a complement rather than the main event, supporting both human and planetary health.
“One way I help my family adapt is by cooking familiar, takeout-style dishes centred on colourful vegetables. This Thai red curry does just that. It comes together quickly using red curry paste and a well-stocked produce drawer, with vegetables added in stages so greens and broccoli stay vibrant, sweet, and vegetal.”
Spaghetti Green Curry Sauce
Jess Valletta - Scone Archives
Jess of Scone Archives, knows her dinnertime defaults well. Noodles are non-negotiable. Daily nutrition calls for vegetables and protein. And when cravings demand something lush and comforting, curries and pasta are very much invited.
This recipe is a Thai–Italian fusion inspired by a vividly saucy green curry spaghetti she encountered in a Bangkok mall in May 2025. It’s a home-kitchen recreation designed for flexibility and pleasure. Twirl fork or chopsticks into aromatic, herb-laced spaghetti tossed with seared mushrooms, tofu, baby bok choy, tender cauliflower, and whatever vegetables are waiting in the fridge. A curry-forward, weeknight-ready dish that satisfies on every level.
Malaysian Curries
Malaysian Style Chicken Curry
Leslie Bulut - A Bite of Delight
Leslie Balut is the writer behind A Bite of Delight, where she shares globally inspired cooking designed for real home kitchens. Leslie believes that vibrant, nourishing food should be accessible without specialist equipment, hard-to-find ingredients, or a culinary degree.
Her cooking is shaped by more than a decade of exploring global cuisines, extensive travel, and a nomadic lifestyle that has taught her to cook creatively with whatever a local grocery store offers. That constraint, she says, has made her a better cook. Leslie’s recipes are carefully tested, practical, and joyful, built for weeknight dinners as much as for memorable shared meals.
For Curry Night, she shares her version of Malaysian chicken kari, a dish that reflects her approach: deeply aromatic, balanced, and achievable anywhere. It’s global cooking made generous, grounded, and doable.
A Full Sri Lankan Dinner or Lunch
Lisa McLean - Culinary Repertoire
Lisa McLean is the writer behind Culinary Repertoire, where spice-led cooking, cultural food history, and everyday kitchen practice meet evidence-based health. A clinical naturopath, nutritionist, medical herbalist, and registered nurse with over twenty years of experience, Lisa brings her professional lens to the table without losing sight of pleasure, tradition, and the realities of home cooking.
Her food writing is shaped by decades of travel and deep relationships with the cuisines of South and Southeast Asia, particularly Sri Lanka. For Curry Night, Lisa presents a full Sri Lankan meal, reflecting the way curries are traditionally cooked and eaten as part of a balanced, aromatic table rather than as stand-alone dishes. It is food built on restraint, layering, and intuition, where rice, sambols, vegetables, and slow-cooked curries work together in quiet harmony.
Sri Lankan White Chicken Curry
Ranji Thangiah - Tooting Mama
Ranji Thangiah, aka Tooting Mama, is a food writer, photographer, and podcaster weaving Sri Lankan stories through food.
She grew up eating home-cooked Sri Lankan meals: vibrant curries, sambols, and mallungs prepared instinctively by her parents, guided by generations of embodied knowledge rather than written recipes. When her father passed away, his famous sweat-inducing black pork curry disappeared with him, severing a tangible thread to her heritage.
Ranji now treasures her parents’ cookbooks, especially a 1960s Ceylon Daily News Cookery Book that travelled with them to England. Through these pages and her growing Sri Lankan cookbook library, she is reclaiming this culinary legacy and exploring how Sri Lankan food carries stories of culture, colonialism, migration, war, and identity.
Her podcast Tea with Tooting Mama invites guests to share Sri Lankan connections through food, while her Substack celebrates the cuisine, people, and diaspora. She is also developing a Sri Lankan food walking tour through Tooting, London’s self-styled Little Sri Lanka.
Sri Lankan inspired Basic Curry Recipe
Lucy House - Healthy Farming Healthy Food
Lucy House writes Healthy Farming, Healthy Food. She is a farmer, permaculture practitioner, and home cook who believes that healthy soil grows healthy food, and healthy food supports healthy people.
Her approach, is essentially a permaculture lifestyle, centered on growing her own produce and sourcing local organic ingredients whenever possible. Lucy believes the quality of food begins in the soil and shows up on the plate.
Through her writing, she encourages people to cook simple, nourishing food from scratch and to reconnect with where their food comes from. The curry she is sharing is deliberately uncomplicated, relying on good-quality ingredients and a straightforward method. It reflects her food philosophy clearly: thoughtful sourcing, simple processes, and nutritious, satisfying meals.
Thank you for joining us at the Curry Night table. This collection has been built with care, curiosity, and deep respect for the many ways curries are cooked, adapted, and loved.
We’re deeply grateful to the food writers who so generously contributed their work, each bringing a curry shaped by lived kitchens, cultural knowledge, and personal practice. We encourage you to explore their Substack publications and other writing, where you’ll find a richness of thought, craft, and generosity that extends far beyond this table.
If this post has inspired you, we’d love you to subscribe and follow our work here on Substack. Leaving a comment or liking the post helps keep the conversation alive, and sharing it with friends or restacking it makes it easier for other readers to discover this carefully curated collection and the wider body of work it sits within.
Annada D. Rathi and Lisa McLean
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Annada it has been a total joy working on this project with you. I loved the feedback from one of the other writers telling us that we had set a new high standard for collaboration between writers. I'm delighted to hear this, as I know how clear we were to ensure each writers contribution was honoured and elevated, and for us not to be benefiting from the work of others without sharing in the collective recognition of our work.
So many familiar favorites from Sri Lanka! I am currently in Colombo and can definitely relate to asking "what curries are we having today?" rather than "what are having today?" Rice and curry for life ♥️