My go-to template is rice with fried or steamed veggies and coconut curry. I usually also add chicken but if you want it vegan there is nothing wrong with just substituting mushrooms or an additional vegetable.

The great thing about it is that it’s super versatile and you can customize the veggies to be pretty much anything, but i usually just pick two or three from either peppers, onions, zucchini, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, bok choy, or even green beans. Potatoes and chickpeas work too in a pinch but i find that gets a bit heavy.

For the curry sauce you just use coconut milk (dilute a bit with water if it’s too thick) as a base and a blend of spices of your choosing (i use things like cumin, turmeric, cardamom, coriander seeds, chili powder, lemongrass, cloves, black pepper, etc.) plus optionally some tomato paste. Also i like adding plenty of garlic and a bit of ginger.

You can also add some coconut milk when cooking the rice to give it some aroma. And you can garnish with things like thai basil, coriander, sesame, lime/lime zest, etc.

If i’m feeling particularly fancy i may make a crispy, spiced batter for the chicken (or if you’re going vegan you could batter one or more of the veggies) to fry in, but that is a huge time investment that i can’t usually justify.

But if you keep it super basic and reduce the number of ingredients (especially those that need prep) to a minimum you can cook it in under 30 minutes. The rice itself only takes around ten, the sauce barely has to cook at all apart from lightly roasting the garlic and ginger a little, and the veggies should be prepped in ten and fried/steamed in another ten.