It sometimes surprises me how much I love curry, because I never ate it as a child.

Curry came into my life much later, when I was playing on the LPGA Tour and traveling nearly every week.

When you spend that much of your life on the road, finding somewhere to eat becomes part of the rhythm of travel. And as a vegetarian, I learned something very quickly: Indian restaurants were places where I could open a menu and have choices. Not one reluctant vegetarian option tucked somewhere at the bottom, but an entire world of vegetables, lentils, rice, breads, sauces, and spices.

So I began looking for Indian restaurants in nearly every city where we played.

I still remember the kind of dish that first won me over. It was a vegetable curry, creamy and filled with vegetables, with enough sauce that it could spill over the rice and soak into every grain.

Of course, I ordered it mild.

I was usually warned that curry was spicy, and even “mild” sometimes arrived with enough heat to get my attention. But underneath that little bite was something I had never tasted before — layer upon layer of warm, fragrant spices wrapped in a creamy sauce.

And then there was garlic naan.

Once you have a bowl of curry in front of you, rice underneath it, and warm naan in your hand for scooping up the sauce, it is difficult not to feel that you made exactly the right choice for dinner.

Over the years I tried nearly every vegetarian Indian dish I could find. I loved so many of them, but curry always held a special place for me because I loved the sauciness of it. I wanted enough sauce to drench the rice, not merely coat the vegetables.

Later, when my travels took me to Japan, I discovered Japanese curry — an entirely different expression of the idea. Then came Thai curries, fragrant with their own herbs and aromatics. Eventually I realized that what we casually call curry encompasses an enormous family of dishes rather than one particular recipe. India itself contains countless regional traditions, and versions of curry traveled and evolved throughout Asia and eventually around the world.

I love many of them.

But at home, I continually return to the creamy ones.

There is something about coconut milk and aromatic spices that I find irresistible.

Indian cooking also introduced me to a spice cabinet unlike anything I had known growing up. Cumin, coriander, turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, garam masala — ingredients valued not only in cooking but with long histories of use in Ayurveda and other traditional practices.

And they are extraordinarily beautiful.

Turmeric turns a pot the color of sunlight. Coriander has a floral fragrance that seems to rise out of the pan. Ginger brings warmth and brightness, and I often find myself adding a little more toward the end simply because I love it so much.

When those spices begin warming in the pot, the entire kitchen changes.

That is also one of the most important things I have learned from making curry at home: give the spices their moment.

Don’t simply bury them in liquid.

Toast the whole spices. Let them become fragrant. Give the tomato paste a little time against the heat. Build the curry before asking it to become dinner.

These days I rarely make exactly the same curry twice. I look at what is in the refrigerator and, even more often, at what has come in from the garden.

Potatoes, cauliflower, and eggplant are three vegetables I use again and again because they are also vegetables we grow in our garden. There is something especially satisfying about walking outside, seeing what is ready, and knowing that before long it will all be settling into a pot of warm coconut curry.

Potatoes and cauliflower are nearly nonnegotiable for me. And if there is an eggplant ready to be picked, it is going in too.

The eggplant becomes silky, the potatoes drink in the sauce, and the cauliflower somehow seems made for all those warm spices. Other vegetables come and go depending on what the garden gives me and what I have in the refrigerator, which is part of what makes curry such wonderful garden food.

But potatoes and cauliflower are my favorites. Those two are nearly nonnegotiable.

And if there is an eggplant waiting for me, it is going in too.

The eggplant becomes silky, the potatoes drink in the sauce, and the cauliflower somehow seems made for all those warm spices. Other vegetables come and go depending on what I have, which is part of what makes curry such wonderful garden food.

I usually make mine in the pressure cooker.

I love my pressure cooker and use it often. There is something rather wonderful about closing the lid and letting dinner quietly take care of itself while I make the basmati rice, warm some naan, clean the kitchen, or simply do something else.

And then comes the part that, in my kitchen, is not optional.

A generous spoonful of my Not-So-Spicy Tomato Jam goes right on top.

With fresh cilantro scattered over everything, that sweet, tangy tomato jam against the creamy coconut curry is the thing that takes the bowl from delicious to the kind of dinner where I keep going back for one more bite.

A 10-out-of-10 bowl.

There are days when I actually crave curry — not merely because I am hungry, but because I want the experience of it.

I want the fragrance filling the kitchen.

I want a bowl of basmati rice disappearing beneath all that golden coconut sauce.

I want the vegetables and ginger and coriander and cumin.

I want the naan for the last little bit left in the bowl.

And I love the way I feel after eating it.

Over the years, as I stopped eating out very often, I learned to make more and more of the Indian dishes I once searched for while traveling from city to city. What began as something unfamiliar on a restaurant menu eventually became something completely at home in my own kitchen.

Perhaps that is one of the loveliest things food can do.

It travels.

From one country to another. From one cook to another. From a restaurant discovered while living out of a suitcase to vegetables pulled from your own garden decades later.

And somehow, along the way, it becomes yours.

For me, a warm bowl of vegetable curry will always be one of those meals.

Fragrant. Generous. Comforting.

Food that feels like medicine.

And perhaps that is exactly where this recipe belongs.