Chickpea Curry
I married an Englishman & he LOVES to eat curry. We make all kinds of curry.
One time he went through a curry craze and he made curries from all over the world.
We’ve made Jamaican curry, Chinese curry, African curry.
The kids eat it too. If it’s too spicy for them, we take out a few ladles and make a side pot & add coconut cream or a little stock and serve it with yoghurt.
They’ll eat every mouthful. 🙂
So, we probably eat curry once a week, sometimes twice.
This recipe changes all the time so don’t be too hard & fast with the ingredients list. Tonight, we made it with kale & spinach because there was literally nothing else in the fridge.
If I’ve got cauliflower, I’ll usually chop that up instead of kale. If you’ve got an eggplant laying around, chop it up. Just use whatever you like.
For the spice, tonight I used a Madras dry spice mix bought at our favourite Asian store. You can freestyle and add the Indian spices as you see fit or you can buy the premade spices made into a paste from the supermarket, it’s really up to you.
Either/or will make you a delicious curry you can have on the table in 20 minutes.
Ingredients
1 large white or brown onion
2-3 cloves of garlic, grated
1-2 inches of ginger, grated
1 inch of cumin, grated
4-5 teaspoons of Madras spice mix (or half a jar of Indian spice paste)
2 tins of chickpeas
1 cup of stock
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
1 tin of coconut milk
1 tspn brown sugar
Good crack of salt, to taste
2 large kale leaves, washed, stems removed & finely chopped
3-4 blocks of frozen spinach
Squeeze of lime
Coconut yoghurt to serve
1/2 cucumber
1 tomato
Pappadams
Brown basmati rice
Method
Cook the rice in a rice cooker if you have one, or just put a large pot of water on the stove and when it’s boiled add 2 cups of basmati rice. (If you’re cooking rice on the stove, be careful not to forget about it or it’ll turn to mush).
In a pan on high heat, add half a cup of water and a veggie stock cube along with the diced onion, grated garlic, ginger, cumin & spice mix.
Cook this for a few minutes and then add the tomatoes and cook down. It should be dry and the tomatoes should start to fry.
Add half a cup of water and stir so nothing is stuck to the bottom of the pan.
Add the chopped kale, chickpeas (drained and rinsed) and bring to the boil.
Add the coconut milk and bring back to the boil, then put the lid on and leave it for 5 minutes or so.
Add the frozen spinach blocks and cover with the lid. Turn the heat down to just over a simmer & leave for another 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
The curry will start to darken in colour and cook everything through.
Add the teaspoon of sugar, a squeeze of lime and the salt.
If you’ve overdone the spice, add a little more coconut milk. Alternatively, if you’re wanting it to have more spice just add half a teaspoon at a time until you’re happy.
Sides
We love to serve this with a big dollop of coconut yoghurt that we mix in a bowl with chopped cucumber & a little salt.
In another bowl we finely slice fresh tomato and mix with grated garlic.
We like to throw a heap of something fresh on top like coriander if we have it, tonight I used spring onions.
Lastly, we serve with a wedge of lime. (Most of these sides we didn’t have tonight as we are desperate to do a grocery shop, but typically we make all these little bits to go with it).
Oh, and we make a huge pile of pappadams that we cook in the microwave. I lay the pappadams out flat on the glass plate, make sure they’re not touching and then cook on high for 1 minute, then do another batch.
I only learnt to cook them this way a few years ago. It’s way better than doing them in oil, and better for you too!
On the table we have a chili or a sweet chutney. Eggplant chutney is our favourite & can be found in the Asian isle of the supermarket.
SO DELICIOUS!!
Enjoy!