Chickpea, tomato and spinach curry

This is one of my favourite vegan recipes at the moment. It doesn’t look like much but it is very filling and super healthy as well (even though I don’t understand why something this tasty is healthy). The added bonus is the high proportion of veg and pulses mean that you get 2 or 3 of your 5 a day in one portion. As it is super healthy you can add a sprinkling of chopped nuts and a dollop of yoghurt to serve and not feel very guilty about it (use Alpro yoghurt if you want it to be truly vegan – the alpro natural yoghurt is actually really good).

I made this recipe (serves four), eating half last night with the second half for lunch today. Unfortunately this recipe is limited by the use of whole tins of chickpeas and thus scaling is dependent on whether you can find a good use for a part-tin. Of course, what I should have done to keep the costs down is use dried chickpeas and then I could have used any quantity I want. But you get the picture. Tinned chickpeas make this recipe a breeze. The only difficult bit is remembering to stir it while the lentils are cooking.

As always, this is adapted from another source to fit my needs. Please feel free to play around with my recipe, but check out the original on BBC Good Food for other ideas too.

My tip of the day for getting coconut cream: if you don’t have coconut cream in but do have a tin of coconut milk, put the milk in the fridge overnight or in the deep-freeze for 30 minutes. You’ll find the liquid and solids separate and you can use the solids as coconut cream (and drink the liquid which is divine!).

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1260646/chickpea-tomato-and-spinach-curry

Chickpea, tomato and spinach curry

Serves 4

Preparation: 15 minutes

I so need to take lessons in none-blurry photos. I'm always so desperate to eat my yummy dinner though!

Cooking time: 40 minutes

Cost: £5.26 (£1.32 per serving)

1 onion, coarsely chopped

1 clove garlic, coarsely chopped

3cm piece of ginger, coarsely chopped

4 tomatoes, chopped

2 tsp olive oil

1 tsp ground cumin

2 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp turmeric

pinch of chilli flakes to your desired taste

1 tsp marmite

4 tbsp red lentils

4 tbsp coconut cream

1 head of broccoli, chopped into florets

1 tin of chickpeas, drained and rinsed, or equivalent of dried chickpeas, soaked overnight and boiled for 30 minutes

100g baby spinach

1 lemon, halved

Chopped nuts (such as cashews)

Rice and yoghurt to serve.

First if you are using brown rice get it cooking. If you are using white rice start it cooking once you have the curry simmering.

To save time pop the onion, garlic, ginger and tomatoes in a food processor and blend to a puree. If you don’t have a blender just chop finely and mix together.

Heat up your pan, add the oil and then fry the cumin, coriander, turmeric and chilli flakes for 1 minute (it will smoke so put your extractor fan on first). Add the puree and yeast extract and cook for 2 minutes until bubbling.

Add the lentils and coconut cream and cook until tender, stirring periodically (depending on your lentils this will be somewhere between 20 and 25 minutes). You may need to add additional liquid periodically (I added about a pint in total), in small increments to stop the sauce sticking to the bottom. In the meantime cook your rice if you are using white rice.

Once the lentils are tender add the broccoli and chickpeas, cook for 4 minutes. Finally add your spinach, lemon juice and nuts, stirring until the spinach is just wilted (about 1 minute). Serve immediately with the rice and dollop of yoghurt and chopped nuts if desired.

N.B. The cost of the meal is calculated on the day that this blog entry was published, using Sainsbury's online groceries as a reference for pricing. Each item is costed by weight used not by the total cost of a bottle/packet of that product.

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

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