Chickpea curry

Bake a sweet potato.

Meanwhile, dice an onion, cook that up with chopped ginger, garlic and curry powder. Add the drained chickpeas, some veg stock and a bit of creamed coconut and a dab of tomato paste. Cook it all for a few minutes until it's thickened. 

You can add a bit of spinach to the pan at the last minute. Serve it over the baked sweet potato with a garnish of chilli and some toasted cashew nuts.

Chickpeas will somehow absorb a shedload of curry powder, right up until the moment that they don't and any remainder blows the roof of your mouth off but it's a great one for making mild or hot as you fancy and it's completely veggie.

Here's one from my Gousto book 

Cheers folks 🙏

this is mine....

fry an onion until.soft and clear add chopped garlic & ginger , tbsp turmeric, 3/4 tbsp cumin

add sweet potato diced into 2cm cubes

add magi coconut milk powder and water, bring to boil simmer for 10 mins

add a tin of chickpeas, cook for another 10, add a generous bunch of spinach, cook for another few mins until wilted, mix in chopped coriander just before you serve with loads of naan bread

its a great one to batch up and keep in the fridge for a couple of days too

Pro tip.

Blitz the onion until its mush. Cook that off the proceed with recipe of choice.

If you really want to impress.... Make your own naan, it's a piece of piss.

Also if this prowess in the kitchen in supposed to translate to prowess in la chambre...

Is stuffing all the participants with fart pellets a good idea?

I've tried cooking chickpea curry a few times and found it vile each time - due to the chickpeas.

Not being much of a whole chickpea consumer, I genuinely don't know of this is because I can't cook them or I simply don't like the things.

What is the texture supposed to be like, please? Hard on the outside and a mouth-drying mush on the inside? Or just enough firmness to feel before mush like a kidney bean in a chilli con carne?

I like couscous, but obviously that involves chopping the chickpeas up.

Apologies for thread hijack.

Seems about right, I like them.

However, try butter beans instead.

But then again you might not like beans in general.

Use potatoe instead. It's a curry, try different things. You'll get there in the end.

https://www.greatbritishlife.co.uk/magazines/yorkshire/22636822.chole-cinnamon-spiced-chickpea-curry-recipe-prashad-indian/

This if from an amazing vegetarian Indian cookbook called Prashad. Really really good although it's worth being discrete with the chilli as her baseline is pretty fiery.

Posted by: joshvegas

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If you really want to impress.... Make your own naan, it's a piece of piss.

I love doing this. So easy (although messy af)

200g self raising flour

200g yogurt

Season and spice

Mix up, roll flat, pan fry both sides. 

Lush.

Use potatoe instead. It's a curry, try different things. You'll get there in the end.

My potato and carrot curry is a marvel, so I'm already there on that front. 🙂

I probably just don't like whole chickpeas in anything then. I can live with that, TBH.

I like couscous, but obviously that involves chopping the chickpeas up.

?

Shows how little I know about this stuff. I always thought couscous was roughly ground or chopped chickpea.

I don't have my finger on the pulse, obviously...

😉

Have you tired the chickpeas from jars?  In general they are much nicer than tinned stuff although a lot more expensive. 

🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣

Posted by: Oakwood

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I probably just don't like whole chickpeas in anything then. I can live with that, TBH.

 

Not even hummus? 

One I've made, slightly different:

Roast some sweet potato cut into chunks

Fry up some onions, when translucent add garlic, ginger and chilli and cook a bit

Mix the sweet potatoes, onion mix and a jar of chickpeas in a bowl. I usually cheat here and use a premade sauce, although there's nothing to stop you cooking one up using tomatoes, coconut milk and a curry powder mix of some kind. 

In a pie dish, layer filo pastry brushed with oil, at least 4 or 5 layers. Put your potato etc mix in the middle, then fold the pastry over to completely cover it. Brush with more oil. If you're feeling fancy you could probably sprinkle some crushed pistachos over the top. Cook in the oven until the pastry is golden.

I must try that recipe from Prashad posted above. None of this coconut nonsense. It looks very much like the best chick peas in the world served up at This and That in Manchester. I've tried to recreate it at home but haven't come close yet.

I am going to say it.

Any "recipe" that involves sweet potato can probably be dismissed outright.

Posted by: slowoldman

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I must try that recipe from Prashad posted above. None of this coconut nonsense. It looks very much like the best chick peas in the world served up at This and That in Manchester. I've tried to recreate it at home but haven't come close yet.

I've been trying to recreate This and That's veggie curry since I was about 16. Legends.

100% recommend the Prashad book, helps if you invest in something to blend ginger and chilis as you'll be doing a lot of it, get some asafoetida & fenugreek leaves for the authentic touch, plus the legumes (dried chana dal rather than tinned chickpeas, they're miles ahead in texture and have a nice nutty flavour). If making the chole her way, careful not to overdo the crushed cinnamon, you can end up with burnt ashy wood floating around your masterpiece...

I have a blender - I start off my keema with an onion, ginger and garlic paste similar to this recipe. I haven't tried grinding my own whole spices into a garam marsala.

Made the Prashad curry today, had the wrong chilli which made it a bit tingly but very tasty indeed. The Garam mix was also a good touch.

Posted by: slowoldman

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I have a blender - I start off my keema with an onion, ginger and garlic paste similar to this recipe. I haven't tried grinding my own whole spices into a garam marsala.

This man knows.

Does it have to be a curry? This is good (zing it up with chilli), and easy enough that I knocked up a variant on last night's bivi.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/chickpeas_with_harissa_99809

I've made this one from bbc good food a lot and I really like it!

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/kadala-curry

Posted by: imnotverygood

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Have you tired the chickpeas from jars?  In general they are much nicer than tinned stuff although a lot more expensive. 

I was about to make the same point. Night and day. M&S is your friend.

The trick to any curry is the base massala. (And I don't mean the Curry Secret version)

It isn't just about the ingredients either, the process of cooking it is important. I think in terms of "whole spices", "wet spices" and "powdered spices" 

First thing is to temper some whole spices in oil. Good vegetable oil, and you need to coat the bottom of a large pan with it, so don't skimp on the oil. You can always drain it off later if yu need to. 

Heat the oil and add whole spices: Cumin seeds,( 1 tsp) an inch or two of cassia (indian cinamon bark), three or four green cardomum pods,  bruised,  4 cloves, a good pinch of coarse black pepper and a couple of indian bay leaves. If  cooking indian style veg curries I'd also add a pinch of mustard seeds.  Heat this until the cumin seeds go brown but not burnt- you're creating a spiced oil for the curry, so you just need to "temper " the spices. 

Use a whole red or brown onion, diced very finely,or blitz the onion into a fine paste.  Add this to the oil in the pan and turn the heat to medium/low. Stir this to make it cook evenly, and watch it carefully. You don't want it to go brown. This needs to be cooked for several minutes, until it sits on the bottom of the pan and you can see the oil bubbling up through it. Now add a heaped  teaspoon each of garlic and ginger paste, and stir this into the mixture. Cook for a further minute. Don't let the garlic burn. 

Once it does so add two or three very ripe tomatoes, finely chopped or blitzed, and stir it into the onion mix. The onion will absorb all the water from the tomatoes. Now add a teaspoon of tomato puree, a level teaspoon of salt, half a teaspoon of turmeric powder and a couple of green birdseye or finger chillies, topped and whole. Stir, and again cook over a medium/low heat until the oil bubbles through the mix. 

Now add dry spices. A teaspoon each of ground coriander, ground cumin and kashmiri chilli powder. Stir and cook for about a minute, and have a cup of water to hand so you can add a splash or two to stop it sticking to the pan. 

That's it. From this point much depends n what you want to cook. For veg curries you'd be adding vegetables of choice, with added water to create a sauce to cook them in. I'd add some water here then the chick peas, plus a tablespoon of whole yoghurt. Cook it out until the chickpeas are tender, then add a teaspoon of garam massala,  a tablespoon of crushed fenugreek leaves (Methi) and a ripe tomato cur into quarters, stir them in and cook for another minute, before sprinkling on a handful of chopped coriander leaves. 

I'd serve this with paratha or buttered chappatis.