With my new found inspiration to get some vegetarian meals to cook, I searched for “chickpea recipes” because I heard chickpeas are full of protein and fibre. I found a recipe that looked pretty tasty on the Supervalu website from The Happy Pear which I tried out. I adapted a bit around methods I thought would work well.

To be honest, this is one of my best curries and it doesn’t even have meat! It has a lovely flavour and easy to forget you aren’t having a meat dish. Until this point, I had no idea you could even get a curry without meat… silly me.

Here’s how I made it.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup basmati rice
• 350g chickpeas boiled al dente
• 400g coconut milk
• 1 tbsp garlic
• 1 chilli chopped up
• 1 red onion sliced
• 400g tin of chopped tomato
• 1 tsp ginger
• 1 blob olive oil (about a tbsp)
• mixed herbs
• salt and pepper
• 1 tbsp curry powder
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• a squeeze of lime for flavour
• 1 avocado

Method:

• Start boiling the rice and chickpeas in separate pots (unless you want to do one and then the other)
• In the pan put the blob of olive oil, on a high heat fry the onion, garlic, chilli and ginger
• Once browned, add in the tinned tomato and lower the heat to medium
• Add in the coconut milk
• Stir everything together
• Add the mixed herbs, salt and pepper, curry powder, paprika, ground cumin, coriander and stir again
• Once the chickpeas are al dente drain those and throw them in the pan and stir
• Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes

When the rice and curry are done, dish up and add a squeeze of lime or a slice on top for flavour. Serve with some avo on the side.