10 minute chickpea curry

Don't you think this meal looks like an alien or maybe my funny valentine?



When it's too hot to cook...just cheat. A week of temperatures over 38 degrees (that's 100 degrees F to the rest of you) doesn't inspire much cooking, but still I have trouble with the whole just salad for dinner thing, so I cooked, just a little. It is a little Americany in it's combination of mixing two pre-packaged ingredients together but bear with me, it is more natural and has a lot of flavour. The two ingredients are chickpeas in a can - simple, and a jar (well, part of a jar) of Indian chutney. (see below for more on my love of these) Introducing...

The Ten Minute Curry!

Heat 3 heaped tablespoons of brinjal (eggplant) chutney in a saucepan and tip in 1 drained can of chickpeas. Cook, stirring occassionally, for about 10 minutes. Add a little water / liquid from the chickpea can if it gets a little burny.

Serve with salad and a raita made from 1 c unsweetened yoghurt, 1/2 smallish cucumber, cubed, and some chopped fresh mint or a pinch of dill.


Pickles!
I love buying these from local Indian/Asian stores: India knows chutneys! My favourites are lime pickle, mango chutney and brinjal (eggplant)pickle. They have lots of spices that you don't have to prepare yourself, you can read all the ingredients - all real things, not numbers! One of the real ingredients though is sugar, which I try not to cook with much these days, so remember that. But for the every now and again meal, brilliant!

Here are some other ways I like to use these pickles:

- Salad dressing with a kick: Get a nice big teaspoonful (chop any big chunks up finely), mix with 1/4 olive oil.

- Pizza spread: Use in place of tomato paste (a thin spear only) for exotic pizzas. Then just top base with some cheese and one or two toppings like zucchini, pumpkin, whatever.

- as a rub for roast veggies: Mix a tablespoon of pickle with some olive oil in a bowl, tip over your roasting pan of chopped veggies ready to go into the oven. Rub the pickly-oil all over the veg using your (gloved) hands. Roast, keeping an eye on them for burning bits. So yum.

- Dip: Mix with yoghurt for an easy dip that might really impress people (little do they know!). Serve with veg crudites or what you will.

Soupe du jaune

It's officially Spring and the first Spring morning was all sunshine and promise- then the promise was delivered when the afternoon brought the gift of rain and the evening an impressive lot of stormy weather. So you can forgive yet another comforting meal-in-a-bowl type soup. Also, we had corn, pumpkin and cream cheese that needed eating, et voila! - a recipe is born! So I adapted a recipe from World Vegetarian Classics for corn chowder and made this rather wonderful roasted vegetable chowder - the roasting bringing out even more flavour and allows us to use heaps of garlic (entirely missing in the corn chowder recipe). The cream cheese with its richness and that touch of acidity complements and balances the sweetness of the vegetables. However, if dairy products are not for you, you can make the soup vegan by swapping the cream cheese and milk for soy milk.

Ingredients

1/2 Japanese pumpkin
3 carrots
3 parsnips
4 fresh corn cobs
1 L / 4 cups water (I may well have used more, so add more to get consistency that suits you)
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 bay leaves
1 large or 2 small onions
1 bulb garlic (yes, a whole bulb, but don't worry, the roasting softens its flavour)
1/2 t dried sage
1 t fresh thyme leaves / 1/2 t dried thyme
3/4 c 200g cream cheese
1/2 c / 125ml milk
(or swap cream cheese and milk for 325ml unsweetened soy milk)

Recipe serves 6-8 (or more if served in mug-sized portions)

Directions

Preheat oven at 160 degrees celcius (my oven is quite hot but do keep temp lowish so veggies develop good flavour)

Spray a big baking tray with olive oil. Chop pumpkin into large slices (leave skin on - it will peel off easily once cooked) and place on the tray. Slice carrots in half lengthways. Dice a few pieces of carrot for chunky textures bits and set aside. Trim skinny parsnips ends off and set aside with carrot chunks. (seen here on plate with corn in a steamer. I also aded some chopped soft roasted bits, too, because I can't follow even my own recipes as I'm making them up).


Cut the bulbous tops in half and arrange these and the carrots around the pumpkin (or on another tray if they won't fit without overlapping). Place in oven and cook till vegetables are soft and roasted (with that nice caramelly chew on the pumpkin) but don't let them dry out or go hard and crunchy - we're making soup here!


While veggies are roasting, strip kernels from corn cob - like this: stand corncob upright (hold the top) and cut downwards with a sharp knife. It's a good idea to do this in a large bowl as they kind of ping off everywhere. Leave kernels in the bowl for now. To make the stock, place the stripped corn cobs and the bay leaves in a big pot. Sprinkle on a pinch of salt and cover with the water. Bring stock to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes. At the same time, cook veggie chunks: In a steamer, place the corn corn kernels and twiggy parsnip and carrot ends and steam these as soup is boiling. Remove steamer once kernels and vegetables are tender.Discard the corn cobs and bay leaves.


Roughly chop roasted veggies, whizz in a blender/ food processor and add to the stock along with the remaining herbs. Add the cream cheese and milk to the soup mixture and stir / whizz with handheld blender till smooth and creamy. Return steamed veggie chunks to the soup. Reheat soup and add salt and pepper if desired.

Roasted Vegetables and Beetroot Greens Salad

Tips for making the best roast vegetables
(thanks to Jude Blereau's Wholefood Cookbook for reminding me of some fundamentals - when I rush they can turn out half dry, half steamed!)

- use metal trays, cast iron with enamel coating if possible, to transfer heat best. Glass and ceramic don't let enough direct heat get to the vegetables.
-don't crowd the veggies too close together - give them space in the trays so they can crisp up, otherwise they can steam-cook
-cut the slow cooking veggies like potato into smaller pieces than the faster cooking ones like kumara (sweet potato) or steam the slow-cooking veggies first
-Keep watery vegetables in different trays to drier ones.
-I keep different kinds of veggies in separate trays so I can take out the faster cooking ones first- if you mix them all at the beginning some, like beetroot, might burn while others are still hard.
-Wrap whole bulbs of garlic in twists of baking paper to stop them burning. Un-wrap then un-peel when cooked (about 20 mins so remove this before the other vegetables). I also wrap my beetroot in baking paper and unwrap when soft to let crisp just a little.
-Some oil is necessary for helping the vegetables crisp on the outside and be moist inside. Only about 1-2T is fine.
-Rub the oil and seasonings into vegetables before cooking them.



I seasoned mine with fresh rosemary, home-made dukkah. Adding cheeses like feta or goat's cheese to a bowl of roasted vegetables makes a nice cafe-style salad. You can even mix with greens when cooled a little.



Beetroot leaves make a great salad. I just used the leaves from my bunch of beetroot. First I picked the leaves from the stems, washed them thoroughly, rolled them up and sliced thinly. A dressing of juice of 1 lemon, 1 crushed garlic clove, 2 T extra virgin olive oil helped 'marinade' the tougher leaves (the little young leaves are fine as is). And I just added a can's worth of chickpeas, rinsed and peeled (the skin pops off with a pinch between thumb and finger) and 1 chopped avocado.