One for the hippies and veggies: Potato and Chickpea curry

It’s the weekend before payday, which means I’m putting off buying nice ingredients and I’m determined to use up whatever I’ve got in the fridge/cupboards. Thankfully, you can make a decent curry out of just about anything, and it’s perfect for using up veg.

So I had: a few potatoes, some green beans, half a pepper. Thankfully, we almost always have garlic and ginger in. A quick raid of the tin cupboard and the freezer and we’re sorted.

The first thing is the spices; we have a cupboard full of them (largely thanks to Joe going on a spice buying spree) but if you want to cheat, I won’t hold it against you. Every spice cupboard should have cumin, because it’s ace and brightens up a stir fry or a curry (or a boring lentil soup) no end. Every spice cupboard should also have a decent curry powder as a massive cheat, and some chilli flakes for times like this when you’ve run out of fresh chilli.

First toast some mustard seeds, fennel seeds, cumin seeds and the inside of a couple of cardamom pods until the mustard seeds started popping. Just put them in a dry pan over the heat for a bit. (skip this if you’re not doing the whole individual spice thing) Then grind them up in a pestle and mortar.

Fry a sliced onion in a little vegetable oil, then add the ground up spices along with some turmeric, ground coriander, garam masala, and more or less any other suitable curry-ish spices. 

Blitz up a couple of cloves of garlic, and a decent chunk of ginger in your mini-food processor and then add this and a good pinch of chilli flakes. 

Add your chopped potatoes and veg. Give it a good stir so that everything is coated in spices.

I’ve mentioned before my issues with the price of coconut milk, so this time I tried coconut cream, which came in a big block. It looks slightly odd at first, but it melts down pretty quickly. Add half a block, and your tin of chickpeas. Then top it up with hot water, it should be nearly covered, and allow it to bubble away to cook the potatoes.

Put on your rice, you’re nearly done. (I always have brown rice, as I prefer the taste, so it takes a while to cook)

As ever with cooking, taste it as you go along. It may need a touch of sugar if it’s too spicy and you want to calm it down, and I added plenty of salt and pepper.

I always have spinach in the freezer as it’s really handy, and I love spinach in a curry, so I added some of this towards the end of the cooking. Done and done! Healthy, tasty and, most importantly, really cheap.

This weeks soup: Turkish lentil. I had this in Istanbul, loved it so came home and worked out how to make it. It involves paprika, lemon juice, bulgur wheat (I'm a little obsessed with this at the moment) and mint. Cheap and very tasty.