Vegan chickpea curry

Welcome, friends, to another Cactus Culinary Kitchen Adventure. This is a good name for a series, maybe I should stick with it…

For those of you who haven’t heard, QUARANTINE. Covid-19 is threatening the whole world, and we are now not allowed to leave the house unless we have a pretty good darned reason, and it’s a good thing, too. Some people forced the hands of those in charge by being inconsiderate pricks who keep running around, even though hundreds of thousands of people around the world are sick, and the dead are at the moment that this post is being written 19,758, according to Worldometer.
Thanks you guys, you fucked it up nicely for the rest of us too!

So anyway, all this staying home business isn’t really new to me, I’m generally quite happy sitting at home playing a game, reading a book, watching something or just laying around being useless. I’ve been in self-isolation for 2 weeks now, and since I started, I left the house exactly 4 times:
2 supermarket runs (girl’s gotta eat)
1 kiosk run (it was an emergency, I needed ice cream)
1 family visit right before the lockdown, and I didn’t even go into the house.

All this time at home means I have more time to cook. Great, right??? Well…not if you hate doing the dishes, but everything comes at a price.

In any case, I had the ingredients for a very easy vegan curry in the cupboard, so I figured now is a good a time as ever. The usual chaos in the kitchen ensued, not because of the recipe, but mainly because I’m a clumsy fuck.

The result was an easy, fragrant and delicious chickpea curry, which goes very nicely with plain basmati rice.

As soon as it was ready, my boyfriend walks over to the stove, puts his head over the pot, gets a good whiff and says:
“Aaaah, that smells delicious. Shall we cook some nuggets and throw them in?”
I stared in disbelief looking to see if he was joking, but alas…he was dead serious.

It was at that time that I realised, I probably haven’t fed this man a proper meal in days. I thought back, and I realised that the last time we had meat was 4 days ago.
You see, this man is used to eating hearty, large meals comprising mostly of meat. He likes his meat, and he eats a lot of it (get your head out of the gutter, you dirty fuck).

At this point, he can charge me with domestic abuse due to negligence, and I won’t deny it at all. I failed him, and I felt terrible for it. In hopes of making it up to him, I promised him souvlaki for dinner.

All things considered, he was a proper gentleman. Other people might have complained, but not him. Kudos to you babe, you’re the MVP in everything.

So without further ado, the recipe follows below.

Ingredients

• 2 cans chickpeas
• 2 cans full fat coconut milk
• 1 can chopped tomatoes OR 100 ml tomato sauce
• 1 can sweetcorn
• Sharwood’s curry powder (mild or hot – or both)
• Salt to taste

Method

To be honest, I had no clue what I was doing. Big surprise, I know, but it can happen to the best of us. So I drained the chickpeas and removed the skins. This took about 15′-20′ (I was watching YouTube so it’s fine) and gave me a sore thumb, but I finally did it. Once this was done, I was trying to figure out what would be the best way to give the chickpeas a bit of flavour before making the sauce – they’re mostly cooked already anyway.

So had two options in mind: brown the chickpeas lightly in a bit of oil in a pan, or spread them out on a sheet of baking paper, sprinkle some salt and spices on top and stick them in the oven for a few minutes.

I decided to go with the first option because I’m lazy. It didn’t turn out great…

To bring my laziness to the next level, I didn’t want to use the non-stick pan AND a pot, so I put some olive oil right in the (not non-stick) pot and when it heated up nicely I threw the chickpeas in there with some salt and curry powder. Predictably, the chickpeas stuck a bit to the bottom of the pot. I tried to amend this by stirring them with a wooden spoon. This resulted to chickpea residue stuck to the bottom of the pan, and the peas becoming progressively mashed.

!ABORT MISSION!

…which I did by adding some water to get the pot. MORE failure, as the chickpea residue now became a thick, disgusting goo in which partially whole chickpeas swam.

I needed to save this ASAP, so I promptly added the coconut milk. This task proved to be its own challenge, as these particular cans didn’t have those convenient little rings for opening at the top and – surprise! – I don’t own a can opener.

Enter steak knife.
“What?” you ask.
“Voila!” I say with fierce joy:

I’m not gonna lie, it felt pretty empowering to do this.
Then my boyfriend stepped in and opened the second can because he thought I was one stab away from losing a finger or three. He was probably right.
I did enjoy it while it lasted, though.

Chickpeas and coconut milk now in, it was time for the tomato. I added two cans of chopped tomatoes. Bad idea. One would have been enough, and maybe even a bit too much still.
My mistake paid off though, because it helped me to help you guys, because now I’m telling you: LESS TOMATO. Did I mention that I stood over the pot removing tomato chunks for about 15′?

Note to future chickpea curry-cooking self: Less tomato chunks, more tomato mush.

The ordeal was nearing its end. I drained the sweetcorn and tossed that in the pot as well. I added salt – to taste, 2 heaped teaspoons of mild curry powder, and 2 heaped teaspoons of hot curry powder – that way the result was flavourful, but didn’t burn our mouths off.

I let the pot simmer for about 15′-20′, until the curry sauce was nice and thick, and while that was happening I made some basmati rice on the side to accompany.

Although the process was disastrous, the end result was YUM. Proof below:

Thank you all for joining me in another venture into the unknown depths of the culinary arts.

Stay fresh, stay safe.
Peace out!

PS. It took me about three hours to finish this post. The number of Covid-19 casualties is now 20,500.
STAY THE FUCK HOME.

The Cactus