A blog isn’t a blog without a recipe or two, so I thought that I’d share one of my own creations with you today.
Now, to give you some background on my eating habits, I’ll say that I’m a lazy cook. I love cooking for other people (firmly believing that I inherited my mother’s ‘feeding gene’) but when it comes to making meals for myself I’m pretty lazy because food isn’t at the top of my priority list. It lies somewhere between sleep (below) and putting out the garbage (above. barely). That said though, I hate take aways and ready meals, mainly because I can’t eat half of the stuff, and the stuff that I can eat has so much fat in it I can’t help but feel that I can use it as a waterproof substance.
Read: I’m fussy. I never used to think that I was, but then I lived with people for two years and I realized that, yup, I’m fussy.
So when I make meals for myself, I need something that’s quick and easy and healthy.
One of the ‘easy fix’ meals that I came up with is my Chickpea Curry and it is VERY simple. It serves two people for one meal or one person, three meals if you are me.
What you need:
- 1 tin of Chickpeas in brine,
- 1 tin of Onion and Tomato Mix OR 3 Fresh tomatoes (organic, not long life, long life tomatoes have no flavour and have FISH GENES in them) and one onion,
- ¼ of a green pepper (Green peppers last about two days in the fridge, so you can use it the next day in a different meal, in your salad or – if you are me, eat it as a snack)
- Some Medium strength curry powder.
- Mixed herbs, especially oregano, basil and thyme. This can be dried or fresh.
- Cooked Rice. (I work on the rule of thumb of: one cup of rice for 4 people, so – ½ cup of rice for 2 people, which is the amount that I use)
- Salt and Pepper to taste.
- Cut chilli’s if you’re brave enough! One will do.
What you need to do:
- Find a small saucepan, cut in the onion, tomatoes and green pepper (if you’re using the fresh ingredients) and the optional chilli, with about quarter of a teaspoon full of herbs. The size of the chunks must be quite small, no bigger than a pinky nail in size. Remember to add salt and pepper, though bear in mind, this must be done to taste. I’m not going to mention them again.
- Turn on the heat if you haven’t already and let the ingredients heat up. Stir it and maybe, if you’re using fresh tomatoes, you can add in a little bit of water to make the mixture more runny. And the end of the day you want about the equivalent of a tin or a cup of tomato mixture.
- Add about a quarter teaspoon of curry. Take note though, that curry is a personal thing. Some people like it hot, other people like it spicy, other people don’t like it at all. So, again – season to taste. I am not Nigella Lawson, I don’t dictate cooking, lol, I just give you a standard guideline.
- When the mixture is nice and hot, drain the chickpeas from the brine and put it (the chickpeas!) into your tomato mixture. Let it all come to a boil, stirring occasionally. Go wild and give it a taste, if there’s anything lacking, put it in!
- Turn the whole mixture down and forget about it for as long as it takes you to make rice.
- Make the rice. Don’t look to me to give you instruction for this – just look at the packet, it should be there and those instructions came from actual experts. 😉
- If you are me, make a second pot of rice because you let the first one burn. I cannot make rice. I have tried. I have failed. I have tried again and I have proven that inevitably, success will occur.
- Now, this step is up to you. You can mix the chickpeas in with the rice as I do, or you can have it over your rice or even on the side.
- Serve up and enjoy!
As I said, I’m not a cook, but this works for me. I don’t have a picture at the moment of the end result, but when I do – I’ll upload it here. 😉
Enjoy!
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