I imagine many vegans would profess that chickpeas are one of the most important foods in their diets. If you consider hummus, chickpeas, and aquafaba (the liquid from the can – look it up, trust me), chickpeas are in a lot of vegan meals, snacks, and desserts. I’m a big fan of chickpeas baked into a crunchy, spicy (and healthy) snacks, and I sometimes make my own hummus. And, let’s just say we have chickpeas for dinner at least once per week; oftentimes it takes the form of some type of curry concoction. 

We have a fantastic Indian food store right near our apartment, so we can get any spice we could ever desire. We’ve typically bought mixes of spices so as to not have to purchase a dozen separate spices out right. Even at non-ethnic food stores, you can most likely get a “curry powder” in your spice aisle. We love the warm gentle spice of milder curries; it is always a hit in our house on a busy weeknight. This time we added a combination of produce that had been in the fridge for a while and needed to be eaten. It turned into 1) chickpea curry night and 2) clean out the fridge night, all in one! Too much excitement for one evening if you ask me. 

Firstly, we turned on the rice cooker to cook a cup of basmati rice. Then we chopped up the sorry looking half of a zucchini, a few straggler baby carrots, a half of green pepper that was left, a bit of yellow onion, and two cloves of garlic. We sauteed the veggies in olive oil on low and seasoned with salt and pepper until they were slightly softened. Meanwhile, we put the can of chickpeas into another pan with the cup of coconut milk, tablespoon or so of tomato sauce leftover from last pasta night, palmful of curry powder, a sprinkle each of cumin, ground ginger, and roasted red pepper, and let that simmer on low while the rice and veggies finished cooking. Everything finished up in the next ten minutes or so, and then we assembled the dish adding some fresh baby spinach and red cabbage for nutrition, flavor, and texture. The warm curry and cooked veges were nicely offset by the crunchy raw spinach and cabbage as well as the starchy rice. It was spicy but not too spicy – just right!

1 cup basmati rice

1 can chickpeas

1 cup coconut milk

1 Tbsp tomato sauce

1 Tbsp curry powder

1 tsp each cumin, ground ginger, crushed red pepper

mixed veggies

olive oil

salt and pepper

raw spinach, red cabbage, and lime for garnish (optional)

Serves 2 lucky eaters!

Hubby garnished with hummus as well!