Quite a number of years ago, when we put our house on the market, our realtor gave us some tips for keeping our home ready for showings.
In addition to keeping things clean and organized, he encouraged us to pin back the curtains for plenty of natural light and begged us to take a break from cooking anything that would have strong, lingering smells. Specifically, he said we should stay away from curry.
I thought about that this week when I decided to try a vegan curry recipe I found online. Personally, I think the smell of spicy curry would be a selling point for a house, but I’m sure it’s not for everyone.
This recipe was fantastic, and if you’re trying to cut some meat out of your diet, I highly recommend it. It was filling, extremely flavorful and very pretty, to boot. It was also on the spicy side, so if that’s not your favorite, I’d skip this one. I think it would be a bit difficult to make this one completely mild.
The recipe I tried comes from the blog “Well Plated” by Erin Clarke. I added extra garlic in my version.
Potato and Chickpea Curry
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1 small yellow onion diced
- 6 cloves garlic minced
- 1 tablespoon fresh ginger or ginger paste minced
- 1 tablespoon curry powder
- 2 teaspoons garam masala
- 2 teaspoons cumin
- 1 teaspoon turmeric
- 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- salt to taste
- 2 pounds potatoes diced (I used Russets)
- 14 ounces canned chickpeas rinsed and drained
- 14 ounces diced tomatoes in juice
- 14 ounce can light coconut milk
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1 cup frozen peas
- Prepared white rice for serving
- Naan bread for serving
Instructions
- In a Dutch oven or stock pot, heat the olive oil over medium heat.
- Add the onion to the hot oil and saute until the onions are soft. Add the garlic and ginger, and saute for about 30 seconds. Add in the curry powder, garam masala, cumin, turmeric, cayenne pepper and salt, and continue to stir for about a minute.
- Once the mixture smells really nice, stir in the potatoes and chickpeas to coat them with the spices.
- Add in the diced tomatoes and coconut milk, and stir well to combine.
- Bring the mixture to a very low boil and then reduce the heat to a simmer, stirring regularly to keep the mixture from sticking to the bottom of the pot, for about 15 minutes.
- Once the potatoes are fork tender, stir in the sugar, lemon juice and peas. Let the mixture heat over low until the peas are hot.
- Serve the curry over top of white rice and with a side of naan bread.
I absolutely loved this one. Joey was out of town for the evening, so he had to settle for leftovers later in the week, but he also gave it a thumbs up.
It does make quite a bit of food, and it stretches even further with rice, so if you want to feed a crowd on the cheap, save this one for the future.
Plus, our whole house smelled like warm, delicious spices for a couple days, so I suppose it’s a good thing we aren’t trying to sell it right now.
Of course, with the way the housing market is moving right now, I doubt it would even matter.
This piece first appeared in print on May 19, 2022.
Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.