INGREDIENTS
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onions
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whole black peppercorn
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whole cardamom
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other mirepoix vegetables
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tomato paste
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spice powders
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canned or soaked + boiled chickpeas
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canned or fresh chopped tomatoes
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marmite
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frozen or fresh green beans, chopped to bite size
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sugar
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coriander leaves
DESCRIPTION
This is a staple curry in my house that is a easy to prepare in large quantities and tastes good enough to eat for lunch or dinner every day for a week. It’s also the main thing I tend to make when I get back from travelling and need something heavy on fibre and vegetables to recover from eating grocery store sandwiches and tacos for every meal.
Mirepoix vegetables constitutes a lot of things, I usually do carrots and peppers at least.
Spices for this are usually fairly South-Asian in character, cumin, coriander. I ususally add some prepared garam masala or mixed leaf masala in various quantities, and adjust heat with chili powder. Hold off on salt until later, since the marmite going in the middle here can be very salty.
Marmite? It works! The very heavily fried vegetables go a long way to making this "hearty" but marmite adds an extremely strong savory flavour here. You can go with a mushroom stock here I guess, or OXO cubes, but you do want some very strong source of that kind of flavour.
PREPARATION
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Chop onions and other vegetables, and fry in a pot with whole spices until they start to brown.
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Fry some tomato paste briefly.
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Add your spice powders and fry briefly, then add chickpeas and stir them in to coat them in spices
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Cook until the vegetables are very brown, then add tomato to prevent burning, and stir to break them up.
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Stew this together until the chickpeas start to soften. Add a large spoonful of marmite, and stir it through.
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Once everything is mostly cooked, mix in as much frozen green beans as you want. Kill the heat while they defrost and cook slightly in the sauce.
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Adjust the flavour of the sauce with salt and sugar, and garnish with coriander leaves.