Thursday, 7 December 2017

Jack's Peach and Chickpea Curry

budget recipes, vegetarian curry, vegan curry


My guilty pleasure (or at least one of them) is having a good reading session on Mumsnet, when I am in bed with my mini ipad. A few days ago I came across a thread, discussing Jack Monroe's book A Girl Called Jack. Gosh and golly, who would have thought that a recipe book would provoke such passions.
Though I have a vast collection of cook books, I don't have any of Jack's books. I did have a very quick look at her first book years ago, so can't really say much about it.
I'm not really her target audience because though I enjoy vegetable dishes, I'm not a vegetarian or vegan.
Reading the bun fight thread on the merits and worth of Jack's book, a mention of a peach and chickpea curry piqued my curiosity. I thought: wait, that sounds intriguing.
Off I went to Jack's blog Cooking on a Bootstrap and found the recipe for peach and chickpea curry (link removed as JM keeps moving the link around on her blog, and I cannot keep up, if you want the recipe, search it on her blog please). And I really loved the sound of that. It is easy, and supposed to be a budget recipe.

With all the Christmas gifts shopping (we need a whole lot of presents for teachers and TAs, especially those who work with our elder son at special needs school), I need to find ways to budget better than I'm doing at the moment.

I bought most of the ingredients in Waitrose (it's the nearest supermarket), so the prices might be lower if you shop elsewhere.


I had a tin of Cirio chopped tomatoes, olive oil and spices at home, as well as rice.
Tinned chick peas - £0.58, peach slices in syrup £0.79 (both Essential Waitrose range), a pack of fresh red chillies (reduced to 45p), 1 carrot 13p, 1 bulb of garlic - 50p, 1 onion at 36p. The most expensive bit was a pot of fresh flat leaf parsley at £1.31. A total of £4.15.
You will need just 1 clove of garlic for the recipe and only 1 chilli, and I used just a little bit of parsley.
It is enough for 3-4 servings, depending on your appetite.
Tinned peaches are a secret ingredient in this dish, they add a lovely sweet taste. The textures and flavours are varied as well from silky soft peaches to slightly crunchy chickpeas.



For the recipe and step-by-step please visit the link above.
I added a chopped carrot to the recipe, cooking it with chopped onion and spices. I also added a couple of chopped tomatoes and a teaspoon of Sri Lankan Masala spice mix.
In this recipe I used Cirio chopped tomatoes, but if you count pennies, a less expensive tin of supermarket own tomatoes will work.

I can make less expensive meals, like soups, for example, carrot, lentil and orange soup is tasty and pretty cheap to make. Overall, this meal was not as cheap as I thought it might be, but it's still pretty good, and I will be definitely cooking it again.

I had this curry for lunch today, and loved it.

vegetarian curry, vegan curry


As for the chillies, I've been a good girl, and chopped all three, putting two of them in mini jars in the freezer so that they will be ready for the next time I need some fresh chillies.


Adding this recipe to #KitchenClearout linky run by Cheryl at Madhouse Family Reviews, as I used a tin of tomatoes from one of the earlier-in-the-year food boxes and old-ish spices.


3 comments:

  1. LOL Reading Mumsnet is one of my guilty pleasures too !! I never tend to get past the AIBU thread though as it usually has me in stitches and once I get sucked in, I can't get out again ! This dish sounds intriguing - I'd be willing to give it a try :)

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    1. Yes, AIBU is a black hole, you can disappear for good there. This recipe is a keeper for me. But then I love tinned peaches, they remind me of my childhood and peaches preserved in their own juice which were sold in huge 3litre jars in Russia.

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  2. What an interesting dish, I would never have thought of combining tomatoes and peaches. Will have to give it a try.

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