Spinach, Potato & Chickpea Curry

Spinach, Potato and Chickpea Curry

Everyone loves a great curry, but not everyone loves spending all day in the kitchen toasting spices and prepping vegetables.  Somewhere between delivery from your favorite curry house and making your own Garam Masala (which everyone should do once), there must be a shortcut.  Let’s talk about how to make an awesome vegetarian curry in under an hour.

There are a lot of kitchen shortcuts for curry, and not all of them are that great.  One that I’ve discovered that doesn’t taste pre-prepared is a line of jarred spice pastes from Patak’s.  There is a ton of flavor locked up in theses jars and they aren’t overly spicy.  Starting with a good paste can save over an hour that would be spent cooking down garlic, ginger and onions into a rich base with your various spices and Garam Masala.  The back of the jar for their Mild variety has a basic recipe which I’m going to tweak, and do a little out of their sequence, for what I think is a more authentic result.

More Timesavers

In addition to using the paste, I can make up time by pre-cooking the potatoes and coarsely chopping vegetables.  The potato 2-step, similar to what I do to ensure crispy oven roasted potatoes, involves cooking them partially first in the microwave.  Trying to do so in the simmering curry sauce will take far too long.  Additionally, since I’m going to be blending the sauce later, I don’t need the vegetables to be super finely chopped.

Variations and Serving

Of course you could meat this up as well with chicken, beef or pork.  Lentils would also be great in place of the potatoes.  If you like Indian paneer cheese, you could add it in just before serving so that it’s just warmed and gooey.  Finally, I like to serve this with medium grain brown rice (nice and chewy, less plain than long grain brown) and naan bread.

Spinach, Potato & Chickpea Curry Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 Onions, coarsely chopped
• 1 tablespoon Ginger, grated or minced
• 6 cloves Garlic, chopped
• 2 medium potatoes
• 1.5 cups warm water
• 1 can Diced Tomatoes, rinsed
• 1 can Chickpeas, rinsed
• 2 cups Frozen Chopped Spinach
• 1/2 cup of Patak’s Medium Curry

Curry – After Blending

Instructions

1. 1. Bring a saucepan to medium heat and cook the onion, garlic and ginger about 10 minutes until they are clear and softened
   2. Microwave the potatoes for about 5 minutes until they are slightly soft.  You won’t need them cooked all the way as that will happen in the sauce
   3. The curry paste is rather thick, so I dissolve it in 1/2 cup of the water.  Once dissolved, pour it into the pan with the remaining 1 cup of water.  Bring this to a boil, reduce and simmer for at least 30 minutes.
   4. Add the curry mix to the pot and simmer 30-45 minutes
   5. To bring all of the flavors together, I’ll use an immersion blender and blend the mixture in the pan until it is nice and smooth.  You could also do this in a blender

1. Add the tomato, chickpeas, spinach and potatoes and simmer for at least 15 minutes, until all of the vegetables are cooked thoroughly