I swear it’s been at least a month since my last vegetarian curry recipe… right? I don’t want to actually check because I want to post this so just pretend it’s time for a curry recipe. Good? Great, let’s get on with it then.

This is a rich tomato based curry sort of influenced by butter chicken but with more tomato and no cream. I use yoghurt to lighten the sauce and make it nice and creamy. There’s chickpeas in there to add protein and make this curry nice and filling. As it’s a vegetable curry it’s relatively quick to cook, I simmer the sauce by itself before adding the vegetables in order to cook out any raw tomato flavour and to allow the spices to really infuse the sauce.

The colour of the gravy is so beautiful and intense and the flavour is spicy and fragrant without a lot of chilli heat. You can totally add more chilli if you want it to be hotter. I also snuck some extra vegetables into the curry by browning off celery with the onion. i’ve advised chucking the onion, celery, garlic and coriander that you’re using to start the curry in a food processor as it’s a quick way of making sure everything is the same size and finely chopped. But go ahead and be less lazy than me and just finely chop by hand.

I made this soup for soup club aka Soup Tang Clan this week, curries are allowed as well as soups otherwise stuff ill get boring by the end of winter. It was such a great option as the recipe serves six generously. if you’re not serving this many people then you can freeze your leftovers and know that you have a quick and healthy option on hand.

Serves 6

Ingredients

2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil or ghee

1 onion (use2/3 cup of spring onion to decrease fructose if you need to)

2 cloves garlic

1 Tbs freshly grated ginger

1/4 cup coriander root and stem

4 sticks of celery

2 tsps turmeric powder

1 – 2 tsps chilli powder (depending on your love of heat)

2 tsps coriander powder

2 tsps fenugrek powder

2 tsps garam masala

2 tsps ground cumin

1 tsp cardamon, ground

650g passata/tomato puree

350 ml vegetable stock

2 carrots, cut lengthways then cut into 1cm thick slices

1 small sweet potato, cut lengthways then cut into 1cm thick slices

1 medium cauliflower, separeted into florets

2 x 400g can of chickpeas

1 cup plain yoghurt

1 lemon, to serve

handful coriander leaves, to serve

Brown rice, to serve

Directions

Place the onion, garlic, coriander roots and stem (well washed) and the celery in a blender and blitz until everything is very finely chopped.

Put a large heavy based saucepan on medium high heat and once hot add the olive oil. Add the blitzed vegetables to the oil and cook for 2 minutes. Next, add all the spices. Cook for a few minutes until spices are fragrant and the onion has softened.

Stir in the tomato puree slowly, bring up to a simmer and then cover with a lid and cook for 15 minutes.

Add the vegetables and stock and then cook for a further 15 minutes. Drain the chickpeas and add to the curry and cook for 5 more minutes.

Take the curry off the heat and scoop 3 Tbs of the sauce into a small bowl, slowly incorporate the yoghurt into this (it helps when incorporating cold yoghurt into a hot curry to bring the yoghurt up to temperature so you don’t split it). Now slowly stir the yoghurt into the curry until completely incorporated.

Serve the curry with brown rice, a wedge of lemon, dollop of yoghurt and coriander leaves.

HH. x