The infinite variety of chickpea curry

“We ordered in some Indian food…

…and received puddles of oily, listless, weakly spices curries. We dragged our way through them and were rewarded by bellyaches and regret.”

An Internet moan, and a common problem, that. The author was in search of a decent chickpea curry, and by the sound of it, not having a lot of joy.

The article goes on to give a ‘perfect’ recipe. The author must have that perfectionist approach I lack, because he or she has slowly evolved and tweaked their recipe to get it just so. I can’t ever do that, on account of never knowing exactly what I did last time.

Anyway, this should work. Do the usual frying thing with oil, onion, garlic, ginger, and chillies. After a few minutes when stuff is softening but not browning, add cumin, coriander, cayenne (or chilli powder or paprika or black pepper), turmeric, garam masala, that sort of thing. If you don’t have any of something, try something else. Bung in some fresh toms chopped up small or tinned toms squished up. Heat through and then throw in some chickpeas, and a little salt. Cover and leave on a low heat. Proper chickpeas are best, but they require an overnight soak and then about a 45 minute simmer. Tinned are fine for curries. Sainsbury do boxes of organic chickpeas in holy water or something like that, but I can’t tell the difference. Like a lot of things, the quality differences are marginal, and the only time I can tell is when I’ve bought a can of absolute rubbish.

It does not pay to get too dogmatic about the perfect recipe for something like a chickpea curry. For one, it’s a dish that everyone will tell you their mum’s got the perfect recipe for, and you can tie yourself up in knots trying to achieve chickpea heaven. Secondly, there’s so many near-perfect recipes, with less than a fag-paper between them, that you’ll remember a sub-optimal (say 95%) version eaten in the perfect circumstances with more fondness than a better (say 98%) version eaten in a rush in the middle of a bad day. Thirdly, the best thing to have with the chickpeas (in my opinion) is a chilli naan, and a lot depends on that. Rice is never as good, but is what I usually end up with at home.

An apparently crucial ingredient in this (and many other) restaurant curries is amchoor, dried mango powder. I’ve never had a packet of the stuff, so can’t comment, but as it’s less than two quid including postage on Amazon, I soon will have, and I’ll be bunging it in as soon as it arrives.

There’s a sort of loose basis I work on that you can’t have enough recipes for certain dishes. Potato curry, for instance. The mild, lush, creamy versions with a lot of gravy to soak into the rice, to the searing and dry ones with near roast spuds coated in spices heavy with cayenne, hot chilli powder and thin slices of fresh chillies. Pizzas and pastas. Chillies, meatballs, burgers. All the mashes: spuds with mustard, with horseradish, with onion, with garlic, sweet potato, carrot, parsnip, swede, any root vegetable, mashed with milk, or butter, or milk and butter, with and without salt, pepper, nutmeg, or pureed with just some of the water they were boiled in.

Chickpea and lentil curries are among these. I’ve finally found a recipe for sambal, and that means another go at making dosas.