Chickpea Pasanda.

A rich, mild, aromatic chickpea curry with plenty of trimmings to make for dinner tonight.

Cooking doesn’t feel right not in my own kitchen anymore. Which is funny, I’ve cooked plenty of meals in my parents kitchen, festive meals and recipes for practically every client I’ve ever had. But something feels different now, with the contents of my pantry stacked into the old cardboard fruit crates the team at Macknade were kind enough to donate stacked around the corners of the dining room, and what used to be my second garage fridge plugged in in, well, the garage, to store all my pots and jars of things.

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After a week of other people kindly cooking for me, I wanted something bright, wholesome, and full of the types of flavours J and I love but my extended family won’t eat to fill me up for a few lunches before I got back into the swing of cooking recipes for clients. And what I wanted was a Chickpea Pasanda.

Pasanda is a creamy, mild, usually vibrantly yellow-with-turmeric North Indian and Pakistani curry, made with a yogurt marinade and usually thickened with ground almonds. In British curry houses it is typically served with chicken or lamb, and whilst I had some excellent examples when I was living in London, it is something I’ve started to make myself for a weeknight curry at home as outside the capital most examples I’ve had tend to be a too sweet.

My super-popular (well at least that is what Google Analytics tells me!) Chicken Pasanda recipe.

Aside from the fact that when I’m cooking for myself my preference is always beans / tofu / pulses over meat, the idea for this Chickpea Pasanda came when I assembled the most random plate of leftovers imaginable for my lunch a few weeks ago as part of project fridge clear-out. All the chicken in our freezer cooked together had yielded a weeknight pan of pasanda that was a little too big for two, so a few spoonfuls remained. Then I had a tomato and feta baked chickpea thing leftover from a client, and a big tangle of pink pickled onions from making these Spiced Butter Fried Eggs with Homemade Flatbreads as part of my Macknade residency.

Okay, so the tomato / feta / pasanda thing did not quite gel, but the forkfuls which were mostly chickpea, curry and pickled red onion? I knew I was onto something there. Just a few adjustments to my pasanda gravy recipe to better suit a jar of tender, jumbo Queen chickpeas, some basmati rice, those pickled onions and some of my go-to cheat’s raita (Coleman’s mint sauce mixed to taste with natural yogurt, hat tip to the home economist who worked on James May’s cookbook!) and I ended up with a bowlful I was pretty pleased with.

Chickpea Pasanda with Quick Pickled Onions & Cheats Raita

Serves: 2-3, Preparation time: 10 minutes, Cooking time: 25 minutes

It’s the flourishes in this Chickpea Pasanda that both make the recipe work, and that make it weeknight-friendly. First, the curry base does not involve any chopping: you just blitz it in a mini food processor before frying it off in the aromatics-infused oil. Then, good jarred chickpeas mean the simmering time is minimal (just 10 minutes), and finishing the curry with a slick of butter adds back in that richness that is missing from omitting the more traditional meat (and therefore extra fat). Make it for dinner tonight, and let me know how you get on!

• 1 small brown onion

• 2 large garlic cloves

• 20g fresh ginger

• 1 1/2 tbsp olive oil

• 1/2 cinnamon stick

• 2 cardamom pods, bashed to reveal the seeds

• 1/2 tsp ground coriander

• 1/2 tsp turmeric

• 1/2 tsp kashmiri chilli powder¹

• 150g natural yogurt, plus extra for the raita

• 1/2 tsp flaky sea salt

• 4 tbsp water

• 2 tbsp ground almonds

• 1 x 700g Bold Bean Co Queen Chickpeas² (drained weight 500g)

• large knob unsalted butter (approx. 15g but I didn’t measure it)

• mint sauce (the vinegar based one, not mint jelly)

• pink pickled onions, to serve

• fresh coriander and mint, to serve

• basmati rice, to serve

1. Make the pink pickled onions. They’ll still be tasty if you make them as you start, but do it a couple of hours ahead if you want them bright and vibrant like in the pictures!

2. In a mini chopper or mini food processor (I use this one!) blitz the onion, garlic and ginger (all peeled and roughly chopped) into a rough paste. Set aside.

3. Heat the oil (don’t skimp on this, I know it seems a lot!) in a large, shallow skillet, frying pan or shallow casserole. Add the cinnamon and cardamom, and cook for a minute or two until aromatic.

4. Add the prepared onion paste, and cook for 8-10 minutes until soft, and just starting to colour.

5. Stir in the ground spices, cook for a further 2 minutes, then stir in the yogurt, salt, water and almonds. Once the mixture is uniform (don’t worry if the yogurt splits at this point, it will come back together!) drain the chickpeas (but don’t rinse them) and stir into the gravy. Once it is simmering, reduce the heat to medium and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

6. Meanwhile, put a few dollops of yogurt into a small bowl and stir in mint sauce to taste.

7. Stir the butter into the curry and once it has all melted serve with the rice, fresh herbs, a tangle of pink pickled onions and lots of fresh herbs.

1. Or regular chilli powder, but I love the vibrant brick red colour and flavour of kashmiri chilli powder for curries.

2. I do legally have to say that Bold Bean Co often top me up with free beans for recipe development, but I love them and buy them anyway, hence why I’m recommending them to you!