Vegan chickpea vegetable curry

We live in a household where spices and garlic are not welcome aromas or odors. If we cook something spicy or garlicky we usually wait until the folks aren't home.

They are rarely away so fortunately we have an outdoor camping stove. We have been doing so much outside and it's so satifying.

Up until now when we made something with curry spices we usually did a quick dump of basic curry powder to make things go faster. This time we did the whole toasting of cumin and coriander. I'm not able to go so far as to stock up on all the spices that I would need to do the many special curries that are out there so the basic cumin,turmeric and coriander with chili had to do.

A can of chickpeas and some vegetables and the spices made the curry yesterday. I long to be able to take the time to do more complex Indian curry recipes that I have eaten in restaurants. There is an endless variety of spices and ingredients that make up the many different curry dishes.

We took great pleasure in toasting cumin and coriander in a pan on our little stove. The aroma of the spice must have been wafting through the air. I guess in some countries it would be normal but here in this neighborhood, food odors are mostly from hot dogs,steak and chicken on the barbecue. Hopefully the smell of spices inspired some more exotic food choices from the neighbors.

I toasted the cumin and coriander until they got brown and started to pop. Many people fry them in oil to get maximum flavor but I didn't bother.

I took around a teaspoon of each and crush it with a knife since my mother in law was in the kitchen so I didn't want to grind it in my blender. She would have choked.

I wouldn't get a mortar and pestle while I'm here or she would be irritated by the action. Anyhow the knife worked fine.

Chickpea Curry

• 1 can of chickpeas or 2 cups of cooked chickpeas
• 1 diced eggplant
• 1 diced onion
• 4 cloves minced garlic
• 1 teaspoon minced ginger
• 2 hot chilies or whatever you like
• 1 stalk diced celery
• 1 diced carrot
• 3 medium tomatoes or 1 cup can tomatoes diced
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 1 teaspoon toasted cumin
• 1 teaspoon toasted coriander
• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 1/2 cup fresh coriander
• 1 cup vegetable broth
• 3 tablespoons olive oil

I only had a small pan to use that was mine, so I had to do things in segments, then adding the cooked ingredients to a bigger pot.

First saute the onions,garlic, ginger,chili and spices in a tablespoon of olive oil until golden then add a bit of broth. Cook for five minutes.

I added this to the large pot and repeated with the rest of the ingredients.

I took this off the stove and quickly cooked some basmati rice. I really love basmati for this kind of dish.

We cooked outside, we ate outside and we spent the rest of the day outside. I will get every drop of sun while I can since Montreal has a limited amount of it and I won't be able to follow through with our original plan to work for the summer and go back to travel.

The last drop of sun for the day.