Last night I was playing around with a can of coconut milk, wondering what I could do with it in a college dormitory. A vegan of several years and a college senior, I often found it difficult to eat in the university's cafeteria. I actually love to cook, so this year I have almost entirely abandoned "the caf."
The beauty of this recipe is that I have provided methods for both the stove top and the crock pot. If you're like me and you live in a dormitory, you can't use a hot plate and your cooking options are limited. I put this in the crock pot when I went to sleep and had dinner for the week when I woke up. I live on the fourth floor, and through my open window this could be smelled in the courtyard below.
Now, I really love coconut milk. I could wax poetically with my background in biochemistry about why coconut products are so good for you, but at the risk of boring you to sleep, suffice it to say that although coconuts are heavy on saturated fats, they're good fats; coconuts are full of medium-chain fatty acids. Coconut milk has a rich, thick, creamy texture, making it the perfect base for a lot of South Indian style curries. That was what I was initially thinking of, but at the moment when I started cutting up my onion, I looked up at my Moroccan flag and reminisced about the spice markets there. One thing led to another, and what I ended up with was an improvised South Indian / Moroccan fusion curry.
Cooked entirely from scratch in a college dormitory.
As my first contribution to this blog, I gift the hungry college students out there with this delicious, easy to prepare, and startlingly fragrant dish. Enjoy!
Ingredients
- One large, yellow onion
- One celery heart
- Eight cloves of garlic
- 2 TBSP olive oil
- One can of coconut milk
- Vegetable bouillon cubes (enough to flavor eight servings)
- Four cans of chickpeas (or about eight cups prepared)
- 1 TSP cinnamon
- 1 TSP cumin
- 1 TSP paprika
- 1/8 TSP cayenne pepper
Procedure (crock pot)
stovetop method is below
- Finely dice the onion and celery. I used the entire celery heart, and my onion weighed about a pound. You could get away with less of either, but I happen to enjoy onions.
- Sauté the onion and celery. Sauté until the vegetables begin to weep; you will see liquid collecting in the bottom of your crock pot. This tales from about 20-40 minutes on high heat.
- Add the garlic. Sauté for another 20 minutes or so.
- Add the coconut milk, spices, and bouillon cubes.
- Rinse the chickpeas clean and add them to the pot; add just enough water to level with the chickpeas. (If you want a thick sauce, mix some corn starch with a bit of cold water and add it here; I don't do this because I like to drink the sauce.)
- Simmer on high until very fragrant and the chickpeas are very soft (canned chickpeas are usually al dente). This takes about three hours.
- Serve hot. Makes 7-8 servings.
Procedure (stovetop)
- Finely dice the onion and celery. I used the entire celery heart, and my onion weighed about a pound. You could get away with less of either, but I happen to enjoy onions.
- Sauté the onion and celery. Sauté until the onion is fragrant and translucent.
- Add the garlic. Sauté for another 5 minutes or so.
- Add the coconut milk, spices, and bouillon cubes.
- Rinse the chickpeas clean and add them to the pot; add just enough water to level with the chickpeas. (If you want a thick sauce, mix some corn starch with a bit of cold water and add it here; I don't do this because I like to drink the sauce.)
- Simmer on medium-high heat until very fragrant and the chickpeas are very soft (canned chickpeas are usually al dente). This takes about 20-30 minutes.
- Serve hot. Makes 7-8 servings.
Zindagi
The Albino Desi strikes again!
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