Split Chickpea Curry

From Healthy Asian Vegetarian Dishes, Periplus Editions, 2003.

I’m not sure what split chickpeas are. I suspect that they are not what I know as chickpeas. Anyway to make this recipe I ended up using a split pea.

The peas were simmered in water with turmeric for 20 minutes. They were still a bit on the hard side at this stage.

Vegetables were added next: onion, carrot, eggplant and tomato. After another 15 minutes, chopped green chillies were added for another 5 minutes simmer.

At the next stage coconut milk and tamarind juice were added with seasoning and they were simmered for another 5 minutes. The peas were breaking up well now.

In a pan, mustard seeds and cumin seeds were fried until they began to pop. Dried chillies, curry leaves, shallots and garlic were added and cooked until the shallots had browned. This was mixed into the peas and vegetables and it was ready to eat.

It was a moderately successful meal. I prefer curries with a lot more bite than this one had. I found I was depending upon a mango chutney to give it the tang it seemed to lack.

I have found so far that recipes from this book are generally successful. This one turned out to be just a little below what others had been but it was still worth the making. Possibly my use of the wrong split chickpeas may have been part of the reason.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔