Where you feel you need to boost your immunity a little, curries are a great way to go. You can stuff them full of vegetables and build up the flavour. Roasting the vegetables before adding them to the curry gives them a really lovely texture and makes the curry easier to make. Feel free to add in your own favourite vegetables!
Serves: approximately 6
Time: 1 hour
Ingredients
1 medium aubergine
1 medium courgette
1 400g can of chickpeas
1 tablespoon ghee or olive oil
1 onion
3 cloves of garlic
2cm²piece of ginger
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon garam masala
½ teaspoon chilli powder
½ teaspoon asafoetida
3 large vine tomatoes
1 400g can coconut milk
Handful mange tout, kale and spinach
Salt and pepper
Juice of one lime
Fresh coriander
Method
1. Pre-heat the oven to 200°c.
2. Cut up the courgette and aubergine into bite size chunks. Spread over a baking tray, drizzle over some olive oil and sprinkle over a generous amount of salt and pepper. Mix together and put into the oven. Bake for 20 minutes. After the 20 minutes, add the chickpeas to the tray, add a little more olive oil, salt and pepper and mix together again. Cook for a further 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, remove from the oven and leave to cool while we prepare the rest of the curry.
3. Finely chop the onion. If using ghee, add to the pan and allow to melt completely before adding in the onion. If using oil, add to a large pan and allow to heat before adding the onion. Cook on a medium/low heat for few minutes.
4. Finely chop the garlic and grate the ginger. Add to the pan along with the other spices and cook for another five minutes or so, until the onion is soft and starting to brown a little. (If you have used olive oil you may want to add in about 100ml of water to stop the spices from sticking to the bottom of the pan).
5. Cut the tomatoes into small chunks and add to the pan. Cook for a few minutes so the tomatoes can start to release some juices.
6. Add the coconut milk and stir through. Place the lid on the pan and allow it to simmer gently for about five minutes.
7. Stir through the lime juice, roasted vegetables, the spinach and the kale. Halve the mange tout and add as well. Cook until everything is warmed through.
8. Chop the fresh coriander and stir through. Save a little to sprinkle over to serve.
9. Serve with brown rice.