Slow Cooker Curried Coconut Chickpeas

If you want to eat cheaply and healthily, you need to learn to love your legumes. It's a lesson I've been learning quite happily for a few years now and luckily, my other half will eat them too!

Nutritionists encourage us all to introduce more lentils and legumes to our diet but most Australians ignore that advice, possibly because legumes have long been maligned as the flatulence-inducing food of weird hippy types (I don't believe this stereotype though!)

It's a shame because legumes are a nutritional powerhouse. They're low in fat, high in fibre, folate, potassium, iron, magnesium and protein, have a low glycemic index and have no cholesterol. Eating legumes can help reduce the risk of heart disease and diabetes and can also help with weight control - what more could you want from a food? Yes, there are those unfortunate associations with flatulence but you can minimise the problem by not using the water they're stored or soaked in for your cooking. And the more you eat, the more your body gets used to them. Promise.

I like to buy my beans in bulk and cook them in the slow cooker, but they're just as easy to buy in tins, just not as cheap. Pulses make a great basis for curries and casseroles, taste great in salads, and can be mashed and shaped into patties for burgers. And they make the basis of many great dips - mmm hummus!

This recipe for curried coconut chickpeas comes from a slow cooker book by New Zealand author Alison Holst. This is one of my favourite stand by dinners that seems to appear on the menu regularly. I assemble it in the slow cooker bowl the night before, whack it in the fridge and pull it out in the morning to let it simmer away all day. I come home from work and dinner is waiting for me. It does have a little bit of coconut cream in it, which is not all that good for the hips, but I think the healthy chickpeas, tomatoes and yummy spices cancel it out somewhat.

This is my "tampered with" version of Alison's dish:

Curried Coconut Chickpeas
INGREDIENTS
Spray oil
1 medium onion, chopped into dice
2 cloves crushed garlic
2cm grated ginger or about 1 teaspoon from a jar
2 1/2 teaspoons curry powder
2 cups drained, cooked chickpeas or one 400g can
One 400g can chopped tomatoes
1/2 cup coconut cream
Big pinch of salt
1 teaspoon brown sugar
fresh coriander or basil leaves, to serve

METHOD
Spray some oil into a non stick fry pan and fry up the onions, garlic, ginger and curry powder. When the onion is cooked and transparent, add to the slow cooker bowl.
Add your chickpeas, chopped tomatoes, coconut cream, salt and sugar and stir it all in to mix.
If you're preparing this the night before, put the slow cooker bowl into the fridge. Then when you're ready to cook, put the bowl into the slow cooker, turn it to LOW and let it cook for at least six hours, it can cook up to ten hours.
The mixture is fairly thin, which is how I like it, but you can thicken it up with cornflour mixed to a paste with cold water (about a teaspoon cornflour with a tablespoon or more of water).
Serve with rice and veggies with the coriander or basil sprinkled over the top.
*You could also substitute the weight of chickpeas with some pumpkin or sweet potato.
**For those without slow cookers it works fairly well if you cook the onion mix, add the other ingredients and let it simmer for an hour or so.