Chickpeas and spinach with ginger

Another veggie (vegan, in this case) one-pot recipe, chickpeas and spinach with ginger is very similar to the spinach and chickpea curry that we already do, pretty much just swapping curry paste for ginger. I don't think I've blogged the curry, since it hardly counts as a recipe, so this post covers both.

The ginger recipe is from Serious Eats, and part of a whole series of vegan recipes. Since it took a bit of searching to confirm the can sizes for chick peas and tomatoes, I'll just add that I used 2 of each, normal sized cans (~400g, or ~240g drained in the case of the chickpeas). Needless to say, I did not use the massive amounts of oil called for, but if your diet allows, by all means leave a comment to tell me what I am missing...

Fundamentally the recipe blends half the tomatoes with a good amount of fresh ginger, and adds it to cooked onions and garlic, then adds spinach, and finally chickpeas. Bay leaves, salt and soy sauce ramp up the flavour, although I omitted the suggested vinegar and oil for serving. I will say that I simmered mine for a lot longer to further soften the chickpeas, and ended up with beautifully silky spinach and a richer sauce. There wasn't really enough spinach as I thought the large bag I bought was big enough, but it really could take more. I didn't use the can liquid from the chick peas as suggested, and I think it would have been too runny if I had.

I served this on its own, and we demolished the whole lot in a greedy-pig-portion each, with some left over for Small. Next time I'll do it with rice or another grain, or possibly some sort of bread, plus more spinach, and make it last two meals. The flavour was excellent with the ginger, something I never would have thought of adding to tomatoes, and I can see it becoming a regular on our menu.

The curry we already do is very similar, without the blending. Cook the onions slowly in curry paste and some of the juice from the tomatoes. Add the rest of the tomatoes, chickpeas, and spinach, and simmer for as long as you want to. Butternut squash is another common addition if I have some already cooked (I often roast a squash, just cut in half, to use in various recipes through the week such as risotto, macaroni cheese, cous cous, etc.), but it takes too long to cook from raw in this recipe.