Anna's Creamy Chickpea and Halloumi Curry

Anna’s Creamy Chickpea and Halloumi Curry

Anna Wylie

Featuring:

Pulses

Effort:

Complexity:

Cost:

In season now

Serves: 4

Prep time: 5 mins

Cook time: 25 mins

Ingredients:

Oil

2 onions, sliced

2 big garlic gloves, crushed

Ground Cumin, coriander, turmeric - all big teaspoonfuls

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

Around 200ml double cream (you could also use coconut milk)

1 tin of chickpeas - if using bold bean keep the stock and use 100ml of double cream

Two Big handfuls of spinach

1 block of halloumi (cubed)

Garam masala 1 teaspoon

Big pinch of sugar

Favourite kind of cooked rice - I like wild rice - to serve

Fresh coriander

Fry sliced onions in a good glug of your favourite oil for around 5 minutes on a medium heat. Once onions are softed, turn to a low heat and add the crushed garlic. After a minute, add the cumin, coriander and turmeric. Add some water if things are sticking to the pan to form a paste.
Turn the heat to medium and add a tin of chopped tomatoes and cook for around 5 minutes.
Add the chickpeas (with stock if you fancy, I like the bold bean stock). Once it has reduced a bit, add the double cream. Heat this on a low heat for around 5 minutes. Whilst this is cooking, grill the halloumi.
Add a couple of big handfuls of your favourite leafy greens (I like using spinach).
Mix in the halloumi cubes with the garam masala and a pinch of sugar. Season as you prefer.
Serve with your favourite rice and garnish with some fresh coriander!

Note: I’ll sometimes add extra veg and fry with the onions at the start if I’ve got things to use up. I also sometimes add frozen peas before I add the leafy greens!

Engaging Kids

Kids who engage regularly with veg through veg-themed activities, such as arts and crafts, sensory experiences, growing and cooking are shown to be more likely to eat the veg they engage with. Encouraging kids to engage and play with veg is the handy first step to them developing a good relationship with veg and life-long healthy eating.

Kids in the kitchen

The eventual aim, if possible, is to get kids in the kitchen. Don’t worry, this doesn’t have to mean they are with you from start-to-end creating mess and rising stress levels! It can be as simple as giving them one small job (stirring, measuring, pouring, grating, chopping…) ideally involving veg. They can come in to do their little bit, and have fun with you for a few minutes. Getting them involved, making it playful and praising them plenty for their involvement, perhaps even serving it as dinner they “made”, makes it much more likely they will eat the food offered, not to mention teaching them important life skills. Find ideas, safety tips, videos and even a free chart in our Kids in the Kitchen section here.

Activities

While getting kids to interact with veggies for real and using their senses to explore them is best, encouraging hands off activities like arts & crafts, puzzles & games or at-home science experiments can be a great start, particularly for those who are fussier eaters or struggle with anything too sensory. Use these veg-themed activities as a stepping stone to interacting with the veg themselves. We have loads of crafty downloads here, puzzles here, and quirky science with veg here.

Sensory

Once you feel your child is ready to engage a little more, you can show them how to explore the veg you have on hand with their senses, coming up with playful silly descriptions of how a veg smells, feels, looks, sounds and perhaps even tastes. Find ideas, videos and some simple sensory education session ideas to get you started here.

Serving

The moments before food is offered can be a perfect opportunity for engagement that can help make it more likely a child will eat it! Giving children a sense of ownership in the meal can make a big difference to their feelings going into it and the pride they take in it. You know your child best, but if you aren’t sure where to start, we have some fun and simple ideas for easy roles you can give them in the serving process over here.