Spice it up with a Sweet Potato & Chickpea Curry

During the wintry weather we had recently, I was craving some hot, warming soup.

I made one of my favourite recipes, a deliciously warming seven spice carrot soup recipe that uses curry leaves, black mustard seeds and some other of my favourite spices. This pot of soup used up the last of the curry powder lurking in the back of my cupboard so I made a note on my shopping list to pick some more up.

Shortly after that I began the Spice It Up course with Learning with Experts. Taught by Gelf Alderson of the River Cottage, the first cookery lesson in this course is how to make your own home-made curry powder and curry paste.

Truth be told, I’d never considered making my own curry powder (or paste) before now. I just bought ready-made blends, so I was really looking forward to trying this. I removed shop-bought curry powder from the shopping list, and bought some new whole spices instead.

It turns out making your own curry powder is remarkably easy, and it tastes so much better than shop-bought! The trick is to toast and grind your own spices. Buy your spices from a retailer with a higher turnover too as you don’t want older, stale spices that have been sitting on the shelves for ages.

Spices lose flavour over time, especially ground spices, so start with your own whole seeded spices like cumin, coriander and fenugreek. First, you toast the seeds in a dry pan until they begin to brown and pop and a gorgeous scent begins to fill the room. I don’t know why, but it’s incredibly satisfying to do this, it feels like proper exotic cooking. You then remove the toasted spices from the heat and add any powdered spices you’re adding to your curry powder blend, such as paprika and turmeric. Pop it all into a blender and pulse until the mixture forms a fine powder and then store in an airtight container.

Making your own curry powder means you can make as much as you need – there's no need to buy a big jar which might only be used every now and again before it goes stale in the back of the cupboard (surely, I’m not the only one guilty of this!). Plus, there’s a chance that if you’ve gone through the effort to make your own blend you might be tempted to use it more often, getting creative in the kitchen.

I’m not going to give you the recipe for the curry powder Gelf taught us how to make, in fact, his recipe was only a guideline – in his cookery class we’re encouraged to tweak the recipe to our own tastes. Me, I like my curry powders on the hotter side, so I now add a few whole, dried chillies to mine.

Making our own curry paste was just as easy too, blending onions, shallots, ginger, turmeric, coriander and lime zest to form a versatile paste.

Our assignment

To use our own curry powder blend and curry paste in a vegetarian curry recipe. I made a simple sweet potato and chickpea curry with spinach (recipe below), which I served with homemade na’ans (again, a recipe taught by Gelf in the Spice it up course) and a dollop of homemade yoghurt on the side.

Fancy learning how to cook with spices yourself? Spice It Up is one of twelve courses in the River Cottage Cooking Diploma, a collection of 48 lessons covering a broad range of cooking skills. There are two options, the Expert, which I’m enrolled in, and the Peer reviewed one. So far, I’m loving the modules I’ve done, and I’ve been inspired to try new things and change the way I look at food too.

Will you join me in the classroom? Just click this link to book your place!

Sweet potato and chickpea curry recipe

1 tbsp Scottish rapeseed oil

2 small red onions, halved and finely sliced

2 generous spoonfuls of homemade curry paste

1 small red chilli, finely sliced

2 tbsp homemade curry powder

1 tbsp black mustard seeds

3 small sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks

1 400-gram tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1 400-gram tin chopped tomatoes

200 ml water

300 ml tinned coconut milk

1 lime, juice only (the zest goes into the curry paste)

1/2 bag baby leaf spinach

fresh coriander leaves, to garnish

Method

1. Heat oil in a heavy based sauté pan and cook the red onions over a low heat until softened. Add a little sprinkle of sea salt to prevent browning.

2. Add the curry paste and cook a few more minutes.

3. Add the curry powder and black mustard seeds and cook another minute, stirring constantly.

4. Add the sweet potato, chickpeas, chopped tomatoes and water and simmer, with the lid on, for 15 minutes.

5. Remove the lid and simmer until the potato is tender, but still retaining texture.

6. Add the coconut milk and spinach. Cook until the spinach has wilted.

7. Squeeze over the juice of the lime and season with more salt and pepper, if needed.

8. Serve garnished with fresh coriander leaves and finely sliced red chillies.