Recipe: Deliciously Ella’s Coconut Thai Curry With Chickpeas

She’s appearing on front covers and centrefolds of every worthy tabloid and style-driven magazine, and is touted as the Nigella Lawson of the healthy eating world. Ella’s persistence and commitment is testament to her success. Still waiting for your copy of Ella’s debut cookbook (you must be hounding Royal Mail like a crazy person?!)? We’re here to appease you with a welltodo London Deliciously Ella favourite.

Deliciously Ella’s Coconut Thai Curry with Chickpeas

This Coconut Thai Curry was the first recipe I did for the book and it’s still one of my favourites! The coconut milk makes it wonderfully creamy, while the ginger, chilli flakes, coriander and miso add a fantastic array of different flavours. The chickpeas make it really hearty too, so it’s amazingly filling. I love it served with brown rice, but it’s delicious with buckwheat too or brown rice pasta. It keeps really well, so you can make extra portions of it to store in the fridge to fuel you through the week.

Serves 4

Ingredients

2 x 400ml tins coconut milk
2 x 400g tins tomatoes
2-3cm piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated
1-2 teaspoons chilli flakes
1 large butternut squash (1kg)
2 medium aubergines (600g)
handful of fresh coriander, finely chopped
1 x 400g tin chickpeas, drained
3 teaspoons brown miso paste brown rice, to serve
salt and pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°C (fan 180°C).

Put the coconut milk, tinned tomatoes, grated ginger and chilli into a large saucepan with a sprinkling of salt and pepper and allow it to heat until boiling.

As it heats up, peel the squash and cut both the squash and the aubergines into bite-sized pieces. Add these to the coconut and tomato in the pan.

Allow the mixture to cook for about 30 minutes in the oven, at which point add the coriander and chickpeas to the pan with the miso and place the pan back in the oven for 30 minutes. It’s ready when the squash is soft.

Serve the coconut curry with the brown rice. Store any leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge or freezer.

Top tip

If you don’t like chickpeas, you can leave these out. You can also substitute any of the veggies for other ones you have in the house; cauliflower, courgettes and sweet potatoes are all delicious.

Recipe extracted from Deliciously Ella by Ella Woodward, out now published by Yellow Kite, £20 © Ella Woodward 2015