The easiest vegetable curry you’ve never made: 30p per serve

Seriously, if you take an hour and a bit to prep this sometime in the week (I like Sunday evenings), you’ll have 9 portions of delicious curry that you can alternate with other stuff, saving you masses of time in the long run. Make it go further by adding a five bean mix if you like. The beauty of this is that you can really add or take out what you want. Totes flexible. And I really hate jarred curry sauces. Use them at your peril, but I think they’re deffo second rate compared to this.

I make this curry regularly cos it makes me feel v healthy when I eat it; it contains like 3 of your 5-a-day yadder yadder. And you can leave it to simmer and get all those flavours nice and jumbly while you do something else, like cry over essays or lie on the floor for 45 minutes not moving bc you’re dead inside.

STUFF

4-5 potatoes. I use sweet potato and normal, but it’s really up to you – 40p

2 Big Carrots – 15p

Can of chickpeas – 33p

5-6 portions of frozen spinach that come in massive bags – alternatively use 1 bag of fresh spinach but this is pricier.  – 20p for frozen, 59p for fresh

Any other veg you want, or that needs using up. I put broccoli in the other day. Radical.

Can of chopped tomatoes – 29p

Can of Coconut milk – 39p or 1/2 tub of yogurt – 32p. I’ll use whatever I’ve got on hand.

1 large onion or more if you’re in an onion mood. – 15p

3 cloves of garlic – 10p

1-2 TBSP of tandoori, korma, jalfrezi or tikka spice mix. I get mine for like 46p from lidl and it lasts ages. – roughly 10p

Palm sized piece of ginger – 17p

1 large red chilli – 12p

What u do

Get that enormous pan out, you saucy minx. Slowly and lavishly, pour vegetable oil into it (about 4 big spoons) while looking your flatmate directly in the eye. Let it heat up for a bit on medium. (The oil, not the flatmate)

To start with, chop your ginger, chilli and garlic into very fine mush – you can use a cheese grater for this if you have zero knife skills. Dice your onion relatively small and add to the pan. Put the lid on (if you have one) and let it soften for 5 mins, then add the ginger, chilli garlic and spice mix and season it well (plus any other curry- like spices you wish. I put a metric fucktonne of cumin in as I really like cumin but I’m reliably informed that not everyone owns as many spices as I do so no worries if all you’ve got is a spice mix. Also, turmeric if you’ve got it goes nicely). Let that all fry for a mo, adding a malenky bit of water if it’s going dry.

While your onion and spices are softening up nicely, chop your spuds, carrot and other hard veg into bitesize chunks. I leave the skin on cos I’m lazy but go ahead and peel it if you want. No judgement.*

Add your chopped root veg to the pan and give it a stir. I like to do this until the edges of the veg go a little bit brown, like it would when you’re frying meat. If you actually want to use some meat, go ahead and add it here. Chicken, beef, venison (joke) up to you.

Right, so now you should have a dry mix of yummy smelling veg and spices.

Add your tomatoes, tomato paste and chickpeas and around half a litre of veg or chicken stock and stir that all around for a bit. Taste it and determine whether it needs salt or pepper or any other spices. It should be quite acidic at this point. Let it all simmer for a bit (about 20 mins) with the lid off, so the veg should all cook through. Test the spud chunks with a fork – they should be just about going soft but it dm if they’re a bit hard still.

Add the coconut milk/yogurt and mix it all so it goes a nice orangey opaque colour. Add the spinach. Boil this with the lid half on, half off for another 20 mins or until it’s nice and thick and all tastes great. Keep tasting it and adjusting it to what you like. Often all it needs is some more spice mix or salt but bear in mind acidity when you’re cooking too; if it’s still too acidic for you, add more yogurt or a little bit of butter or cream. If it’s lost its bite, add some lemon juice or another 1/2 can of tomatoes.

Let it cool and portion into bags or containers to freeze. This will actually keep in the fridge for like 3 days too. I like this with naan bread or poppadoms with mango chutney. I tend not to serve it with rice due to the carb content of the potatoes already but go ahead if you are a hungry person who likes rice.

(if you are gonna cook rice, cook it with a little turmeric, salt and cumin for extra flavour)

Voila!

*so much judgement