What We Ate Wednesday--Sticky Ginger Glazed Chickpeas with Mango Cucumber Salad

Hello lovelies! Sometimes I just spend hours browsing the internet. Do you do that too? Are you looking at recipes and drooling over food or is that just me?

Just me then.

As I said to a friend last Thursday:

I love food.
I love to eat food.
I love to cook food.
I love to share food.

I could have also added:

I love to veganise recipes.
I love to make recipes cheaper.

This is my superpower.

Last week I was browsing budget recipes when I came across a website called Budget Bytes.  The word budget caught my eye and I saw a recipe for a sweet sticky garlic ginger soy sauce glaze and thought, "Whoa Mama. I am *so* making that." The original recipe used chicken, but as we don't eat out friends I thought I could use the sauce on my favourite budget protein chickpeas.

I mean--CHickens and CHickpeas both start with CH so this would totally work.

And it did. The Budget Bytes recipe suggested serving it with mango and cucumber salad.

Yes please.

Her recipe for mango and cucumber salad called for more sweetener and rice vinegar, but I just basically did what I normally- splash on some bottled lime juice and drizzle of golden syrup and we're good to go.

You can read the original recipe HERE. She also tops with 2 sliced green onions. I don't bother as they cost 70p a bunch and I can put that money towards other things as it basically a garnish to make it look nice in a photo.

I also used half a 500g bag of defrosted frozen mango as it is cheaper that buying fresh. Just measure out what you need, put it in a container and pop it in the fridge for a few hours to defrost.

Sticky Ginger Glazed Chickpeas with Mango Cucumber Salad

I served mine with easy cook brown rice that takes about 25 minutes to cook so if you are doing rice start it first.
Do the salad next as it benefits from marinading.

Mango Cucumber Salad
250g mango chunks (about 2 heaping cups)
half a cucumber, diced
2 TB lime juice (bottled is a-ok)
drizzle golden syrup or your liquid sweetener of choice
1/8 tsp salt
shake of red pepper flakes

Sticky Ginger Glazed Chickpeas
Marinade:
1/4 cup brown sugar (or 1/4 cup white sugar and 1 tsp molasses)
3 TB soy sauce or tamrai
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 TB chopped ginger root
1 TB oil
15 grinds pepper

You can just mix as is, but i put mine in a deep cup and whacked it smooth with my stick blender.

1 onion, sliced into rainbows
half a pepper, diced
tin of chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1. Cook the onion and pepper  in a splash of oil or water until softened and then add the chickpeas.
2. Cook until the chickpeas are heated through add the marinade and increase the heat slightly so the marinade can bubble and caramelise and go all gooey and yum.
3. Serve over rice (hidden in the photo, but definitely there) and the mango cucumber salad.

One of the things I love about being vegan is you are much less risk for things like salmonella. The original recipe is made from chickens  and you are supposed to soak the meat in the marinade then cook, adding the rest of the marinade back in at the end. She makes a really big deal about making sure the marinade is piping hot to kill bacteria as it has had raw meat in it and you risk getting sick and possibly dying. She also insists that you are not to store the unused marinade for later as it could harbour things like e-coli.

Just another advantage of being vegan.

This was really lush and easy and quick to make. It will definitely be on our list to make again.