Hello lovelies! This is a quick and easy soup to make,
even quicker if you already have the Munchy Seeds made. I had lots left over so topped an Apricot lentil Soup and even threw them on a pizza (see next week’s What We Ate Wednesday!)
Pea and Potato Soup with Savoury Seeds
First make your Munchy Seeds (recipe HERE) and while they are roasting and cooling
make the soup.
You need: 1 onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
200g potatoes, diced
400g ( about 3 cups) frozen peas, defrosted
700ml (about 3 cups) hot vegetable stock
juice of half a lemon
salt and pepper to taste
Hello and welcome to Fairy Tale Friday. Are you
sitting comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin.
This week we begin to look at versions of Snow White
on film. Today we begin with the oldest version I can find which was made in
1916.
This silent film was directed by J. Searle
Dawley and was adapted by playwright Winthrop
Ames from his own 1912 Broadway play Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs, which was in turn adapted from the 1812 Grimms fairy
tale.
Interesting fact number one: The
director Dawley also made a 14-minute horror "photoplay" of
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, in 1910 which is the earliest
known screen adaptation of the novel.
The film
stars Marguerite Clark as Snow White (reprising her
stage role) and Creighton Hale as the Prince. Clark was the second
most successful silent film star next to Mary Pickford. Sadly, most of her films
are lost. She is terrific in this—expressive without overacting. 6 foot 2
Lionel Braham also shines as the enormous huntsman (with an even more enormous
beard) which makes him look rather like Brian Blessed.
Interesting fact number two: According to Wikipedia-- Walt
Disney was fifteen years old when he saw it, and it inspired him to
make it the subject of his
first feature-length animated film . Chronologically, this should be
discussed in the next few weeks, but I am going to save the Disney film for
last as it is the most famous version and for many of us our gateway Disney
film.
So how was the film? It is a full hour in length, so I
had to watch it in parts before and after work, but it is a masterstroke. There
are many familiar elements such as the jealous stepmother, the magic mirror,
the Prince, the dwarfs and a wedding. But how these parts fit together is
completely novel. There is much extra detail—some puzzling and some jaw
droppingly original. The effects are not that bad for 1916 and the acting is
never melodramatic. There are good title cards to help you follow the plot—a few
funny enough to make me snort.
Our film begins with Father Christmas coming to
deliver a set of dolls which he carefully places on a table while a child
sneaks downstairs to watch. After he goes back up the chimney, the dolls transmogrify
into the live action characters.
We set the scene with the bit straight out of the
Grimms where the mother is sewing and pricks her finger and the red blood drops
on the white snow of the ebony window. Here the Queen actively squeezes the
blood out forcing it to drop on the snow as if to make a point and one of the
ladies in waiting gives a subtle eyeroll which made me chuckle. We also see here one
of the ladies in waiting who is quite ugly with a big false nose.She is our antagonist of the film.
This evil lady goes to a bald witch (with a fearful
familiar who is basically someone in an animal onesie) and wants a spell to
make her more beautiful than Snow White and to get to marry the King. The bald
headed witch gives her a truth telling mirror which magics her beautiful
(basically gives her a nose job) and says if the mirror ever breaks, she will
go back to her ugly self. The witch also predicts that within a year the good
queen will dieand the evil one will be
the new queen. But there is one caveat—the witch demands Snow White’s heart.
The prophecy comes true and the evil lady in waiting
is now the queen. As in Cinderella, our young heroine is forced to work in the
kitchen and not join her group of dancing maids of honour (who I suppose are
just the junior version of ladies in waiting.)
The stuffy, pompous big-wigged chamberlain (who acts
like he has a stick up his butt both literally and figuratively) does the
bidding of the evil queen. I should like to say I do not recall ever seeing her
father in all this. Snow White (again, much like Cinderella) is happy and
cheerful and everyone loves her, and she doesn’t mind a bit of hard work as she
flits around barefoot like a simpleton.
Snow White is tasked with going to the Huntsman’s
little cottage and collecting three ducks for lunch. These ducks are clearly on
the menu and are not just going to be guests at the table. This fact is
important for later. The Huntsman has three adorable little children named
Tina, Trina and Tip who wear sort of traditional folk costumes from some
unspecified European country. She gently scolds the littles and gets them to
release a small brown bird they had in a tiny cage saying “Birds should never
be caged. Let them fly free.” I guess ducks don’t count in your assessment of the
rights of birds, eh Snow White?
A Prince from a neighbouring kingdom happens by out on
a hunt and decides to shoot the tiny brown bird they have just released with
his bow and arrow. Luckily, he is a crap shot which gives them time to beg to
spare the bird’s life. He agrees not to shoot as he is smitten with the raven
haired mystery girl. They flirt shamelessly back at the Huntsman’s cottage and
he tries to work out who she is but again like Cinderella in her poor dress and
no shoes she shyly (or cunningly, depending on how you see it) deflects and
makes him think she is one of the maids of honour. Then she skips away barefoot
down the lane with the three poor ducks who are gong to meet their doom as
lunch.
There is some sort of party where all the other maids
of honour in white want to dance—but our heroine in her shapeless black sack of
a dress is forbidden to gavotte by the snooty Chamberlain. She knows the Prince
is there. She wants to see him and be seen by him. Each maid of honour gives up
a little bit of her clothing so she can blend in with her white gown and veil. “You
look like a bride!” they exclaim as a sort of foreshadowing. But what about
shoes? She is still prancing around barefoot. They all agree to take off their
shoes so she can blend in. They all dance, she catches the Prince’s eye. He is
saddened as he has come to deliver a proclamation that he is to marry his
cousin Snow White whom he has never seen, and this is quite sad as he is in
love with another. Embarrassingly, the evil Queen thinks he is talking about
her and his face is so “aw hell naw” it gave me laugh number two. He declares his
love for one of the maids of honour but when he picks her out of the line-up
and the evil Queen realises that the maid of honour is in fact her stepdaughter
Snow White. She declares they can marry in a year and a day, but first Snow
White must go to a boarding school for backwards princesses. This made me laugh
with a snort.
Obviously, this is the point where Snow White will
need to be killed and her heart taken. The witch appears and makes it clear—it must
be the heart of a beautiful girl to make her spell work. The evil Queen summons
the Huntsman and threatens to lock up his children in the tower and starve them
to death if he refuses to comply. So that’s why we met his three adorable
kiddies earlier! He reluctantly agrees and takes Snow White out to the forest. That’s
the FOREST. (This will be important later.) He tells her what he is tasked with doing and she thinks he is kidding…when it becomes clear it is not a joke (after throwing
herself in his big strong arms and batting her eyelashes….I feel this Snow
White definitely knows how to use her womanly wiles) he tells her to run and he
agrees to find a wild pig to kill instead. Snow White is then menaced by a lion—that’s
a LION—who has inexplicably wandered into the forest and then the little brown
bird she saved comes along and tells her to follow. She follows the bird to the
cottage of the seven dwarfs. She takes a tiny bite off of all their plates and
then falls asleep in one of the beds.
We see the dwarfs—who are quite small (I cannot be
sure if they hired little actors or perhaps children as their faces are
obscured by long white beards. Perhaps it is forced perspective filming as the
actress who plays Snow White is quite tiny herself) in a scene that is meant to
be in a weirdly lit underground mine but makes them appear like they are a heavy
metal rock band on an arena tour. They arrive home and do a helpful roll call
to let us know their names are Blick, Flick, Glick, Snick, Plick, Whick and inexplicably
Quee. They unload some top quality jewels and silver dust they mined at work
and then have a comic scene where Quee gives them all a wash by flicking them
in the face with a wet towel followed by a dry towel. Quee himself does not
wash (this will be important later.) They realise someone has lazily swept the
kitchen and eaten some of their food. However, they say like the three bears
that someone has eaten their porridge and used a knife to cut some bread—neither
of which she actually did.
They find her asleep and a curious exchange occurs.
First, they wonder will “it” wake up. Then one of them declares it is a “she”
not an “it.” Another claims that “girls can’t talk.” Then a creepy one says, “I
wish she’d stay with us just so we could look at her.” Being subtitled it is
hard to tell who is the dodgy one, but my bets are on Quee. They decide to
bribe her with gifts to stay so lay things of value by her sleeping head. The reject
the idea of diamonds as too common and instead leave a jack knife, a thimble
and an almanac. Yup, that’s what I said.
Then they decide that Quee really stinks as he hasn’t
had a bath in 50 years, so they force him into a barrel of water. She wakes up
long enough to say “Sorry I ate your food, and I am really tired so I will tell
you my story tomorrow. Goodnight.” Everyone is OK with this and Quee has to
sleep in the barrel as she is in his bed.
Then we go back to the Queen ordering the Huntsman to
be arrested. I thought it was because she had discovered the heart was not Snow
Whites but apparently, she’s just a bitch. We see him imprisoned in the tower and
he can see his children in an adjoining cell. He shows off his super strength
by bending the iron bars, but he still cannot reach them. Luckily, our plucky
little brown bird appears with a comically long piece of string with a little
trapeze-y handle at the end like you use on a zip wire. The Huntsman uses this to
hoist his kids through the bent bars and then suspends the jailer with the
string and steals his keys and they escape.
Meanwhile, the evil Queen bring the heart to the witch
who adds it to a watering can and has her furry familiar water her head with
it. If this had been the heart of a beautiful girl then she would have a grown
a headful of luscious locks, but instead in a very good time lapse effect curly
pigs tails grow out of her scalp because it as the heart of a wild pig. Too bad
he didn’t kill the unexplained lion—she could have had a head of hair like Tina
Turner.
They agree to kill Snow White and the evil Queen is
changed into “a different looking person altogether with the means to dispose
of Snow White that the dwarfs can’t trace back to [her].” She is given a basket
of wares—ribbons and laces which allude to the original Grimms’ story, but most
importantly a poisoned comb that must stay in her hair for the count of 100 to
kill her. This will be important later.
Snow White being the kind soul she is doesn’t
recognise her stepmother (it looks as if it actually played by another actor
for once) and lets her in and allows her to put the comb in her hair. Snow
White grabs her head like she has a migraine and then stumbles about and
finally crashes into the table, falling under the table somehow. The evil Queen
begins to count. Here we have the threat of a ticking clock and we only have
until 100 until she is dead. Luckily, that little brown bird is on the case. It
sees the poison comb, tells a rabbit (as you do) who hops down the mine and
tells the dwarfs (of course it does) who rush in at the last minute somewhere
in the 90s and remove the comb. Then they all play a game of Blind Man’s Bluff like
nothing ever happened.
Next the Queen disguises herself as a one-eyed male
pie seller and Snow White eats the poison apple and snuffs it. Meanwhile the
Huntsman and the Prince join forces to find Snow White and find her dead body.
Here he sees her and loves her because he knows her and not because she is some
random dead chick he fancies. He takes her body not to have necrophiliac sex
with her but to take it to stepmother as proof of her crimes. They arrive at
the palace and the Prince does the mime version of “J’accuse!” since it is a
silent film. The journey to the palace knocks the apple loose from Snow White’s
windpipe and she sits up alive then drops the piece of already been chewed
apple casually on the floor like she has no manners.
The next title card says, "When the Queen broke the magic
mirror her evil face showed itself and the witch finally received the hair she
wanted.” This was my last laugh of the film. We see the evil Queen horrified
that she has the big conk again and she is wearing one of those rolled up cones
with a floaty scarf on her head like no real people probably ever wore but you
see a lot in fairy tales. The witch now has hair down to her bum and dances
gleefully.
There is a wedding and Snow White says that all the
dwarfs can stay at the palace with them without asking her husband if he is Ok
with that, which doesn’t bode well for the marriage in my opinion.
My verdict: The film is quite long, but is beautifully
and artfully shot and well worth watching. You can see it below. Be sure to
turn up the sound. There is a faint musical undercurrent…almost discordant in
places…that hums along and enhances the story.
That’s all for this week. Stay tuned next week for Betty
Boop as Snow White.
Hello and welcome to Fairy Tale Friday. Are you
sitting comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin.
Last week we looked at a serious poetic version of our
classic tale, but this week we look at a more humorous one. This comes from the
book Revolting Rhymes in 1982 bybeloved children’s author Roald Dahl.
Dahl is responsible for many modern classics such as Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory, Matilda. James and the Giant Peach—just to name a few. He is
also responsible for some of the best dark short stories with a twist for
adults like Lamb to the Slaughter.
This is more like a fractured fairy tale in that we do
have some elements you would expect—evil stepmother with a magic mirror who is
jealous of Snow White, a Huntsman sent to kill her and bring back her heart, consuming
the heart etc. (I only hope she cooked it well.Boiled heart can be as tough
as hell)
In other stories it is always her beauty that makes
people feel sorry for her—the Huntsman won’t kill her because she is too
beautiful, the dwarfs vow to care for her because she is pretty, the prince
wants to marry her despite being dead—because she is good looking. This story
plays upon that idea. She knows full well that she is pretty and uses her looks
to hitchhike into the city where she takes up with seven jockeys with a
gambling problem. They are forever skint after blowing their cash at the racetrack.
In this one she steals the magic mirror which gives them the winner of each
race and they all get rich. No one dies. No one tries to get revenge. No prince
comes along and tries to commit necrophilia. Just one crafty lady who uses her looks and
gets rich by cheating for her height challenged friends. The moral of the tale?
Gambling’s not a sin. Provided that you always win.
Hello lovelies! We seem to eat a lot of "whatever is left over in the fridge" on top of polenta lately...and that's ok! We call the these "fag end" meals because they are the remnants of other meals that aren't enough on their own, but together make something spectacular.
This is what we had, but use whatever you have:
1 red onion
1 slice of red pepper as wide as three fingers
1 smallish sweet potato
tin of chickpeas
1 lemon
kale
polenta
I should just like to note that my computer keeps trying to auto-correct POLENTA into TADPOLE. This is a vegan blog....no tadpoles were harmed in the making of this meal!
Lemon Tamari Yum over Polenta
Preheat your oven to 200C/400F/ In a large roasting pan add the following:
1 red onion, diced
1 slice of red pepper as wide as three fingers, diced
1 smallish sweet potato, diced
tin of chickpeas,drained and rinsed
Juice of half a lemon (save the other half for later in the recipe)
1 TB olive oil
Mix all together and top with pepper. Roast for 15 minutes then stir. Then roast for another 15 minutes.
When you start the second 15 minutes, work on the kale and polenta.
In a large pot cook 100g kale (a few handfuls) in a splash of water until bright green and reduced. Set aside with a lid to keep warm.
Bring the stock to the boil. I like to boil 3.5 cups water in the kettle and then add some stock powder/cube to 1/2 cup that you heat in your pot whilst the kettle boils. then add the boiled kettle and it all comes to the boil much quicker than waiting for it come to boil from a cold pot. Does that make sense?
Stream in the polenta to the boiling stock and whisk constantly until it thickens. When it starts to spit, take it off the heat and add a splash of milk and the parmesan. If it seems too stodgy, add another splash of milk then return to heat and make sure it is heated and then remove from heat, add a lid and let sit until the veg is roasted.
When the veg is roasted:
Add it to the kale you already cooked and add the juice of the other half of the lemon and a good splash of tamari or soy sauce. Keep stirring until everything is hot. Serve over polenta.
This was delicious--the polenta was savoury and the lemon and tamari gave the veg a real tangy taste. The chickpeas go all chewy and a bit crispy when roasted so it nice textures. Nom nom nom!
Hello lovelies! I make no secret of my love for pizza. I make my own dough out of spelt as i can tolerate it, as opposed to wheat which makes my tummy swell up like I have eaten a basketball. But you can make a strictly gluten free crust...or you can even buy a crust and just add toppings. Do whatever you like, but do try this pizza!
Like last week, this is a kind of use up the odds and ends sort of meal. We don't normally have vegan cheese, but we had a little Violife in the fridge so I grated it and threw it on.
We had a large punnet of cherry tomatoes that I had used the night before on a pasta, but before I cooked them I saved out 6 small tomatoes for the pizza.
I made a big batch of my WALNUT AND OLIVE TAPENADE (click on the link to read how to make it) and froze it for later meals. I normally freeze it in 1 cup servings, but I divided one of the cups in half and froze enough for 2 pizzas. These days, I don't even bother to put the olive oil in the recipe and it is fine. A little more crumbly and less paste-y...but it still tastes delicious.
You can use any tapenade you have...homemade or store bought. You just need half a cup of it.
My crust needs to be cooked 5 minutes at 250C/500F and then add the toppings. Then cook for another 12 minutes. But if yours just goes straight in the oven put your toppings on straightaway and cook according to package directions.
Tapenade Pizza
1 pizza crust
1 red onion, cut into rainbows
a bit of red pepper, diced small
2 mushrooms sliced thin
6 cherry tomatoes cut in half
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
4 TB tomato puree
3-4 cloves of garlic, grated
half a cup olive tapenade
1/3 to 1/2 cup grated vegan cheese
rosemary
Cook the onion in a splash of water or vegetable stock until softened then set aside.
Marinate the cut cherry tomatoes in the balsamic vinegar.
In a small bowl, add your garlic to your tomato puree and add a splash of water to thin it out.
Layer your pizza like this:
tomato garlic paste
tapenade (press into tomato garlic paste with back of a spoon)
cooked red onion
mushrooms and peppers
tomatoes, cut side down around the edge
sprinkle cheese in the middle
sprinkle on copious amounts of rosemary on the top and any remaining balsamic vinegar from the tomatoes. Grind on black pepper.
Bake in a very hot oven according to package directions.
This was really delicious...lots of umami flavour going on. The cheese was just enough. In my carnivore days I was an extra cheese kind of gal. Half cup cheese almost felt like too much. How times have changed. I used to use cheese to drown out stuff...now I like to taste the flavours of everything underneath.
Hello and welcome to Fairy Tale Friday. Are you
sitting comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin.
This week we look at a poem by Pulitzer Prize winning
poet Anne Sexton from her marvellous collection of poem-stories entitled
Transformations. This 1971 collection includes strange and interesting
retellings of Grimms fairy tales including including Snow White,
Rumpelstiltskin, Rapunzel, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, The Frog Prince, and
Red Riding Hood.
Anne Sexton was a very gifted poet who struggled with
bipolar disorder and eventually committed suicide in 1974 by locking herself in
her garage and turning on her car engine, thus ending her life by carbon
monoxide poisoning.
Transformations was a huge influence on me when I
wrote my book Wounds: New Openings Into Old Stories. You can see the influence
clearly in her style of formatting with the long thin column of text.
I love the way she writes, bringing old ideas in with
new such as cheeks as fragile as cigarette paper and her lacings were as tight as
an Ace bandage. This is one of the few works that thinks like I think—Snow White
is a dumb bunny to continually fall for the trickery of her stepmother
in disguise. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me
three times, I am clearly a dumb bunny who deserves a poison apple.
It also ends in a way that I would have loved as a
slightly gruesome child—with not only the dancing of the stepmother in the hot
iron shoes, but a full description of her torment.
But the true ending, with Snow White a perfect china doll
consulting her own mirror until a time appears that she too is eaten by age and
the cycle continues.
No matter what life you lead
the virgin is a lovely number:
cheeks as fragile as cigarette paper,
arms and legs made of Limoges,
lips like Vin Du Rhône,
rolling her china-blue doll eyes
open and shut.
Open to say,
Good Day Mama,
and shut for the thrust
of the unicorn.
She is unsoiled.
She is as white as a bonefish.
Once there was a lovely virgin
called Snow White.
Say she was thirteen.
Her stepmother,
a beauty in her own right,
though eaten, of course, by age,
would hear of no beauty surpassing her own.
Beauty is a simple passion,
but, oh my friends, in the end
you will dance the fire dance in iron shoes.
The stepmother had a mirror to which she referred--
something like the weather forecast--
a mirror that proclaimed
the one beauty of the land.
She would ask,
Looking glass upon the wall,
who is fairest of us all?
And the mirror would reply,
You are the fairest of us all.
Pride pumped in her like poison.
Suddenly one day the mirror replied,
Queen, you are full fair, 'tis true,
but Snow White is fairer than you.
Until that moment Snow White
had been no more important
than a dust mouse under the bed.
But now the queen saw brown spots on her hand
and four whiskers over her lip
so she condemned Snow White
to be hacked to death.
Bring me her heart, she said to the hunter,
and I will salt it and eat it.
The hunter, however, let his prisoner go
and brought a boar's heart back to the castle.
The queen chewed it up like a cube steak.
Now I am fairest, she said,
lapping her slim white fingers.
Snow White walked in the wildwood
for weeks and weeks.
At each turn there were twenty doorways
and at each stood a hungry wolf,
his tongue lolling out like a worm.
The birds called out lewdly,
talking like pink parrots,
and the snakes hung down in loops,
each a noose for her sweet white neck.
On the seventh week
she came to the seventh mountain
and there she found the dwarf house.
It was as droll as a honeymoon cottage
and completely equipped with
seven beds, seven chairs, seven forks
and seven chamber pots.
Snow White ate seven chicken livers
and lay down, at last, to sleep.
The dwarfs, those little hot dogs,
walked three times around Snow White,
the sleeping virgin. They were wise
and wattled like small czars.
Yes. It's a good omen,
they said, and will bring us luck.
They stood on tiptoes to watch
Snow White wake up. She told them
about the mirror and the killer-queen
and they asked her to stay and keep house.
Beware of your stepmother,
they said.
Soon she will know you are here.
While we are away in the mines
during the day, you must not
open the door.
Looking glass upon the wall . . .
The mirror told
and so the queen dressed herself in rags
and went out like a peddler to trap Snow White.
She went across seven mountains.
She came to the dwarf house
and Snow White opened the door
and bought a bit of lacing.
The queen fastened it tightly
around her bodice,
as tight as an Ace bandage,
so tight that Snow White swooned.
She lay on the floor, a plucked daisy.
When the dwarfs came home they undid the lace
and she revived miraculously.
She was as full of life as soda pop.
Beware of your stepmother,
they said.
She will try once more.
Looking glass upon the wall. . .
Once more the mirror told
and once more the queen dressed in rags
and once more Snow White opened the door.
This time she bought a poison comb,
a curved eight-inch scorpion,
and put it in her hair and swooned again.
The dwarfs returned and took out the comb
and she revived miraculously.
She opened her eyes as wide as Orphan Annie.
Beware, beware, they said,
but the mirror told,
the queen came,
Snow White, the dumb bunny,
opened the door
and she bit into a poison apple
and fell down for the final time.
When the dwarfs returned
they undid her bodice,
they looked for a comb,
but it did no good.
Though they washed her with wine
and rubbed her with butter
it was to no avail.
She lay as still as a gold piece.
The seven dwarfs could not bring
themselves
to bury her in the black ground
so they made a glass coffin
and set it upon the seventh mountain
so that all who passed by
could peek in upon her beauty.
A prince came one June day
and would not budge.
He stayed so long his hair turned green
and still he would not leave.
The dwarfs took pity upon him
and gave him the glass Snow White--
its doll's eyes shut forever--
to keep in his far-off castle.
As the prince's men carried the coffin
they stumbled and dropped it
and the chunk of apple flew out
of her throat and she woke up miraculously.
And thus Snow White became the prince's
bride.
The wicked queen was invited to the wedding feast
and when she arrived there were
red-hot iron shoes,
in the manner of red-hot roller skates,
clamped upon her feet.
First your toes will smoke
and then your heels will turn black
and you will fry upward like a frog,
she was told.
And so she danced until she was dead,
a subterranean figure,
her tongue flicking in and out
like a gas jet.
Meanwhile Snow White held court,
rolling her china-blue doll eyes open and shut
and sometimes referring to her mirror
as women do.
That’s all for this week. Stay tuned next week for a jollier
poem version of our classic story.
Hello lovelies! I cannot believe I have never written about this. I was sure I had. But I searched all the the key word combinations I could and I never found it. It may be there but it is deeply buried, so I thought I would resurrect it.
We eat this curry a lot because it is cheap and easy and makes enough for about 6 bowls if you serve it with brown rice. Curry paste makes it happen in a snap. The original recipe was something I found in a free magazine from Waitrose...it may have been a Jamie Oliver recipe. It definitely used Balti curry paste, but now we just chuck in whatever curry paste we have on hand. It's all good. This curry is very forgiving.
Easy Peasy Curry
1 onion, diced
half a red pepper, diced
garlic
1 TB chopped ginger root
1 tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 tin tomatoes
4 TB curry paste
600g potatoes, cubed
200g (about 2 heaping cups) frozen peas, run under hot water to take the ice off
brown rice to serve
1. Chop the potatoes and boil them until easily pierced by a knife, Drain and reserve.
2. Meanwhile in another large pot, cook the onion and garlic and ginger in a splash of oil or vegetable stock until softened. Add the chickpeas, tinned tomatoes and curry paste and turn up the heat and when it starts to bubble turn the heat back down and simmer with the lid on, stirring occasionally.
3. When the rice is nearly done, add the potatoes and defrosted peas to the curry and heat until piping hot. Taste for salt and pepper. Serve over rice.
That is literally it. We have it the first night with rice and the second night with cream-style corn which you can either buy in a tin or whack some sweetcorn and milk in a blender and make.
