Courgette and Chickpea and Coconut Milk

Hot food in less than 10 minutes

This meal - my Thursday dinner - is slop on a plate in all of its quick and easy glory – it looks like nothing but it took minutes to make and tasted incredible.  This is my staple food; dumplings and five hour cooking is fun and I love it from time to time, but most of the time I want to eat before 23:00.

Like this, but in fabric ballet shoes, and with less flexibility.
And with hairier legs and more dried skin.
And the fastest growing toenails in the world.

Thursdays are always a good day for me, I start work early which means I finish work early and then I head down to Deda for an adult beginners ballet class.  I am not a graceful woman, but this class is  a joy in my life, it manages to give me hope and peace and excitement and energy every single week.  And it's proper exercise, we come out sweating, but we also come out jumping around and laughing.  And so much more than that, it gives me a hour a week where I can feel at peace in my shell, and know that my body is moving in the ways that I want it to,  that I have control over what it is doing and what is happening to it.  I had a lot of health issues when I was younger, I spent a year unable to really get out of bed, I spent a lot of time in a wheelchair, and so to have this hour where I feel completely in control of my body and to be able to feel it learn new things is amazing.

I can't dance on a full stomach, but I really can't dance on an empty stomach and this Thursday I had eaten wasabi peas* and giant chocolate buttons for breakfast (not together) and wasabi peas and giant chocolate buttons for lunch (not together).  Which is not really enough.  I had about an hour before the class started so grabbed a bowl of soup from the cafe (such good food, such good soup, such good service.  I love the cube!) which was perfect, but after an hour of sweating and I wanted more food when I got home.

My wife was cooking some garlicky fried courgettes to go with some left over risotto and offered me half of them.  With the addition of a couple of things form the fridge this became a beautiful bowl of food:

Courgette and Chickpea and Coconut Milk:

serves 2

Stuff from my fridge makes a lovely meal.

Ingredients:

• 1 courgette
• 0.5 can chickpeas
• a few tablespoons Soy Yoghurt
• some garlic puree
• some lemon juice
• some chili sauce
• some soy sauce
• some creamed coconut, grated off the block
• 1 spring onion

Method:

• Fry the courgettes until coloured, about five minutes.  Add the chickpeas, some yoghurt, some garlic puree, some lemon juice, some chili sauce, some soy sauce (10 seconds each, 1 minute total) a about two tablespoons of grated creamed coconut, just grate it straight off the block (remove the plastic first!) (2 minutes, including the time taken to find a grater).

cooking instructions 1:
Shove it all in a pan

cooking instructions 2:
Stir

This would be tasty food, but it is so easy to lift a meal into something delicious, this time I freshened all the flavours by adding some chopped spring onion right at the end of the cooking (2 minutes to peel and chop), just stir it in and then serve.  The fresh light flavours bring it all together and make it something more than its parts.

You can do a similar thing with a handful of fresh herbs, stirring coriander in to curry or stew with make it more than it was before, or parsley into warning winter foods.  Fresh lemon juice does the same, or finely sliced celery leaf would work too.  The key is to add a new flavour right at the end, and it brings everything together.

Time taken to make this meal: 10 minutes, start to finish.  BOOM.

*Wasabi peas seem to the the quintessential middle class snack to me.  “What's that your eating?  Peanuts?”  “Oh no darhling, wasabi peas!”  But I do love the spicy little things.  And who am I to deny my middle class heritage?  True story: I overheard a conversation where someone said “It's to'ally legit, it's no back 'a lorry” and thought they were saying “It's totally legit, it's no baccalaureate”.  They were talking second hand phones, I heard a discussion on educational systems.  I couldn't be more middle class if I tried.