Creamy Roasted Red-Pepper Chickpea Curry

Creamy Roasted Red-Pepper Chickpea Curry

This creamy vegan curry sauce takes less than 30 minutes to whip up and is the perfect week-night dinner. Loads of creamy vegan sauce recipes use soaked cashews to replicate that cream-like texture without using actual cows-milk cream but, realistically, who remembers to put their cashews on to soak the night before? I have been caught out so many times by planning to make a recipe and then only realising as I start making it that I should have started 24 hours ago. Not this baby though, oh no. The secret to this hearty vegan sauce is, my new favourite ingredient, silken tofu.

Blending silken tofu into the sauce means you can’t taste it at all, but you get this gorgeous, thick sauce that you can’t really believe is vegan! Coupled with the smokey flavour of the roasted red pepper, this is an absolute winner.

I originally served this with brown rice but we had the leftovers as a pasta sauce and it worked really well!

Creamy Roasted Red-Pepper Chickpea Curry

Serves 2 – 3

Ingredients:

2 red peppers

2 tsp olive oil

1 white onion

1 clove garlic

1 tbsp smoked paprika

1/4 tsp chilli flakes

1 tsp sriracha

4 tbsp nutritional yeast

1 tsp apple cider vinegar

150g silken tofu

Pinch salt and black pepper

6 cubes frozen spinach

1 can chickpeas

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 Celcius.
2. Cut the red peppers in half and place cut-side-down on a lined baking tray. Brush with 1 tbsp olive oil and roast for 25 – 30 mins, or until they start to blacken and blister.
3. Meanwhile, finely chop the onion and garlic. Heat the remaining 1 tsp oil in a large non-stick pan and sauté the onion and garlic over a medium heat until soft and starting to brown.
4. Once the peppers are cooked, remove the stems and seeds and add the flesh to the blender along with the onion and garlic, smoked paprika, chilli flakes, sriracha, nutritional yeast, apple cider vinegar, silken tofu, salt and pepper.
5. Blend until smooth – this may take a few minutes – and then pour the sauce into a large non-stick pan (you can use the same one you cooked the onions in!).
6. Gently warm the sauce over a low heat – don’t allow it to boil!
7. Meanwhile, defrost the spinach according to the package instructions (mine took around 4 minutes in the microwave) and drain and rinse the chickpeas.
8. Add the spinach and chickpeas to the sauce and stir to combine. Keep over a low heat for 5 – 10 minutes or until warm through.
9. Serve with rice or your choice of grain.