comfort food from another place

After a long and surprisingly hectic day at work, I had one thing on my mind: comfort food. I wanted something warm, spicy, and rejuvenating. Dinner had to be easy, cheap, and use up some things I already had on hand: a tall order.

Suddenly, a craving for Indian food hit. My previous experiences trying to cook Indian food didn't go over too well, but then I happened upon this recipe for chickpea and spinach curry. Easy! Healthy! Almost identical to what our friend's mom had made for us months ago! Exactly what I wanted! And I could cheat a little with a magical ingredient called Red Curry Paste. Ha-le-lu-jah.

It also called for spinach, which was the one veggie in the garden ready to harvest. Before covering up the raised bed (again) for our latest, greatest cold snap, I carefully trimmed back our baby spinach, brought it inside, and rinsed it. Ryan took one look at it, then looked at me to exclaim, "Wow! It looks like real spinach!"

Indeed. Real spinach. Real, delicious spinach. From our backyard. A gal could get used to this.

This was one of the easiest recipes I've thrown together in a while—not to mention one of the most satisfying. Even if you've never cooked Indian food before, you'll be able to master this in one try. We scooped it up with multi-grain tortillas from Central Market, which we lightly toasted in a dry cast iron skillet (they're great toasted, too). And maybe we added a little butter on the top. Just maybe a little. . . a little bit of butter. Yeah.

I actually followed this recipe at Jen Loves Kev (which she got from off of broadway) pretty square-on, resisting the temptation to add yogurt at the end or put more ginger in at the beginning. But, feel free to riff on the general theme. Who knows what you might discover.

This can be easily made out of pantry staples, which makes it even better: a can of garbanzos, a can of chopped tomatoes, and a few common spices. Looks like we'll be stocking red curry paste from now on, too.

And can I just point out how healthy this is? A high-protein, low-fat, antioxidant-rich, ginger-spiked dinner with a multi-grain side. Makes for great leftovers to boot. . .

What are you waiting for?!?