There are great suggestions going around about what to do to pass the time in self-isolation and learning to cook is one that is very popular.
The thing is, you’ll probably discover you don’t have at least three of the ingredients needed. Are you going to risk your health and the health of those around you to nip to the store for Sweet Paprika when you have Smoked Paprika on the shelf? No, you won’t, because you are a responsible citizen and you will substitute ingredients instead. So I think every ‘recipe giver’ should include alternative ingredients that can be used as substitutes.
To help start this idea, I have shared a link at the end of this post to one of my favourite recipes. It’s Chickpea Curry and it’s a quick, easy, vegetarian recipe that is very tasty created by a couple of Irish chefs called the Happy Pear.
As I said, you probably won’t have all the ingredients, so here’s my substitute ingredient suggestions:
If you don’t have chickpeas you could use cannellini beans (white beans).
Coconut milk is also required – I find this difficult to get in Italy so it’s probably not something you have in your cupboard, so you could use cream instead.
If you don’t make curries regularly you may not have curry powder you can just leave that out, and if you don’t have paprika you could leave that out as well.
If you don’t have a lime you could use a lemon.
Coriander is not a thing in Italy, I can’t find it anywhere, I’m growing my own now, but in the meantime I use flat leaf parsley instead.
So there you have it. Follow the instructions on the link below, whip this up, using the substitutes and you have my favourite dish Chickpea Curry … without chickpeas or curry … actually what you have made is White Beans in A Creamy, Parsley, Lemony Sauce which will probably look very bland and taste like crap.
But hey, keep a note of the substitutes you use for all the recipes you try, and you never know you may have your own recipe book ready to print by the end of quarantine 🙂
Here’s the link to my favourite recipe: https://thehappypear.ie/recipes/chickpea-curry/
