Vegetable and Chickpea Coconut traybake

Not the best photos for this recipe, but I needed to do a quick write up to remember the ingredients as I managed to get the flavour I was aiming for. After seeing the Caribbean coconut and banana curry on Sneaky Veg blog's Instagram feed the other day, I wanted to make something similar but with more of a Thai flavour to it rather than Caribbean. 

In my typical style, I didn't use precise measurements for cooking ingredients so it was a bit of guesswork going into it but it turned out great. 

Ingredients:

1 sweet potato (chopped into large cubes)

Handful of frozen butternut squash

1 onion - chopped

6-7 cloves of garlic (skin on)

2 x small green peppers - chopped into largish pieces

2 x carrots - roughly chopped into chunks

Generous amount of root ginger - finely grated 

Rapeseed oil

1 tin coconut milk (400g)

1 tin chickpeas (400g)

Kaffir lime leaves

Lemongrass (I made the mistake of using lemongrass tea and so it left little bits I needed to pick out of the dish afterwards)

Half tsp cinnamon

Half tsp turmeric

Half tsp ground cumin

Fresh coriander to garnish

I also happened to have a few slices of dried lime so I threw those in as well for the second stage of cooking. 

Method: 

1. Pre-heat oven to 195C (fan) and drizzle some oil in a large baking tray.

2. Add the chopped sweet potato, butternut squash, chopped carrot, chopped onion, garlic, green peppers and grated ginger to the pan and toss until covered in oil. I tend to keep a piece of root ginger in the freezer so I grated it straight from that. 

3. Roast in the oven for around 25 minutes until the vegetables look roasted. You may need to stir occasionally to stop them sticking to the baking tray. 

4. Remove from the oven, reduced the temperature to 185C. 

5. Add the coconut milk, the rinsed and drained chickpeas, the kaffir lime leaves, the lemongrass, and the spices (half a tsp each of cinnamon, turmeric and cumin) and mix. 

6. Place back in the oven and roast for another 10-15 minutes or so. 

7. Remove from the oven, garnish with fresh coriander and serve with rice or couscous or quinoa. 

I think it would work well with so many types of veg - I can imagine cauliflower would be great or green beans or some spinach stirred through at the end of cooking.