
It’s dark and cold outside, autumn is coming and you’re in the need of some real comforting food. What better then, than a chickpea, pumpkin and red lentil curry! This dish is very suitable for freezing and making lunch-boxes since it keeps fresh for a long time in the freezer. The combination of chickpea, lentils, and pumpkin makes this dish really hearty and also packs it with a lot of great plant-based nutrition.

I chose to make cauliflower rice to this dish but you can easily substitute it for white, or brown rice. The good thing about cauliflower rice though is that it is very low in carbs and still makes you feel full as if you had been eating real rice. Making cauliflower rice is really easy. You can either break the florets into a kitchen aid with the S-blade attached and mince it into rice. You can grind it with a greater also, this takes a bit more time but the result will be exactly the same.

I think raw cauliflower has a bit of an aftertaste, so I usually fry it for a while in a skillet to make it “dryer” and get rid of that raw taste allowing it to have a bit more “nutty” taste.

In this vegan recipe, I bake the pumpkin in the oven before I make a puree out of it. I used a butternut squash, which has a nice nutty pumpkin like flavour, but you could use whichever pumpkin you like. You will wrap the pumpkin in tin foil and then bake it in the oven on quite low heat for about an hour. The tin foil wrap will contract and keep the heat, steam baking the pumpkin.

When the pumpkin is ready (it should be soft all the way through and you should be able to peel it without effort), let it cool for a little while and then scrape the meat out into a kitchen aid or blender mixing it until it turns into a puree.

When the preparations are done, this chickpea, pumpkin and red lentil curry, is very easy to make. You pretty much just put all ingredients in large saucepan and cook them to desired consistency and taste.

If you are unsure what type of pumpkin to use, you can have look at this list and see if it helps you choose the right pumpkin for you.