Crunchy Indian Marsala Chickpeas - Yummies From My Thai Kitchen

School starts back for the year in just over a week's time and, with it will come the demand for healthy snacks to tide us over in the evening, when Mama is in need of a chill-out-glass-of-wine and dinner might still be a couple of hours away. Such is the life of the solo-entrepreneurial mom - plastering over cracks and creating good bridging solutions.

Snacks in Thailand are generally NOT in the healthy zone - just a horrendous amount of palm oil fried thingies, GMO corn, nasty soy product, chemicals, chemical flavorings and artificial coloring's. In plastic packaging. Not on my watch. After learning that the most common rotation crop for GMO cotton and GMO soy is peanuts (yup - soak up that glyphosate!) I kinda lost my taste for them. But how many days in a row can we realistically eat hummus? Miss 14 likes to change things up more than I need to, so this mama has been planning and practicing some new snacks to keep the after-school hungries at bay.

They look good, no?? Tasted even better!! .

How to make?

Step 1. I cook a big batch of chickpeas overnight in the slow cooker. NO canned crap in our world. I use one portion of the cooked chickpeas for a chickpea-rocket salad or a chickpea-pumpkin Thai red curry. Some are set aside for the always-on-tap roasted pumpkin hummus. And today I'm going to use the balance to make Crunchy Roasted Marsala Chickpeas.

Step 2. Drain and place the cooked chickpeas in a bowl. Yes, I salted them lightly in the cooking process.

Step 3. In a mortar and pestle, smash up a generous quantity of garlic with some virgin coconut or rice bran oil till you have a smooth paste. For me "generous" is a whole bulb of garlic. For my more conservative bland-food western friends, maybe 5-6 cloves will seem a lot. Only a little bit of oil initially, so the pounding doesn't result in oil spraying all over you and your kitchen. Why pounding and not chopping and mincing with a knife western style? I have learned in Asia that crushing the spices releases infinitely more flavour.

Step 4. To your garlic paste, add some mineral or Himalayan salt. We use only pure mineral salt from the fair-trade salt wells on the Thai-Laos border. Add some Garam Marsala powder, Cumin powder, Coriander powder, chili powder and a little freshly ground black pepper. Today I also added a little turmeric powder. Normally I would use fresh turmeric root by preference and pound it together with the garlic, but I ran out and had some nice quality turmeric powder on-hand someone had gifted me from India. Add some extra oil at this point, so you can coat all your chickpeas. I use a combination of extra virgin cold pressed coconut oil and rice bran oil.

Step 5. Pour the paste over the cooked chickpeas. Mix well, being careful not to mash up your peas.

Step 6. Put on a flat tray in a hot oven and bake until crispy.

Step 7: Cool and enjoy! With wine, beer, fresh lime-soda or freshly squeezed pineapple juice. Yummy as a garnish on salads... great to round out and increase the bio-available protein levels of school lunch boxes.

#foodismedicine but NO NEED for it to be dull or boring. Planning is everything.

Enjoying the varied tastes and natural yummy Indian flavours in my Thai kitchen. Sincere gratitude to @eco-alex - our Indian food and web guru on the ground in Tamil Nadu, South India - for the spice consultation.

BlissednBlessed,

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