Chicken Tomato and Chickpea Curry with Cavalo Nero
A few months ago in the Australian Healthy Food Guide, there was an article on Sprout, a cooking school in Adelaide, run by Dietitian Themis Chryssidis and Callum Hann, who was a contestant on Masterchef. Given that I run healthy cooking workshops here in Sydney I was most interested to read about them.
The article included a curry paste recipe, along with three curries using the paste. The paste and the curries all looked and sounded so good I had to give them a go.
I decided to start with their chicken curry, but when it came time to make it I was in a hurry (curry in a hurry?). I didn’t have time to prepare the curry paste, so I adapted the recipe a bit to include about 1/3 of most of the ingredients from the curry paste. I also made a few other little changes which included that since I didn’t have any spinach, I substituted Cavalo Nero. That’s right, I really can’t stick to a recipe!
The curry was really delicious and since it made enough for two nights, it was even tastier the second time.
Here is my version…

Served with rice plus, which is a blend of brown, basmati, red and black rice, quinoa, barley and black sesame seeds (there is a gluten free option also available)
Chicken, Tomato and Chickpea Curry with Cavalo Nero
Serves 4-6
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 400g skinless chicken breast, cut into bite sized pieces
- 1 large brown onion, chopped
- 1 large red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, crushed
- 1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
- 1 tablespoon curry powder (I used Herbie’s Korma curry powder)
- 1 tablespoon garam masala (I used Screaming Seeds garam masala)
- 1 bunch coriander, roots and stems separated from leaves, roots and stems finely chopped, leaves roughly chopped
- juice of 1/2 lemon
- 400g can diced tomatoes
- 400g can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
- 1 bunch Cavalo Nero, washed well and chopped into 1 cm wide pieces (or use a bunch of English spinach or silverbeet)
- 1 heaped teaspoon Massel chicken stock powder
- 1 tablespoon tamari or soy sauce
- long grain brown rice, quinoa, barley or rice plus to serve
Directions:
- Heat a large saucepan over medium heat. When hot add 2 teaspoons of oil and the chicken and cook until golden brown on both sides. This should only take 2-3 minutes.
- Remove chicken from pan and set aside.
- Return pan to medium heat, add the remaining 2 teaspoons of oil and onion and fry until golden.
- Add garlic, ginger, curry powder and garam masala and cook for 2 minutes.
- Add tomatoes, lemon juice and chopped coriander roots and stems to pan and cook for a further 2 minutes.
- Add chickpeas, cavalo nero and 1-1 1/2 cups of water to pan and cook with lid on for 10 minutes, until cavalo nero is soft and cooked through.
- Return chicken to the pan and cook for 2-3 minutes until heated and cooked through.
- Stir through chopped coriander leaves and serve on top of rice, barley, quinoa or rice plus.
Per Serve (4 serves): 1398kJ or 333 calories; P 29g Fat 14g SFat 3g CHO 19g Fibre 9g
[…] few weeks ago I posted a chicken curry recipe that I found in the Australian Healthy Food Guide (HFG). I was supposed to make a curry […]