Chickpea stew with coconut milk – mild curry in the pot over the fire

Four tins and a bag

This is the way to remember the whole dish. Two tins of chickpeas, a pack of chopped tomatoes and a tin of coconut milk, plus a spice bag you mix at home. With an onion, a little garlic and ginger and a sweet potato, the stew is complete.

The rule of thumb by the fire is just as short: spices in the fat, coconut at a simmer. Dry spices need half a minute in hot oil to release their aroma, but they burn fast over embers. Coconut milk, on the other hand, likes a gentle simmer. If it boils hard, the fat separates and settles as a yellow film on top. That's harmless and tastes the same, but the sauce isn't as glossy.

At home or by the fire

At home you mix the spice bag and chop the onion, garlic and ginger. Peel the sweet potato and cut it into cubes of about 1.5 centimetres, so they have time to soften in a quarter of an hour. The vegetables can go in a bag or a tub, and none of it needs to be kept cold on an ordinary day out.

The tins are heavy but tough. Tinned coconut milk and chickpeas keep at room temperature as long as they're unopened. What needs to stay cold is the yoghurt. Don't leave it out for more than two hours in summer heat, and never in the sun.

By the fire you fry, pour and stir. The only thing to measure outdoors is the water for the rice.

Rice, bread or tunnbröd

Rice by the fire. Rinse 3 dl jasmine or basmati rice and cook it in a saucepan with a lid in 4.5 dl water with a little salt. Let it simmer at the edge of the embers for 10–12 minutes, until the water has gone, then put the pan beside the fire with the lid on for another ten minutes. Don't lift the lid in the meantime. It's the steam that finishes the rice.

Rice from home. You can also cook the rice at home, but then the same rule applies as for pre-boiled potatoes. Rice can carry spores of the bacterium Bacillus cereus, which survive boiling and germinate when the rice sits lukewarm. The toxin the bacterium then produces causes vomiting, and it isn't destroyed when you reheat the rice. So cool the rice quickly at home, ideally spread out in a shallow tub, put it in the fridge and carry it cold in a cool box. Heat it until it's steaming and eat it straight away. The same reasoning applies to potatoes in baked potatoes in the embers.

Bread. This stew is almost better with bread than with rice, since the sauce is made for dipping. A tunnbröd on a hot stone cooks in a minute per side and is similar to the flatbreads chickpea curry is often eaten with. A frying-pan bread can be cooked in a pan alongside while the stew simmers, and the children can grill stick bread over the flames. Ready-made tunnbröd or tortillas from the shop work too, warmed for a second or two on the grill.

Dried chickpeas – why we go for tins

Dried chickpeas weigh less in the rucksack, but they don't suit the fire. They need to soak for at least twelve hours and then boil, often for one to two hours, before they're properly soft. That's a lot of wood, a lot of water and a long wait for something a tin solves in a second.

If you still want to use dried chickpeas, do the groundwork at home. Soak them as the packet says, or for at least twelve hours if it says nothing, pour away the soaking water, rinse them and boil them until they're completely soft. Cool them quickly and bring them cold, or freeze them in portions. About 2.5 dl dried chickpeas, roughly 200 grams, gives about the same amount as two tins. Pulses contain lectins that can cause nausea and stomach ache if they aren't properly cooked, but the lectins are destroyed by soaking and boiling. Tinned chickpeas are already fully cooked.

Leftovers and storage

Chickpea stew is often even better the next day, but the leftovers must cool quickly. That goes for the stew, and even more so for the rice.

• Cool quickly. Livsmedelsverket (the Swedish Food Agency) says that food that won't be eaten straight away should cool as quickly as possible. Divide anything over half a litre into smaller tubs, or stand it in a cold water bath. If it's only a few degrees above freezing or colder outside, the tubs can cool there.
• Rice on its own. Rice that has sat lukewarm for several hours by the fire shouldn't be kept, because the vomiting toxin from Bacillus cereus survives reheating. Anything left over straight from the pan is cooled quickly, in the same way as the stew, and heated until it's steaming all the way through.
• In the fridge the stew often keeps for several days at 4 degrees. Heat it until the whole pot is bubbling and stir, because it thickens and gets hot at the edge long before the middle.
• The stew freezes well in flat bags. The coconut milk can separate a little when it thaws, but it comes back together when you stir it while reheating.

How to wash up the pot and keep things clean at the fire site without running water is explained in hygiene and washing up outdoors.

Allergens

The yoghurt contains milk and bread contains gluten. Curry powder can contain mustard or celery, and sometimes fenugreek, which is a legume, so read the packet. Coconut comes from a palm and isn't related to other nuts. It isn't one of the nuts that have to be labelled, and coconut allergy is very rare but does occur. Chickpeas are legumes, like peanuts, and people who are allergic to one legume are often allergic to several.