Spiced chickpea tray bake with tahini yoghurt

Simple lunch with all the colour and all the flavours to brighten a cold day.

Aside from the traditional recipes, some of my favourite meals are the ones that are, in essence, a fridge cleaning. Trying to make the best out of what’s lingering on the shelves of the fridge, supported by what’s in the pantry.

It wasn’t always this way, though. Turning a seemingly random selection of ingredients into something tasty takes practice. It takes the experience of knowing what works together and what doesn’t. You need to know the tricks to build big flavours and interesting textures out of something seemingly simple. And you need to be able to bind it all together so the dish is more than the sum of its parts.

In no small part thanks to my deep dive into food cultures so different from the one I grew up in, I’m now quite confident in this exercise. In fact, I relish in it. Restrictions can trigger creativity, resulting in dishes that are very tasty – delicious, even.

Surprisingly many of the resulting meals are worth writing down. As I instantly did with this one, which became an instant favourite with my Norwegian readers when I first published it a couple of years ago. It seems this splash of colour, flavours and popping textures was just what people needed at this time of year.

I’ve used pumpkin here, but feel free to substitute sweet potatoes. If you don’t have red onions, use regular yellow ones. Choose your favourite herbs – coriander (cilantro), for example, would work really well in place of the classic parsley/mint combo I’ve gone for.

If you like, add a scattering of toasted nuts – even some roasted salted almonds, if you have some around.

I eat this as is, perhaps with a slice of bread if I’ve got a good one laying around.

Afiyet olsun!