Curry Chickpeas with Cherry tomatoes & a cooling cucumber yogurt sauce.

Each week I select one meatless dish for the entire family. Here's why..

1.) Meatless dishes require less prep and are easy to make

2.) They tend to be healthy and low calorie, so this helps to keep me on my health goals.

3.) They lower the grocery bill.

Now the challenge of course is creating recipes that my entire family will go for. I find that using some of the same spices I use in family favorites like curry makes it a lot more palatable. Here is one my favorite meatless dishes that the whole family loves.

Curry Chickpeas with Cherry tomatoes & cucumber yogurt sauce.

½ cups full-fat Greek or Indian yogurt

½ cucumber, finely chopped

¼ cup basil leaves, finely chopped

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 garlic clove, finely grated

½ small onion , chopped

1 lemon

Salt and black pepper

¼ cup ghee butter

1 pint cherry tomatoes

1 (15-ounce) can chickpeas, rinsed and drained

1½ teaspoons curry powder

¼ cup water or vegetable broth

Rice, pita bread or focaccia to serve

In a medium bowl, stir together the yogurt, cucumbers, basil, garlic, zest of half the lemon and tbsp of lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Cut the remaining lemon into wedges for serving.

In a large skillet, heat ghee butter over medium until shimmering. Lower the heat and add curry powder and stir in the onions and let cook for about 1 minute. Now add tomatoes and moisten with water or broth to prevent the curry from burning. Cover and cook about 3 minutes, Add the chickpeas and season with salt and pepper. Cook covered another 2 to 4 minutes (until tomatoes are tender and bursting). Turn off the heat and remove from heat.

Spoon tomatoes and chickpeas onto a plate, top with cucumber raita. Serve with either rice, pita or focaccia and garnish with lemon wedges.