Harissa roast vegetables with chickpeas and yoghurt

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A tin of chickpeas costs about a dollar twenty at Woolworths on Mann Street, Gosford, give or take, and that’s roughly the moment this whole recipe made sense to me as something worth writing down. I’d been roasting vegetables with harissa for years without much of a plan, mostly because I had a jar of the stuff going stale in the fridge door and a tray that needed filling. Then one Sunday I added chickpeas straight into the roasting tray instead of serving them on the side, and dolloped yoghurt over the top instead of fussing about with a proper dressing, and the whole thing clicked into a dinner I now make close to weekly.

Why harissa roast vegetables work as a weeknight dinner

Harissa is doing most of the heavy lifting here. It’s a North African chilli paste, smoky and a bit sour from the preserved lemon or vinegar depending whose jar you buy, and it turns plain roast veg from something you eat because it’s good for you into something you actually want to eat. That matters more than people admit. Vegetable-forward doesn’t mean boring, and if your pumpkin tastes like wet cardboard with good intentions, you won’t cook it twice.

The chickpeas roasting alongside the vegetables pick up all that harissa oil and go slightly crisp at the edges, which gives you textural contrast without needing a separate pan or a protein you have to watch like a hawk. Chuck natural yoghurt over the top at the end and you’ve got cool, tangy and rich sitting against hot, spiced and earthy. That’s the whole trick of a good dinner plate, as far as I’m concerned: contrast, not just a pile of good ingredients sitting next to each other being virtuous.

What vegetables actually hold up to this treatment

Root vegetables are the backbone. Pumpkin, carrot, sweet potato, they’ve got enough sugar in them to caramelise properly in a hot oven and enough structure not to collapse into mush. Red onion wedges go sweet and a bit jammy at the edges. Cauliflower florets are non-negotiable in my kitchen for this one, because the char you get on the tips of the florets with harissa is close to the best thing that happens to cauliflower all year.

Zucchini and capsicum are fine additions but they cook faster and hold more water, so they go in later or get cut thicker, otherwise you end up with a tray that’s half roasted and half steamed in its own juice. I learned that one the hard way more than once, standing over a tray wondering why the zucchini had turned into something resembling a wet sponge while the pumpkin was still rock hard in the middle.

Ingredients

• 800g pumpkin (Kent or butternut), peeled and cut into 3cm chunks
• 2 large carrots, cut into batons
• 1 red onion, cut into thick wedges
• 1 small cauliflower, cut into florets
• 2 x 400g tins chickpeas, drained and patted dry
• 3 tbsp harissa paste
• 60ml olive oil, plus extra for serving
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• Sea salt and black pepper
• 250g natural Greek yoghurt
• 1 small garlic clove, finely grated
• Juice of half a lemon
• Small handful coriander leaves, roughly chopped
• 2 tbsp toasted slivered almonds

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 220°C (200°C fan). You want it properly hot, not a timid 180 that’ll give you soft, pale vegetables instead of char.
2. In a large bowl, toss the pumpkin, carrot, red onion and cauliflower with 2 tablespoons of the harissa, the cumin, olive oil, and a generous pinch of salt and pepper. Make sure every piece gets coated, hands are the best tool here.
3. Tip the vegetables onto two large baking trays lined with baking paper, spreading them out so nothing is crowded. Crowd the tray and you’ll steam the lot, so use two trays if you need to.
4. Roast for 20 minutes, then remove the trays and add the drained chickpeas, tossed through with the remaining tablespoon of harissa, scattering them among the vegetables.
5. Return to the oven for a further 15 to 20 minutes, until the vegetables are well charred at the edges and the chickpeas have gone a bit crisp. Taste as you go, give one chickpea a nibble, and if it needs more salt, add it now while everything’s hot.
6. While the tray is in the oven, mix the yoghurt with the grated garlic and lemon juice, and a small pinch of salt. Set aside.
7. Pile the roasted vegetables and chickpeas onto a large platter, dollop the yoghurt over the top rather than mixing it through, and scatter with coriander and toasted almonds. Finish with a drizzle of good olive oil.

Serving it properly

This works as a stand-alone dinner, serves four as a main with some crusty bread to mop up the yoghurt and the harissa oil pooling at the bottom of the tray. It also sits nicely alongside something like the miso-glazed salmon with greens if you want a protein-heavier night, or next to the shaved fennel and orange salad if you’re feeding a crowd and want something lighter to balance it. I’ve also folded leftovers through couscous for lunch the next day, which does the job without feeling like you’re eating the same dinner twice.

A variation worth trying

Swap the cauliflower for broccoli when it’s cheap, which on the Central Coast tends to be whenever the independent grocers get a glut from down the valley. You lose a bit of the cauliflower’s sweetness but gain something a little more bitter and green, which plays well against the harissa. If you can’t find harissa paste, a mix of smoked paprika, cumin and a good pinch of chilli flakes with extra olive oil gets you most of the way there, though I’ll be honest and say it’s not quite the same thing. Don’t bother trying to make harissa from scratch on a weeknight either, that’s a Sunday job if you’ve got the inclination, not something you do after work with the oven already heating.

A word on the chickpeas themselves

Tinned chickpeas are underrated as a protein source in this kind of cooking, and Nutrition Australia lists legumes among the core food groups worth eating more of, alongside vegetables and wholegrains, for good reason. They’re cheap, they don’t need soaking overnight like dried ones, and roasted properly they’ve got a nuttiness that plain boiled chickpeas never quite get to. If you’re trying to eat more vegetable-forward meals without feeling like you’re missing a protein, this tray does that job without you having to think about it twice. The CSIRO’s dietary guidelines work along similar lines, pushing for more plant-based protein in the average Australian diet, and a tray like this ticks that box without feeling like a compromise.

If you’re looking at ways to cut back on grocery spend without eating worse, this is one of the cheaper dinners in my rotation, and it holds up well against anything in the piece on eating well when the grocery budget is tight. For more ideas along these lines, the recipe category has a fair few vegetable-forward dinners worth working through.

– Dave Forsythe, Golden Door Living kitchen

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