Butter Chicken/Chickpeas (Vegan)

For a long time I've been making a vegetarian variation on Butter Chicken: Butter Chickpeas. It's full of cream and butter, which makes it delicious...but not particularly vegan. So now that we live in a comparative land of plenty for vegetarian products, I thought I'd play around with a few other ingredients. Tonight was the first test of the new recipe, and it was rad. So here we go:

Vegan Butter Chicken (feeds 2-3)

Ingredients

1 medium-sized yellow onion
3-5 cloves of garlic
4 teaspoons minced ginger
2 tablespoons cooking oil
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 teaspoons garam masala
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon paprika
3-4 tablespoons tomato paste
2 medium-sized tomatoes
1 cup vegetable stock (I use stock/boullion cubes, but I'm sure packet or homemade stock would be fine)
Vegetarian chicken pieces (as many as you like - depends on whether you want your meal with a high sauce:meat ratio, or if you're all about the fake chicken)
3/4 cup of plain soy yoghurt (or thereabouts)
Rice for everyone!

Method (takes 45 mins-1 hour if you have nothing prepared in advance)

1. Dice the onion into small pieces.
2. Mince the garlic, or, if you're living in a new country and you don't have anything other than a knife to prepare things, cut up some garlic into really, really small pieces.
3. Repeat number 2, but with the ginger.
4. Put the onion, garlic and ginger into a pan with the cooking oil and cook over medium heat until the onion has softened.
5. Add all the spices. Cook for 3-4 more minutes until things smell super-delicious.
6. Mix in the tomato paste and vegetable stock. I suggest doing the stock first as it seems the paste tends to stick if you put it in without extra water.
7. Turn down the heat to medium-low. Leave to simmer.
8. While waiting, dice the tomatoes finely. Add to pan.
9. Add fake chicken pieces.
10. Leave to simmer for at least 20 minutes. Check on it during this time to see if it needs more water. Alternatively, add an extra 3/4 cup of water at the start and leave it to simmer down to a thicker consistency. To be honest I'm not great with simmering times as I often get distracted doing other things (YouTube, sex, reading online comics) so I just use guesswork and additional water until I'm ready to eat.
11. Prepare the rice. Depending on the way you cook rice, you'll need to time the completion of this step with the end of the simmering stage. Don't panic if you forget. Just add a bit more water to the sauce-and-fake-chicken and leave it a-simmering until your rice is done.
12. A few minutes before the rice is done, mix the yoghurt into the sauce-and-fake-chicken (there should be a better word for this). You may wish to turn up the heat slightly as the yoghurt will cool down the meal significantly and can take a few minutes to heat up. Today I used soy yoghurt that had been in the fridge 10 days instead of the recommended 5. I don't kniw if this helped or not.
13. Serve and feel proud of your achievements.

Next time I'll refine and post a photo. Until then, let me know if you try it. I'm up for improvements if you have any.