I did a ton of cooking around the holidays. I even took photos with the plan to create blog posts. And then I didn't. Like so many other people, as life slowly began to cycle back towards a sort of sense of normalcy, sanity-saving projects such as these have gotten gradually shunted to the background. I honestly can't believe I used to do a new recipe every day and managed to keep it up for a while! So, moving forward, no promises! I'll do as I can. Otherwise, it becomes work and that's no fun!
Alison Roman's chocolate chunk shortbread recipe is one of the most-read blog posts. My sister (who introduced me to Alison in the first place), informed me that she also has a bunch of home videos on her YouTube channel. One thing I really love about Alison's cooking is her recipes are not very complicated and she prides herself on using ingredients many of us would probably already have. So, here's her chickpea stew--a great weekday dish!
Here's the cast!
I heated the olive oil in a Dutch oven and added chopped onions, garlic, and ginger. Garlic and onions are heavenly together but when you add that ginger...mmmm.
When the onions were translucent, I added salt, pepper, red chili flakes, and ground turmeric.
I let that go for about a minute. Burnt turmeric is horrible but "raw" turmeric is not lovely either. It's a balance, people.
The canned chickpeas were rinsed and drained before adding to the mixture. I refrained from picking at any loose skins that I saw. If Alison does it, so can I.
When the chickpeas were starting to develop lightly browned edges, I removed some for garnish, then mashed the remainder with the back of my spoon. Not to mash them completely, just to release the starch to thicken the broth.
Here are the reserved chickpeas.
Then a couple of cups of broth (I used vegetable) and two cans of full-fat coconut milk are added. You can see the chickpeas still have a lot of texture.
While the soup simmered, I removed the stems from some kale and gave it a good rinse.
At the start of the simmering process, the mixture was sort of a pale yellow.
At the end of the process, the color had deepened and it had definitely thickened.
I am always amused by how much space leafy greens take up at first.
I just kept pushing at them with my spoon and in less than a minute, they had compacted down to this.
Since kale is a tough green, I let it simmer for about 15 minutes and kept coming back to stir it around.
The creamy soup is lovely over rice and the kale really helps to cut some of the heaviness. Very nice! Eric and Chris both gave it a thumb's up. Tom is not a fan of coconut milk but he did taste a spoonful and said, "hmm." Then he ate leftover pizza. Oh well.
Here's the promised link/recipe:
Comments
Post a Comment