A recipe

[jenett]

I posted last night in a tighter filter about my herbalist visits. (I'll be doing a summing up post that's unfiltered sometime late next week, probably, but some of this is internal processing that I'm doing in stages, y'know?)

Last night, we talked about diet a bit, and I mentioned that one of my favorite recipes is, apparently, something I should make bunches more of. And someone asked for the recipe.



I'll note that this is not the prettiest of recipes the way I do it (because I generally smush everything together) but it is yummy, and it is quite healthy for many people. Like most of my recipes, there's a definite "some of this, some of that" quality.

Tomato, chickpea, and greens sort-of-stew
- equivalent to about a can of chickpeas.
- canned tomatoes, unless fresh are in season.
- some sort of leafy green that can be wilted. I usually do spinach, but kale or any number of other options would be fine.
- some tahini or peanut butter (other unsweetened nut butters would work fine, too.)
- couscous

1) Take some chickpeas. I am the sort of person who soaks them for 36 hours and then boils them for several hours until tender. If you are not this person (or if you are me, and in more of a hurry to eat this), canned do fine. The rest of this recipe assumes that your chickpeas are nearly tender and fully warmed. Also, they should be in a large pot, because you will be adding things to them.

2) As the chickpeas are about to reach the 'just tender enough' point, start some water boiling for couscous. When it's boiling, pour over your couscous. Use just enough liquid to make it soften - there'll be more liquid coming. A little olive oil, a little lemon juice, and a tiny pinch of salt in the couscous are not bad things. A pinch of dried parsley wouldn't be bad either. (It's actually probably possible to not even pre-make the couscous, if you make sure the rest of this has enough liquid, but I've never tried that.)

3) Back to your pot of chickpeas and add a can of tomatoes. I really like the fire-roasted ones for flavor, but any decent canned tomato will do fine. If you are the kind of person who home-cans tomato sauce, that would work too - it'd just change the consistency.

4) While this is cooking in together, steam your greens until they are wilted (if they started fresh) and damp and warm. Add them to the pot.

5) Finally, stir in a couple of spoonfuls of your preferred smooshed nut or seed type object. (I like tahini a lot, but that's me. As I said, peanut or other unsweetened nut butters work fine.) This recipe makes a bunch of really hearty servings: I usually do one soup-spoon full of tahini for every two servings (so the whole thing is 3-4 spoonfuls) as a baseline.

6) Spoon couscous into the bottom of a bowl. Ladle stuff from the pot over them. Eat.

You can add more tahini (or whatever) to taste to a particular serving. I also keep thinking about trying dried coriander with this - and have tried a little cinnamon or nutmeg (not much, just enough for a hint of that flavor) with good effect.

Very warming, very hearty, and a good way to have healthy veggies in the middle of winter, since it does fine with frozen or canned. Also, not very expensive given the large number of servings it makes, especially if you do your chickpeas from scratch.

Comments

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

That sounds marvelous -- warm and hearty. Yum.

I've just linked to it in my recipe archive (sort of an online recipe file I keep for my own reference). Hope that's okay.

[jenett]

Absolutely fine!

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

If I swap the couscous for quinoa, it probably be just as good.

:-) (Trying to avoid wheaty things...)

[ethaisa.livejournal.com]

This sounds wonderful! I think I'm going to change my plans for the chickpeas I presently have soaking!

Thanks for posting this.

[kakiphony.livejournal.com]

I do a very similar concoction except over brown rice and I almost always use chard for my green and sautee them with a little onion and garlic in olive oil for some extra flavor. J also (as always) insists on crushed red pepper flake.

Isn't tahini the best thing ever?

I have noticed since we moved to Colorado that I can no longer soak and boil beans. I can boil them for DAYS and they don't get mushy enough. Supposedly, we're at just a high enough elevation that the water boils at a lower temp. I've been told that we need a pressure cooker for beans and chick peas, otherwise I will be forced to stick to canned.

[brock-tn.livejournal.com]

Yep. It's that sneaky pressure/temp curve for the boiling point of water that's doing it. (I hated Physical Chemistry when I was in school, but that doesn't mean I don't remember some of it.)

[brock-tn.livejournal.com]

Sounds pretty tasty, and I might just have to play with it. I may go with canned chickpeas, for the convenience. (Note to self - add tahini to shopping list.)

I was thinking that this might be a nice mix with mustard greens, which I can get pretty convenently locally.

[pameladean]

I make something very similar, but with no peanut butter or tahini, and garlic and crushed red pepper instead. The nut butter is intriguing, and your recipe is quicker. Hmmmm.

P.

[brock-tn.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that this is a very Indian set of ingredients, and that maybe some Indian-style pices might go well with this. I've got some garam masala I'm not using for anything else...

[leanne-opaskar.livejournal.com]

I think *fresh* cilantro would be wonderful with it, but I'm not sure if it's one of those things you're restricted on. And garlic and onions. Nomnomnom.

I agree with brock_tn that garam masala would probably also be a terrific addition.

Any reason you're steaming your greens separately? You could just add them to the pot with everything else and stir them a couple times until they wilt.

[jenett]

Cilantro did not come up in specific, but fresh green things are generally good for me.

I do the greens separately mostly because in the winter, at least, I'm usually working with frozen, and I like the chance to drain them before adding them in. When I do start with fresh, I sometimes like to season half the amount I make separately, to eat later. (i.e split in half, dose one in vinegar and olive oil and a little salt, put in fridge, etc.)

[leanne-opaskar.livejournal.com]

Oh. Yeah. Duh. Minnesota. Sorry, I keep forgetting. We have really nice fresh greens available year-round, so I just assume everyone else does too. ^_^; I can't imagine the cost on fresh greens for you folks in the winter -- either huge shipping costs or huge energy costs for greenhouses.

Mmm, the greens with vinegar and olive oil and salt sound tasty. I wish Mark liked greens a bit better -- I like them a lot, but it's hard for us to finish a lot of them.

[jenett]

*grin*

There are winter greens at not too insane prices, just that this involves an additional level of extra planning I do not reliably manage. (since with fresh, I have to be pretty sure I'll finish the bundle of greens myself before they go bad. And given that I a) live by myself, and b) am often out for dinner and c) work feeds me lunch any workday, this gets tricky.)

[brock-tn.livejournal.com]

I'm in a similar situation these days, what with Lark still being in Tennessee, and me in Atlanta. So I bought a smallish chest freezer on sale. It works nicely for holding extra servings of stuff. Currently it has pasta sauce with turkey-based italian sausage and mushrooms, beef chili, lamb pilau, a chicken stew full of rosemary, and carbonade flamande. I often make 6-8 servings of something over the weekend, eat one serving that day, and portion the rest out in reuseable storage tubs for eating later. Warming the stuff in the microwave is about as easy as doing a commercial frozen dinner, but it's lots better food.

[jenett]

This assumes I have somewhere to *put* a chest freezer or a microwave for that matter. Which I mostly don't, without giving up valuable bookshelf space. There is a tiny little pantry, but finding a space that won't block entrance to the basement (door pulls up from the floor) would be tricky, plus there's no electric outlet back there.

(Ok, I could maybe put one on the wall by the back door. But that has shelving implications. You can see the photos from my housewarming party in summer of 07 here: http://pics.livejournal.com/jenett/gallery/0001hxaw)

I don't particularly mind any of this - just means that what I freeze has to fit in a small (it's not a normal house-size fridge/freezer, but smaller) freezer, along with various other useful foodstuffs (frozen veggies, berries, potstickers for nights I just can't face cooking, etc.)

Reheating on the stove works remarkably well, but there's a few foods where you get texture changes.

Plus, I have to be up to paying attention to the reheating, which I am often not, these days so I'm tending to foods that don't need a lot of attention. Pasta, which is a no-attention food for me. Couscous. Steaming stuff.

[brock-tn.livejournal.com]

Understood. You cannot sacrifice bookshelf space; it would be inconceiveable. One reason Lark and I need a BIG house is so we will have room for all the bookcases. ( I think we have 23 bookcases at this point.)

The freezer I have is about 24" x 24" x 36" tall. Thre's one model i've seen locally that is smaller, maybe 18" x 24 x 36" h. But if you've no place to plug it in, any sort of freezer isn't going to do you much good. The same with the microwave. I often forget how large my apartment actually is for what is nominally a 1-bedroom unit.

[jenett]

I could technically put something where the plants are. But I like the plants too much for that, y'know? They make me happy.

I am currently at 4 bookcases of 5 shelves, a 2 shelf one, and books stacked in the top of the pantry shelves. My next purchase is going to be one of the Ikea big squares shelves to go where the altar storage stuff is in those photos. (Since I now have an altar with cabinet drawers, yay!) which will have cookbooks and herbs and other such things.

[aedifica]

May I copy this to send to my sister? I was going to just point her at the entry, but then I noticed it was friends-locked.

[jenett]

Absolutely.

(I need to figure out a way to post recipes.)

[aedifica]

Thanks!

[aedifica]

Your recipe ended up being a major inspiration for what I made tonight. Thanks! :-)

[baratron.livejournal.com]

That sounds really good. It's not unlike a recipe I already use regularly, but I wouldn't have thought to put tahini in. I love nut butters.