Improvising with a chickpea stew.

I had a plan for last week, but I treated it more like a framework. Part of the plan included buying ingredients for a set of dishes that I thought would fill my week (and me) nicely. So far I’ve made the tuna salads, mash with meatballs, and this warm and soft chickpea stew. While I didn’t follow the dish schedule to the letter, I stayed within the ingredients that I bought for the week; I consider this a success, the framework succeeded in keeping the takeaway to a minimum.

Let me share this hearty Chickpea Stew, one of my favorite recipes of the week!

Ingredients

• 60 grs. of dry chickpeas per person. In this case, I made 180grs for 3 people. (When hydrated they weigh way more!)
  All of the following ingredients are approximate recommendations, and it depends on what you like most. Really like onions? Add more. You don’t share my taste for garlic? Remove a clove or two.
• Pumpkin. 2 small wedges, about 200grams.
• 1/2 an Onion.
• 1/2 a Carrot.
• Salt, to taste.
• Pepper, to taste, about 5 turns on my grinder in my case.
• 1 Tomato.
  Optional toppings:
• Parsley.
• Pecorino or Parmesan.

I didn’t follow a particular recipe for this dish, it was a full improvisation mashing together some things I know:

• Boil the dry chickpeas for 5 minutes, and then let them rest for an hour and a half (no fire!). Chickpeas are a particularly hard legume. You can substitute this step with leaving them on water over night. If you don’t do this, chickpeas will take much longer to cook.
• Bring the water to a boil, and then simmer for an hour. No salt until this point, since it could make chickpeas tougher in the end, and in this case we want creamier. Put the lid on, but not all the way set on the pot, let some of the steam out.

While the chickpeas simmer:

• Finely chop the onion and carrot.
• Crush a few garlics. I like it a lot, perhaps too much, so I do 1 garlic per person.
• Sweat the onion, carrot and garlic together by putting it on a pan with some olive oil over very low heat.
• Cube the pumpkin.
• Cut the tomato into wedges.
• Optional: add tomato paste to the pot to get some red in there and, of course, more tomato flavor!

After an hour has passed, try the chickpeas, they should feel still a little bit tough, but edible. It’s ok, we’ll keep cooking them.

• Add onion, garlic and carrot.
• Add cubed pumpkin.
• Simmer for around 35 minutes.
• Don’t forget to test the broth, and add salt and pepper to taste.
• Chop the Parsley if you’d like to have it as a topping, and add it to the served plates or put it on the table for everyone to decide if they want it.