chickpea marvelous with forbidden rice
Ingredients
for chickpeas
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, sliced or diced (based on your preference—if you're in a hurry, dice them!)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon salt
A rounded half teaspoon each of:
garlic powder
cayenne
black pepper
curry powder
smoked paprika
fennel seeds
1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 15 ounce cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 15 ounce cans diced or pureed fire roasted tomatoes (if you don't have canned fire roasted tomatoes, regular canned tomatoes will do)
1 cup water
for rice
2 cups “forbidden” black rice (or substitute wild rice)
4 cups water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ghee (or substitute butter)
Instructions
Cook rice, adding ghee to the rice at the same time as salt and water (at the beginning of the cooking process). If you are using a rice cooker, add the rice, salt, water and ghee to the pot of the rice cooker, stir all the ingredients together, and set it to the “brown rice” setting.
Heat oil in a deep skillet on medium low heat.
Saute onions at least until translucent. (If you want an extra tasty dish, cook onions until they are caramelized: they should look limp and dark brown.)
Increase heat to medium high and add garlic, salt, and spices. Stir, and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute.
Add chickpeas, tomatoes, and water. Cook, stirring occasionally, until liquid in pan has cooked off.
Serve over rice.
Serves 4-6
About this recipe
I was having trouble figuring out what to call this dish (chickpeas and tomatoes? spiced tomatoey chickpeas?), so I served it to some friends and asked them to help me brainstorm a name. My friend insisted that the only appropriate name is Chickpea Marvelous—that's how delicious it is. This is one of those meals where a very minimal amount of effort results in disproportionately delicious results. Start to finish, you could have this dish ready to eat in an hour! It uses pantry ingredients, is easy to scale, and just happens to also be a healthy plant-based meal. Sounds pretty marvelous to me.
Recipe inspired by Aaron Hutcherson's polenta with chickpeas and tomatoes.
