Mimsy Were the Borogoves

Food: Recipes, cookbook reviews, food notes, and restaurant reviews with a heavy emphasis on San Diego. Unless otherwise noted, I have personally tried each recipe that gets its own page, but not necessarily recipes listed as part of a cookbook review.

Chickpea stew

Jerry Stratton, September 4, 1997

A lentil-chickpea stew with sesame, onions, and olives, spiced up with a bit of yoghurt at the end.

Servings: 6
Preparation Time: 12 hours

Ingredients

  • 3 cups dry garbanzo beans, soaked overnight
  • 1/2 cup dry lentils (red)
  • 2 tblsp olive oil
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 3 medium chili peppers, chopped
  • 4 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 2 tsp garam masala
  • 1/4 cup sesame seeds
  • handful of dried celery leaves
  • 3 large tomatoes
  • 1 can chicken stock
  • 6 pitted black olives
  • 1/2 cup yogurt

Steps

  1. Boil the garbanzo beans until soft (about 90 minutes)
  2. Boil the lentils until soft (about 15 minutes)
  3. Heat the olive oil in a pan and sauté the onions.
  4. Stir-fry the peppers, garlic, garam masala, sesame seeds, and celery leaves for a few minutes.
  5. Liquify the tomatoes in a blender.
  6. Mix everything except the yoghurt into the crockpot and cook on low for 8-10 hours. Add the yogurt an hour before the stew is to be done.

This spicy little stew combines a number of odd flavors, and then lets them stew slowly in a crock-pot for several hours.

If you have a pressure cooker, you can use that instead of boiling the garbanzo beans. They take forever to boil, but a pressure cooker can soften them in twenty to twenty-five minutes.

Or, if you can really plan ahead, put the garbanzo beans into the crockpot twenty-four hours ahead of time, and put them on high for a full day.

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