Chickpea Stew
Today was one of those lovely days when I was able to spend most of the afternoon baking, including batches of my Rosemary Shortbread Cookies and Megan at Stetted.com’s Raspberry Honey Buns.
Even better, it was one of those days when I wasn’t fighting with the kitchen or the recipes. I did, however, have a bit of fight with myself because I wasn’t too organized while making the cookies. But that wasn’t anything that couldn’t be fixed with some coffee.
Unfortunately, I have hit the point where I can’t quite justify eating nothing but sweets and carbs for dinner. Especially since I haven’t been to the gym in a week. (oops…)
Instead, I redirected my happy-to-be-in-the-kitchen energy and made Bon Appetit’s Chickpea Stew from the February 2012 issue. The photo from the magazine (not the one shown here! that’s my own amateur shot.) thoroughly captured my attention and the ease of the recipe had me tearing it out of the magazine for future use.
Chickpea Stew (camera phone shot, since my camera battery died. again.)
This weekend, it made sense to make it because the recipe makes just about four servings; perfect for an experimental dish that could go good or bad. Plus, I had all but one of the ingredients listed on hand. My modification to the recipe was to replace the skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs (which I didn’t have in the fridge or freezer) with the Cajun sausage I did have and that was going to go bad if it wasn’t used pronto.
Personally, I liked the spice combination (cumin, garlic and bay leaves) and the heartiness of this dish (chickpeas, sausage and bread cubes to soak up the stew’s broth). Knowing how good skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs can be, I won’t hesitate to use them the next time I make this dish; they’ll likely lend an extra bit of juice after they’ve been cooked that sausage doesn’t have. Next time, I’ll also be sure to add some extra liquid while simmering this dish so that there’s more leftover stew broth to sopped up with bread cubes (that was my favorite part!).
To make this dish even better, it seems to be leftover friendly so I ladled what was left into take-along bowls and made little bags of bread cubes and parsley to serve with it for lunch at work tomorrow. That’ll sure beat the heck out of running down the street to buy a pre-made sandwich.
Check out the recipe on BonAppetit.com, and enjoy!
PS – I had the leftovers for lunch today. Uh. Yeah. Even better on day two. All the flavors melded together perfectly for an even better taste.
