Recipe | Chickpea, Spinach and Tomato Stew

Hi lovelies! Recently I have been loving watching Estee and Aslan's vlogs, especially Aslan's cooking series. This particular recipe was for a chickpea dish with a tomato sauce base. I thought it looked perfect for a drizzly day here in Australia so I decided to give it a shot. You can watch Aslan's video here. 

Serves 3-4 as main

Ingredients

500g of chickpeas, drained

500g spinach, rinsed

300mL Vegetable (or chicken) Stock

5 ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped

3 cloves of garlic, diced

3 eggs

1 tbsp sundried tomato paste

Flour (optional)

Ground cumin

Olive Oil

Salt and Pepper

Start by wilting the spinach over a low heat. Five hundred grams of spinach sounds like a lot, but I always find it astonishing that such a large amount of raw spinach disappears into nothing. After it's cooked place in a sieve and squeeze out any remaining water. Roughly chop and set to one side. 

 The pasta sauce for this dish is really simple. Just chop up 5 ripe tomatoes and add into a food processor. I also included a spoonful of pureed sun dried tomatoes for a really rich tomato flavour. I decided not to strain the puree, but if you want a really smooth end product the just let it strain through a sieve. 

Onto to the actual cooking! Heat some olive oil in a large pan on a medium heat. Once the oil is hot add in the garlic and let it fry off for a minute or so. Then add in the tomato puree and chickpeas. After giving that a couple of minutes add in the stock and cumin. Bring the mixture to a simmer and leave it to reduce for around 10 minutes. To thicken the mixture further you could add a little flour, however I preferred to leave it on the stove for just a little longer. 

Rather than boiling my eggs over the stove, I was lazy and cooked them in the microwave. It's much quicker this way, around 30 seconds per egg, plus you don't have to peel them. I roughly cut them and kept them to one side to add on top of the chickpea stew after serving. 

Once your chickpea mixture has reduced, remove from the heat and stir through the wilted spinach. Serve the stew alongside some fresh bread and butter for a quick lunch. 

I love having a warm lunch during the winter months and I found this one really warming and hearty. It still tasted great cold, so a great one to pack for an easy on-the-go lunch as well. 

What are your favourite winter time lunch options?

Jess x