chickpea and tomato curry stew

I believe I promised you all a recipe.

Unfortunately for you, there’s no funny story that goes along with it. No students giving me a bottle of curry powder as a morning present. No Husband story to tantalize you into reading my blog post. No jaw dropping “oh my gosh, can you believe she just wrote that?”.

Nope. No siree. Just chickpeas. And tomatoes. And some curry powder.

And the fact that when I woke up on Tuesday morning, my eyelids were frozen shut. My toes were ready to break off because they were so cold. And I don’t even want to talk about the final moment when I had to push back the covers to get out of bed. Don’t worry, I made sure to press my frozen toes against the Husband’s legs first to watch him shiver in his sleep. That was funny enough to get my blood flowing for the day.

I slipped my toes into my over worn $15 Target slippers that badly need to be replaced (partly due to the smell – not that you needed to know that, did you?) and trudged myself into the kitchen. Before I got into the piping hot shower that would make my Husband cry for our hot water bill (what bill does that even come on? Shows how much I know about paying the bills…), I decided to check the temperature outside.

What I saw made me want to cry – it was… 49 degrees outside. FORTY NINE! That’s like the number dyslexic version of the temperature it was this time last week (aka: 94 degrees). Seeing that number on the screen made me even more cold, which meant three things: hot coffee, hot oats, and a piping hot stew that night for dinner.

One of my favorite parts about the impending cooler temperatures outside is the soups and stews. There is nothing more comforting than coming home to a hot meal, pairing it up with some crusty (GF) bread, and forgetting about the busyness of the day over dinner. With that being said, I don’t have little elves running around my kitchen making me dinner while I am gone at work, nor has Charlie suddenly figured out how to use the stove – in fact, my favorite kitchen tool during the fall and winter months is the Crock Pot.

Sometimes I feel like the Crock Pot gets a bad rep. I don’t know why because any kitchen appliance that does my cooking for me is a-okay in my book. So I chopped up some vegetables, poured some beans and tomatoes into the pot, and let myself leave five minutes late for work. Because in the grand scheme of things, it was going to save me about an hour later on in the day.

Chickpea and Tomato Curry Stew

Serves: 4-5
Difficulty: Easy
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 4-8 hours

Ingredients:

• 1 cup dried chickpeas, soaked in water overnight and rinsed
• 1 can (15 oz.) diced tomatoes
• 2 cups vegetable broth
• 1 can (6 oz) tomato paste
• 2 carrots, chopped in large chunks
• 1/2 eggplant diced in 1 inch chunks
• 2 ribs celery, diced in large pieces
• 1/2 cup quinoa, dry
• 2-3 tablespoons high quality curry powder

Directions: The night before you make the stew, soak your 1 cup chickpeas in a large bowl of water. In the morning, drain and rinse your chickpeas and add them to the Crock pot. Dice your vegetables (they don’t have to be perfect) and add those to the mix as well. Cover your chickpeas and vegetables with your diced tomatoes, vegetable broth, and curry powder. Set your Crock pot to low heat, and cook for a minimum of 4 hours (mine cooked for 9), stirring in the tomato paste and quinoa 30 minutes before serving.

This stew it chock full of tomato and curry flavor, is hearty, and delicious.

The only problem is that it heated up from 49 degrees for 75 degrees. Did I mention I was sweating while I ate this?

Question: What is a food you crave when the weather starts to cool down?

Tagged as: chickpeas, crock pot, curry, gluten free, recipe, stew, tomatoes, vegan