Wednesday, July 23, 2008

A Good Dinner

Well, I found this one surfing around, clicking on links from Something Out of Nothing, looked easy, so I thought I'd try it. I was particularly interested if it would taste like hummus. Ha!
So, it didn't, it was pretty good. Basic, but good. Not as bland as other chickpea dishes I've made before. If you made this with fresh herbs it would be so, soooo much better, I'm guessing. Also, I dropped the 1/2 C of oil to 1/4 C and next time I could probably even go down to 2 T if I was really feeling the need.

Pasta with Chickpea Sauce

1 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained (6)
1/4 C olive oil (16)
2 cloves garlic, minced (I just used one, we have fresh garlic, is fresh garlic milder or more garlic-y than the stuff you buy at the store?)
1 onion, chopped
1 T minced parsley/1 t parsley
12 basil leaves, torn/1 t basil
1 tiiiiny, tiny tidge garlic chili sauce
1 bay leaf
1/2 can diced tomatoes
salt and pepper to taste
1 lb pasta (32)

Place all but 1/4 C chickpeas in a processor with 1 C of water. Process until completely processed.
In a large pot, saute onions and garlic, add tomatoes, processed and unprocessed chickpeas, spices and salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and simmer, covered, 30m, stirring occasionally.
Meanwhile, boil up your pasta.
When sauce is ready and pasta is ready, discard the bay leaf, drain the pasta (reserving 1/4 C pasta water) and stir pasta into sauce. Thin with pasta water if needed.

total points, 54. Makes 8 C, 7 points per cup.

Finished "The Sparrow", it was so good I recommended it to my husband, which is high praise indeed! Read it! Read it! Read it! Mary Doria Russell has even more books, I'm so excited! There's a sequel!

At first you are all like, geez, hurry up with the mystery, I just want to know what happened, but then you start getting hints about what it might be and you're all like, "Nooo-ooo! Don't tell me! I'm scared!" and then things take a turn for the better and you're all super invested in these characters and so you're really having fun hearing about what happened. Super interesting thoughts about religion and suffering. Wow. Maybe I am just a sci fi nut, but really, I do think it's good.

Onward to "The Gate to Women's Country" by Sheri Tepper- this was the originally recommended book by her and I thought I'd give her another chance. So far, so good. It's building kind of slowly.

No knitting, the yarn is in the garage and I haven't had a chance to really get out there and get what I need.