Spicy Chickpea Stew

What We Had For Dinner Last Night

Spicy Chickpea Stew

Well, I made bread yesterday, think I came up with 'my' recipe that I'll use from now on (of course I'll tweak it some, can't leave well enough alone) and I was trying to think of something I could make with chickpeas (my fallback when I can't think of anything else for supper, plus I was craving them). Something soupy that I could use the bread to sop up...

So I Googled chickpea sauce and was inspired with cumin and coriander and came up with this stew... it would be good without the TVP, I just put that in there because the ancho chile turned out to be too spicy for our tastes (wimps!) and to make it bigger. If you leave out the TVP, use less salt and leave out the cup of water.

2 C boiling water in which you dump
1 C TVP

1 T olive oil
1 T Earth Balance margarine
1 shallot, thinly sliced
1 large clove garlic, minced
2 t salt
2 t cumin
1 t coriander
1 ancho chile or ancho chile powder to taste
1 can garbanzo beans, undrained
1 C water
1/2 22oz bag frozen broccoli
2 T chickpea flour mixed with 2 T water

In a large pot over high heat, saute the shallots, then garlic in the Earth Balance and oil. Add the spices, the ancho chile and salt and mix well, stirring constantly for a few minutes. Dump in the garbanzo beans and cover and simmer on low for a few minutes.
Remove as much of the liquid as you can to a blender (or use an immersion blender), add the 1 C water and blend. Return to the pot and stir in the chickpea flour. Simmer until thick. Add the broccoli and TVP to the pot and mix well. Cover and cook until the broccoli isn't frozen, stirring every once in a while to make sure the TVP isn't sticking.

This would be yummy over rice!

My Bread

4 heaping cups flour
1/4 C vital wheat gluten
1 heaping T sugar
1 scant T salt
1 scant T yeast
2 T Earth Balance margarine
2 C hot water

Preheat oven to 170 degrees. Grease 2 loaf pans.
Mix one heaping cup flour with vital wheat gluten, sugar, salt and yeast.
Add butter, then water and beat on high 'till smooth.
Add 3 heaping cups flour, switch to hook and knead 3m.
Take out dough, oil bowl, return dough to bowl and flip over so the top is oiled and cover with a wet tea towel.
Turn off oven and place bowl with dough inside. Let rise 45m, plus or minus 20m (check on it after 25m).
If dough has doubled and a finger stuck in leaves an indent, take the dough out, cut it in half, knead each a little and cover with the wet towel on your counter while you preheat the oven to 170 again.
Roll out each half into a 12 x 9" rectangle, roll up, tuck ends under and place in loaf pan.
Cover with wet towel, turn off oven and let rise in oven 45m.
REMOVE WET TOWEL, leaving bread in the oven and bake at 400 degrees 40m or until well browned. Cool one hour.
This made a nice, dense loaf that slices easily without breaking and tastes good.


Ahhh, and here is the apple butter!! Whee, I was so excited to eat this yesterday, wow.
As it was cooking down last night there on the counter, my husband and I got to wondering what is the difference between apple butter and apple sauce? And all we could come up with is that apple butter is smoother, thicker and spicier than apple sauce. Well, whatever the case may be, it sure turned out goo-oood!

So I have a 6 qt cooker (recipe calls for 5) and I used only 3 cups of sugar instead of the 4. Otherwise I just followed the recipe.

We used the wild apples from Port Wing and as you saw a few posts ago, the flesh of the apples was pinkish. Perhaps the correct term would be blush. Is there an official apple grower term for this? I'm sure there is (and it's not blush). So anyway, the apple butter turned out red! How gorgeous. It's sweet and tart and perfect. I think that this will become a Fall tradition. It was worth the time it took and now I've got a big batch frozen in the freezer for the depths of Winter.

P.S. I cannot take credit for this idea entirely, when we were up there, my friend M. mentioned a slow cooker apple butter recipe she found and I was just too impatient to email and get it so I just Googled it (again with the Google). So thanks, M., for the inspiration!

Hey, I did some actual knitting and discovered that my pattern biases. So I think I'll try knitting it Ostrich Plumes stylee and offset the design to ?mitigate? the biasing action. Or something. I tire of this pattern.