winter warning

Last week I was out of commission at a staff training in sunny San Antonio. I arrived home to find Richmond covered in snow. My car was under, oh, 7 inches of snow which meant I was not going to bother with grocery shopping. Instead, I scavenged my cabinets and freezer to make this chickpea stew. I used two recipes as inspiration, one from the amazing blog The Kitchn and one from the useful resource Epicurious. This recipe is, as often is the case, this is meant to serve as basic guidelines so adapt to what you have.


Ingredients
1lb bag of dried chickpeas, soaked in water overnight
1 sweet potato
1 large white onion
olive oil
8 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 can chicken broth
asparagus, frozen, roughly the equivalent of 1 bunch
1-2 cups spinach
juice of 1-2 limes

1. Cut sweet potato into small pieces, coat with olive oil, toss with salt and roast in oven.

2. Heat oil in large pot over medium flame. Add onion and saute until translucent, about 10 minutes. Add garlic and spices, when fragrant, add the chickpeas and broth. Bring broth to a boil then add asparagus and spinach. Add sweet potato when ready.

3. Keep simmering to allow chickpeas to soften. I kept the liquid levels very low and added water only when I felt it was needed. Due to lots of stirring, the sweet potato completely disappeared though I could taste it. I left it on about 40 minutes before I ate and then on low while I ate, in all about 1 hour.

4. When almost done, add lime juice, salt and pepper if disired. Serve over rice.

In the end, the stew was sweet and cinammon-y. I loved it but think it could be improved by adding something more spicy, such as cayenne. I only used one lime and the flavor was lost. I didn't use salt or pepper but it probably would improve it.

This made enough for 8, of which I froze half.