Carla’s Lemony Chickpea Stew with Magic Green Sauce

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For the recipe, head to Food Processing:

https://open.substack.com/pub/carlalallimusic/p/lemony-chickpea-stew-only-for-you

This is a 30 minute dinner with sunny, spring-adjacent, savory porridge energy. It’s a pantry meal that is also a clean-out-the-produce-drawer option, and a recipe that reminded me that it’s been WAY too long since I showed some love to the venerable canned chickpea. It’s almost vegetarian and easily made truly vegetarian. Magic Green Sauce is a mix of spinach and herbs that works no matter what combination herbs you use; it’s bright and luscious and melts into the stew.

2:30 – Bang Out Some Veg Prep
8:33 – Live, Laugh, Layer Lemon
16:10 – Make Magic (Green Sauce) Happen
17:50 – Stew With a Touch of Magic

Producer: Zoie Omega
https://www.instagram.com/x_omegadeth_x/

Director of Photography: Tim Racca

Food Stylist: Cybelle Tondu
https://www.instagram.com/cyborrrrg/?hl=en

Editor and Comic Genius: Meg Felling
https://www.instagram.com/poorpotatoface

Theme music “Magic Hours” by Amy Crawford
http://www.amycrawfordmusic.com

Arcadia – Wonders by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100326
Artist: http://incompetech.com/

#carlalallimusic #chickpea #lemonsoup

Hello my chicks and peas It’s Carla and I’m here again in my kitchen today with a brand new recipe for you this is lemony chickpea stew with magic green sauce some of the recipes I work on take me three or four or five Tri to get

Right but not this one she was one and done and I think it’s because I knew exactly what I wanted it is super fast it’s super beautiful it’s really healthy and it’s just something I want to eat at least once a week so I am jazzed about

This recipe and I think you will be too before I fire up today’s recipe I do want to take a moment and thank today’s sponsor better help I am not a huge resolutions person but so far for me in 2024 my goals have been sleep routine

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Help for Lemony chickpea stew in the brain I wanted lemony lemony lemony I wanted layers of lemon which is lol l lol now means layers of lemon so that means lemon’s going to go through it multiple different stages and multiple different parts the first way it’s going

To go in is in some nice wide strips so we need three lemons all day we’ve got strips We’ve Got Juice we’ve got more juice we have cooked juice and we have raw juice it just makes it feel so like fresh and sunny and in the middle of the

Winter something that feels really bright and green and fresh you need that little vacation in our minds of a sunshiny little stew I need about half a cup of juice so if your lemon is huge you might get that out of like three halves it might take more like two whole

Lemons so we’re just going to see what happens always zest before you juice obviously it’s really annoying to try to pull zest out of a haved lemon I didn’t think about it but winter being Citrus season like a Meer lemon could be really nice in this too it would be like a

Little more fragrant a little bit sweeter it’s going both into my magic green sauce and there’s also Juice in the chickpea and rice mixture so I’ll measure it as I add it but just eyeballing it I think I definitely have half a cup my my lemon peel I’m going to

Set aside to go with my herbs and spices so that’s just a placeholder over there I’ve got these four cloves of garlic that are going to be sliced and then a few stocks of celery this is just the most bizarre skinny celery so I’m using

Four of them and I didn’t call for this in the recipe but now that I look at them the herbs that I need for the magic green sauce if you get celery that has lots of nice leaves like this save those set them aside and you put them right

Into your magic green sauce and there will be no waste one and done if you don’t like celery I would substitute with fennel um if you like the flavor of radish I think a crunchy radish could be a nice thing instead of the celery you

Could add onion if you wanted to but I don’t know celery just sort of has really nice payoff it keeps its shape um it Mellows and sweetens so much while it’s being cooked celery and lemon are delicious together celery and chickpeas are delicious together I love celery so

I don’t know why I’m apologizing all right so I just want to cut this into dice so a lot of my recipes I don’t have you prep everything in advance I’m very much about telling you when you’ve got inactive time and you can take care of

Some of your prep during the downtime so for example if a recipe called for having a pot of rice you can put that pot of rice on and then kind of turn around to your cutting board and take care of some of your knife work this

Recipe it really does help you out to prep in advance the rice and chickpea part of the chickpea stew Cooks in 15 minutes so it’s very very quick what you want to do in that time is make the magic green sauce and if you haven’t prepped your ingredients ahead the stew

Is going to be done before the sauce is and and then it’s just not optimal you want the stew to be done nice and hot nice and Saucy and have the sauce ready to go so celery garlic this is going to go into the rice and chickp mixture and

Now I’ve got ingredients for the magic green sauce I need four cups of spinach and 2 cups of herbs the magic green sauce originally was in where cooking begins and it was developed to go with this like long roasted lamb shoulder and what’s Magic about the magic green sauce

Is that you can use any combination of tender herbs and it makes something delicious every single time for this dish I wanted to amplify and bump up the herbs with spinach just to make it more healthy more vitamin C calcium give it a little more heft to it it feels like

You’re eating a vegetable without having like leaves of spinach and when it comes to spinach I really like mature spinach it has so much more flavor than baby spinach even though those packages of baby spinach are ubiquitous and seem so easy but mature spinach has way more flavor and I think

It’s cheaper so I’m just going to roughly chop about four cups of spinach and that’s going to go right into the blender so it’s just waiting for us when it’s time to blend everything up and then additionally I’m combining the four cups of spinach with around 2 cups of

Roughly chopped tender herbs and celery leaves so I’ve got parsley I had some cilantro that was about to diey I have some chives you could use one herb and just use two cups of that single herb you could use one in one you could do

Any ratio you could do one and 3/4 cups of one herb and 1/4 cup of another as long as your tender herbs measure out to be two cups total everything else is going to work and they just they all taste really good together mint and chickpea and lemon fantastic mint would

Be so good in this and I think mint and spinach is like something magic happens with mint and spinach but that’s not what I have I have these the busy work for the magic herb sauce is now done it’s in the blender it’s hanging out my rice is rinsed my chickpeas are drained

My celery is good to go and so now I just start building the stew in the pot we were going so fast over there I forgot to tell you about the leaks this is two leaks they were cut into rounds they’ve been rinsed and they’ve been blotted dry which is something that we

Didn’t need to show you you do need to wash your leaks they can be very gritty and Sandy in the inet so that is good to go I have a nice shallow wide pot you just need something with a lid you can

Do this in a d oven um you can use a 34 pot just something that you can cover so we’re going to get it started with a third of a cup of olive oil don’t worry there will be more olive oil in this recipe so there’s a lot of

Greek energy in this dish as well chickpeas lemon olive oil just makes me feel Greek all right so I’ve got my delicious leaks the celery and the garlic all going in together I’m going to season this right away with some salt and pepper somebody asked me in the

Comments recently if I was like aware of how much salt I was using and if I had ever done the salt diagnosis for how many milligrams of salt and the answer is no and that is because I was blessed genetically with very low blood pressure like almost too

Low like sometimes my mom will pass out for no reason cuz her blood pressure is low um and so I got that and if you need to watch your salt then I’m not the person to guide you this is medium heat it’s not raging hot I want to see

Everything start to sweat a little bit release and then I’m going to cover the pot and that’s just going to help things soften in a very short amount of time after a couple of minutes you will notice like lots of nice bubbling noises that is a sign that liquid is releasing

And that liquid that is hitting the hot oil is like boiling down there and that is when it is time to cover the pot so I’m going to let steam happen which creates pressure which creates a lot of heat which accelerates cooking and also makes it

Nice and steamy in there so we’re not under threat of burning and things are going to get really soft and silky in the couple 2 3 minutes that that is going I’m just going to get my little spice and Herb mixed together that is going to end up as part of the aromatics

Here but I’ve got a teaspoon of coriander seeds so there’s cilantro in the herb sauce that I’m using um if you were maybe using some fennel frond in your magic green sauce instead of cilantro then maybe you want to use fennel seed here and that would be really lovely I thought about using

Cumin cuz cumin and beans and rice and mint all go really well together so you could totally sub out the coriander for something else but coriander has like nice lemony undertones and this whole like lemony situation was happening for me also using dried dill not many dried

Herbs are great dried dill actually has really nice payoff I happen to have it in the drawer it is another one that if you wanted to use fresh dill in your magic green sauce it would really go well with all of these flavors so that is a situation that you could do and

Then dried mint unsung hero of the dried herb drawer because it’s a little bit uncommon in North America that we cook with dried mint and it can be a little bit hard to find it’s not going to be hard to find in like a Mediteranean specialty store and it’s

Not going to be hard to find online but a regular grocery store might not have dried mint if that were to happen you could double up on the dried dill you could use oregano or you could cut open a peppermint tea bag which is totally edible food grade also dried mint and

You could just snip that open and put that in there so these three things are just going to get smashed up a little bit I want to break open the coriander seeds and get the hull of that seed kind of more than just broken in half cuz

It’s a little fire fibrous recipe also calls for some Crush red chili flake I’m just going to add that to this mixture so I don’t lose track of it or forget about it and the lemon peel is going to go in at the same time as these dried

Things so they’re all together no Soldier left behind all right so it’s been a few minutes to have a look beautiful vegetable steam bath is happening so now I have a beautiful oily soften vegetable lightly golden garlic situation I’m going to add my spices my lemon peel my chili flake and those are

Going to bloom in this nice hot olive oil the lemon peel is included in that so lemon peels have all of the lemon oil in them and when they get warmed up and basted about and start to cook it’s really going to release all of that lemon flavor and so cooking the peel

Into the base of the soup is just one of those LOL layer of lemons that is going on on just want to cook this for 30 seconds or a minute it’s still sizzling down there it smells really great my leaks are starting to soften I’ve got two cans of

Chickpeas drained and rinsed that’ll reduce your sodium draining and rinsing there’s a lot of salt in the bean liquid listen as a bean Queen canned beans and canned legumes so important love to have them I love chickpeas I love can chickpeas Instinct says to Salt again

Sorry to my commenter now I’m going to add the rice this is long grain rice and it’s not that much of it but wait till you see what happens now my rice is combined and also coated with oil it just like I want to eat this just

Exactly the way it is right now I made some bullan this is just chicken bullan dissolved in water you could use a vegetable bullion if you don’t eat the birds or you just use water there’s enough happening here that it’s still going to be really tasty you just want

Four cups of liquid whether you’re using stock bullan or water if you are using bullan it is salty be a little bit conservative with the additional salt so that you don’t accidentally overs salt your dish all right so now we have our next layer of lemon LOL so I’m going to

Add a/4 cup 2 oz of lemon juice right in here so this lemon juice is now going to be part of the cooking medium it’s going to get absorbed into the chickpeas is going to be absorbed into the rice it is a foundational flavor it is also a high

Note finishing flavor it’s just layers of lemon LOL bringing up to a simmer four cups of liquid for half a cup of rice is like way more liquid than you would ever use for half a cup of rice if you were just cooking it the rice is

Going to absorb a certain amount of it the chickpeas are also going to absorb there’s going to be some evaporation and in the end I want something where the rice is perfectly cooked and there’s enough available liquid in there to make this feel like a really nice vegetable

Stew so we’re back to magic green sauce that’s what we do well this is cooking I want to put these two ice cubes kind of close-ish to the blades having a little bit of ice in here is going to melt and it’ll help the blades turn because it

Turns into liquid but it also keeps them mix exture cold the more heat the more chopping the more oxidation happens the the Browner the sauce will be so I’m also adding one clove of garlic just grating it directly in here if you don’t have a microplane finely chop okay next

I’m adding half a cup of nutritional yeast this is going to give that kind of cheesy pesto creamy rich flavor if you wanted to to use parm you 100% could I just wanted to give the option for this to be vegetarian or vegan if you wanted

It to be and also I love nutritional yeast and I love the flavor that it gives to this and then we have the other half of the lemon juice layers of lemon LOL that’s in there I’m going to season with salt and pepper and this makes extra green sauce as well which is

Really nice to just have around so you can let everybody put as much as they want into their soup and then have magic green sauce in the fridge just got to shove everything down to the [Applause] blades it’s delicious and perfect it’s Magic according to my calculations the stew should be done now because the magic sauce is done oh my god let’s taste so the stew is super easy how do you know it’s done it is done when the rice has absorbed a bunch of the liquid and

The rice is tender so the lemon peel has gotten pale yellow and super tender and I thought originally when I was writing it that we would have to pull these out but like if it pleases you you can eat that entire lemon peel delicious smells Herby the richness of the rice the lemon

The mine okay so I like to serve it with a nice big spoonful of magic green sauce it’s just going to melt into the hot broth and also any raw herbs that are in here the raw garlic the lemon juice like they also start to transform when they hit the hot liquid and

Then little scoop of yogurt also this is like cooling but also Tangy I’m brightens it up and this is I think hugely important really like adds so much is a nice big squeeze of fresh lemon little pepper our chili flake a drizzle of olive oil and that is

Lemony chickp Su with magic green sauce I don’t know what it is but so so freaking good I really love this one I haven’t been this excited about a recipe that I’ve developed in a while I dreamt it into existence I couldn’t be more proud I have another favorite comment that I got

Recently which I could write a whole dissertation on this is from someone named I won’t get their entire handle but says lose the vocal fry look it up you will present much better you