Spanish Chickpea Recipe (With Video)

This transcription will have some mistakes because it is partially automated.

Hello and welcome to Freshly Served the healthy vegan cooking show. I’m Heather and tonight were going to make a Spanish flavored dish with some garbanzos beans which is the exact same thing as chickpeas, it’s just in Spain they call them garbanzos so because we are using Spanish spices were using the Spanish name and some eggplants.

Were gonna do it bake so I’ve got my baking dish ready I’ve got a lid for it and I’m going to get the oven started at about 350F. So I got my chickpeas all ready to go and I am using my canned chickpeas today. Chickpeas are one that takes an awfully long time to prepare and cook.

They are well worth the effort but sometimes you just don’t have time and you gotta use the can and that’s alright. Just look for a can that doesn’t list salt as one of the ingredients and the cans that I get also are cooked with combo which is a seaweed which helps breakdown some of the proteins in the beans while they cook so they don’t give you so much gas.

Alright! So while the oven is heating up I’m going to chop up my eggplants. When you’re looking for an eggplant you want it to be purple and you want to make sure that they aren’t any brown spots on the outside because that’s gonna be where there’s a bruise.

So, all you do with an eggplant is just chopped it up and I am going to cut it into slices and then probably cubed the slices and you can see on the inside an eggplant is white.

So things got a little crazy trying to fit it in to the baking dish so I have to resort to using a second dish to mix it in, I’ve got the eggplant and the chickpeas in a mixing bowl. I’ve got some onion diced here that I’ll throw in as well then I’m going to add couple of cloves of garlic, mint stuff and I’m gonna chop off these fresh parsley that I have here.

Once you get all of the stuff into the bowl so I’ve got eggplant, chickpeas, onion, garlic and parsley then you needs to drizzle a bit of olive oil on the top, this is going in the oven so it needs to be protected from the heat.

If you don’t put oil onto your vegetables they’re going to get a hard outer coating and they won’t actually cook. They’ll just dry out in the oven and the best way to mix it up is with your hands because then you can then make sure it gets all over your vegetables with the least amount of oil that’s possible.

You wanna do that first, the oil before you add the salt and the rest of the seasonings because the salt function is to draw the moisture out of the vegetables but if you do the salt before the oil the juices of the vegetables will just leave it and it will lose all of its flavor where as if you do the oil first the vegetables juices will only go as far as that barrier of oil and so the flavors stay in the vegetables.

So I got some salt, I got some black pepper and then for Spanish flavor I’m going to do some paprika. I’m going to use some cinnamon to just sweeten them up a little bit, some ground cloves. Ground cloves have a bit of peppery flavor, they’re quite strong so if you don’t like them you can just leave them out and use a little bit more black pepper and then a little bit of cayenne just for some added spice.

Now last but not least is a lemon and every time I use a lemon I like to zest them so here we go. Zester as I always mention is available at your local thrift store for probably a couple of bucks. If you don’t have a zester, if you don’t want to go out to your thrift store, you can use a grater. Just be careful because you don’t want to go too far into the skin of the lemon if you get to the white part it’s very bitter that’s called the pith. You don’t wanna be using that pith.

And then chopped your lemon in half, this one got a lots of seed and then you just stick the zester in there and squeeze and I like to do a strainer so that I don’t have to worry about the seeds while I’m squeezing. And there we go!

Mixing the spices in you can do by hand or by spoon and at this point I’m starting to wonder how I’m going to fit all this back in my baking dish which is probably why I usually mix it up in a baking dish but you know worst comes to worst I can just use a second dish.

So get the sauce stirred up, you can add more or less seasonings depending on your taste. I like quite a bit of paprika but not so much cayenne and I really like the sweetness of cinnamon. That’s nice to mention.

Ok! See how we do here. It’s gonna be close and remember the eggplants will shrink as its bakes. Eggplant is one that’s not a good candidate for steaming; you gotta bake it or soothe it.

Well, I don’t know how I’m gonna stir it when the time comes but I’ll deal with that when we get there. So put the lid on and in my case I have to squish the lid down and pop it in the oven and you do not have to wait until the oven preheats but just keep in mind that if you put it in before the oven actually gets up to heat its gonna take a little bit longer to cook.

So pop it in there and then give it a check at about fifteen minutes, give it a stir, make sure the juices are all covering the vegetables and then it just take about 30 minutes to finish cooking.

So as I suspected it was pretty difficult to stir everything on, it’s been in there for about 30 minutes now and the eggplants just softening up really nicely, because I have this pack so tight it is gonna take a little bit longer to cook and I like really like soft eggplants so I’m going to put this back in for a little bit till it is done.

Here we go! I’ll probably leave it in for about another 10 minutes and then I’ll be ready to serve it. I’d probably have it with a green salad which is always nice.

You can find the recipe for this dish at HealthyVeganRecipes.net. I’m Heather and this is Freshly Served.