This Spinach and Chickpea Stew is my Go-To Crowd Pleaser

Oh, [ __ ]

Hey everyone, it's Kenji and I'm making

a spinach and chickpea stew with ginger

and tomatoes. I made versions of this

dish many times, you know. So, I used to

work at this restaurant in Boston called

Toro. And we made a version of this dish

that was sort of much more complicated.

We'd make a a vegetable stock. We would

use fresh tomatoes. Uh we would soak our

chickpeas and cook them. And then we

would flavor it with various things. you

know, sometimes chiso, sometimes just a

Spanish paprika and serve it with a

poached egg. Um, but you know, it's a

sort of classic Spanish bar snack. Um,

chickpeas uh are very common all over

Spain. Um, the version that I'm making

now, however, is quite different from

that restaurant version. This is like

the real simplified version that I make

at home. And it's one of my favorite

dishes. This is actually out of my first

book, The Food Lab. And it's one of my

favorite dishes to make at home because

it's so fast and so easy, not too many

ingredients, and it's delicious. You

know, I call this my ski trip dish cuz

whenever I you know I I go on these ski

trips with big groups of people. Well,

they started out as like seven people

and now we're up to like I don't know

like 20 to 25 people join these trips

cuz everyone's got kids now. And this is

the one dish that I can make at the ski

house and everybody will eat it whether

they're omnivores or vegans or

vegetarians. Um it is a vegan dish but

it's one of those dishes that is just

delicious no matter whe you know whether

you eat meat or not. It's a big

crowd-pleaser. All right. So, I'm

starting by chopping up a little bit of

garlic. I'm going to take some tomatoes.

I got one 28 oz can of whole tomatoes.

And I'm going to put half of them and

most of the sort of juice.

Let's say one more

into a cup like that. Then I'm going to

take some ginger. You can peel your

ginger. You don't have to. Um, really

depends on how sort of thick the skin

is. But a little knob of ginger like

this. Maybe 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. Oh, we can't

do seven. It's got to be eight. Eight

little coins of ginger.

And then I'm just going to blend this

into a puree.

All right, that's it. Then I'm going to

chop up an onion. So, we'll use my

special mathematical onion slicing

trick. I think I've talked about this

every time I dice an onion, but you

start by peeling it in half like that

and taking the skin off, leaving the

root end intact. I had this goal a while

back of figuring out the most efficient

way to dice an onion. So, I had a friend

of mine build a computer model of one.

Uh, and we tested various slicing

methods and what we found is that if you

take the height of the onion and call

that one, you know, the radius of the

onion, uh, if you then imagine a point

in your cutting board that's about 1.5,

uh, it's technically more like 1.6, six.

But imagine you take half that height

again and draw an imaginary dot uh

underneath your cutting board. And then

whenever you're making your cuts,

instead of cutting straight up and down,

you kind of aim roughly for that magic

invisible point under your cutting

board. So, it's not quite perfectly

radial, but it's not quite up and down.

It's somewhere in between. And that is

the most efficient way to get the most

even dice with the fewest number of

cuts. And I do do the horizontal cut

because it makes things more even.

And I know every single time I dice an

onion on camera, no matter how close I

get to the root, someone in the comments

says, "Look at all that onion you're

wasting." Um, so I want to recognize

you. I I hear you. I understand you. Uh,

and I don't care.

No, I do care, but not enough to change

my ways. All right, that's basically all

the ingredients we need. I'm going to

get quite a bit of olive oil in here.

You want like your real good stuff, you

know. This is Primise olive oil. It's

made by my friend, I would say imported

by my friend Damen Primise. It comes

from Greece. It is my favorite olive

oil. We're going to get I would say a/4

to a/3 of a cup in here.

>> Here we are.

>> Just gloing olive oil. We're going to

get our onions in.

our garlic in.

All right. Now, I've got all this

spinach. You know, when I was a kid, all

spinach was uh the curly leaf variety.

You know, whenever you went to the

supermarket and bought spinach, it was

the curly leaf spinach. It feels like

now all spinach is flat leaf. And it's I

have a lot of trouble finding the curly

leaf variety. I like the curly leaf

variety for brazed dishes like this

because I think it brazes a little bit

better. It holds its structure a little

bit better in a stew. But all I can find

now is flat leaf. So, I'm going to go

with flat leaf. Uh, this is I think it's

probably like 6 ounces of spinach. My

recipe, I think, calls for 12 oz, but

all of the other spinach at the shop was

looking kind of wilty and sad, so I just

bought the one bunch and it'll still be

fine. You could do this with really any

kind of good brazing greens. So, you

could do this with um, you know, kale.

You could do it with collared greens.

You could even do it with something like

arugula if you wanted, escarole.

Any kind of green that you would put in

a soup will work here. All right. Okay.

So, while those soften up, I'm going do

my last little step here, which is kind

of roughly

cut up these tomatoes right in the can.

You can take them out and chop them with

a knife if you want, or you can you put

them in a bowl and squish them through

your fingers. Um, but I'm just I'm doing

the scissoring today. It's always a good

time for scissoring.

All right. So, we're not looking for

much color on here. We're just kind of

sweating those that onion and garlic

out. And season it with a little bit of

uh salt, MSG.

And then I'm also going to add in just a

little bit of smoked paprika. Um this is

sweet smoked paprika, so you could also

do it with hot smoked paprika if you

want it a little spicier. Um but I'm

just using the sweet stuff today.

Smells real good. Onions and olive oil

is like one of my favorite scents, I

think.

I don't know why onions and olive oil

smell so good together, but it it just

makes sense.

So, I'm going to go in with my tomato

and ginger puree. Now,

you know, if you overheat extravirgin

olive oil, you drive off a lot of sort

of the more delicate aromatic compounds

in there. Um, and you certainly don't

want to bring it up to the point where

it's kind of burning. But because we

have so much onion and garlic in there,

some, you know, high moisture vegetables

in there, that actually limits the

temperature that the olive oil is going

to reach. So, in reality, it's not

really getting much above the boiling

temperature of water. Um, so all those

aromomas are generally safe in a dish

like this. All right. Now, we're going

to start doing our spinach. We're going

to add it in like Well, actually, I

don't have that much, so I can just

probably add it all at once. Typically,

if I had, you know, double this amount

of spinach or I had a smaller pot, I

would add it in like a handful at a

time. Um, and kind of let it wilt down

in between additions. But with this nice

big pot and not so much spinach, we can

just dump it all in at once. So, medium

heat again, we're going to just let the

spinach

welt down. This is a recipe that, you

know, it's very, very forgiving. So, you

don't have to have the exact amounts for

all this stuff. Um, you can scale it any

which way. You know, like I like I said,

pretty much every winter I make a batch

of this for about 20 people and we, you

know, serve it with some really nice

crusty bread and a salad. Um, but I

never measure when I'm doing that. I

kind of just get an equal number of cans

of tomatoes and chickpeas and then

everything else just kind of eyeball it.

All right, spinach is nice and welted

there. We're going to go in with our

chickpeas. I'm doing it with the

chickpeas with the liquid from their

can, um, which is going to add

liquid obviously. Um, and it's going to

give some nice body to the soup as well

along with the chopped tomatoes. So, we

puree half the tomatoes and chop the

other half so that you get some nice

texture in there.

Okay. And then a couple bay leaves.

Let me taste it for seasoning.

It's going to reduce a little bit. Um,

so we don't want it to be too

aggressively seasoned yet.

We want to make sure that there's enough

salt in there that you're, you know,

seasoning the chickpeas

as they simmer.

And that is basically it. We're going to

we're going to simmer it for about 30

minutes or so with the lid off so that

it reduces and then we're ready to eat.

All right. So, here we are at a little

simmer. Lena's going to push the camera

into here

and then we'll be back when it's ready

to eat. Ready for your push? I'm ready.

>> All right, push.

All right, so it's been uh half an hour,

maybe 45 minutes or so, and you can see

it reduced down a little bit, turned

into this nice thick stew. Our spinach

is nice and tender. This is not one of

those sort of like bright greens dishes.

This is one of those tender braze green

dishes. Um, now at the very end, we're

going to adjust the seasoning a little

bit. I tasted it. Still needs a little

bit more salt. Salt and MSG. Um, I think

my original recipe called for a splash

of soy sauce, which you could also do in

there if you'd like, just to give it a

little bit more sort of umami depth, but

the uh the MSG does a pretty good job of

that. Um, and then typically I would

finish this with a bit little bit of

cherry vinegar. Um, I couldn't find

cherry vinegar in my pantry. It's

probably there somewhere, but I'm using

some

vinegar instead. You could use something

like cider vinegar, like white wine

vinegar. I would avoid, you know,

something like balsamic that's going to

be sweet, but just a little bit of

vinegar to sort of brighten it up.

That is very good.

Ski house worthy.

And

because there wasn't enough olive oil

there to begin with,

we're going to add some more.

You want to use your your very best

extra version for this. I got a little

bit of bread. This is just pita bread,

but you know, any kind of good hearty

bread will work here. Oh boy.

It's not hot. It's all good.

I love this. All right, so

probably about, you know, 15 minutes of

actual work here. Um, mostly canned

things. Um, some fresh greens, really

good olive oil, onions, garlic, paprika,

and finishing it with a little bit of

vinegar and more olive oil. And it's

real simple, it's real easy, and it's

delicious. It's vegan. Uh, it's a

crowd-pleaser. It's easy to make in

giant batches. Um, it's just kind of one

of these ideal winter dishes. All right,

guys, gals, non-binary pals, you can

find the recipe on my Patreon. Is this a

free recipe or is this a member recipe?

>> One or the other. You're going to have

to go there and find out. All right, see

you later.