This meal is melt in your mouth good. The flavors are balanced and dance on your tongue. My wife says her mouth (and belly) are a full “yes!” to this dinner. We really like having leftovers of this meal, so we often double the recipe!
We like this recipe so much we thought we would share it with you on Anne’s birthday! It’s warming and cozy. What’s better for a winter birthday meal?
Serves: 6
Time: 1 hr 45 min
Ingredients
1/2 cups cashews, soaked
olive oil
salt
2.5 lb cauliflower (1 med size head)
1 lb potatoes (3 small)
1/2 lb onion (1 small), diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp ginger, minced (less than an inch)
1 small red bell pepper
1 tomato
1/2 bunch cilantro
1.5 cups cooked chickpeas* (1 can)
1 1/2 cup of rice
vegetable stock (optional; soy-free option)
Spice Mix
1.5 tsp garam masala
1 tsp ground coriander
1.5 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cinnamon
1.5 tsp salt
1/4 tsp chili powder
Preheat the oven to 375 F. Mix the spices in a bowl. Cut the cauliflower into florets, drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkled with half of the spice mix. Roast for 45 minutes until soft and golden brown. Cube the potatoes in 1/2 inch cubes, toss in olive oil and 1/2 tsp of salt. Roast for 45 minutes until soft and golden brown on the edges.
Cook your rice with with salt (and vegetable stock if you like).
Dice the onion. Cook in a large pot over med. heat until soft (about 15 min). Add garlic and ginger and sautée for another 5 min. Add the remaining spice mix and sautée for another minute. Remove from heat.
In a Vitamix combine cashews, 1/2 cup water, red pepper, tomato, cilantro, and onion mix. Blend until smooth. Combine sauce with cooked potatoes, cauliflower, and chickpeas in the large pot from before. Stir to coat and then warm to desired temperature. Serve over rice.
*Cooking chickpeas from dry:
In the Instant Pot:
To cook the chickpeas in an Instant Pot, add 3/4 cup of dried chickpeas to the pot. Cover the chickpeas with water (in the small Instapot this is about 6 cups of water), season with 1 tbsp kosher salt, 2 tsp coriander, 1 tsp turmeric, and 1/4 tsp chili powder. Set the Instapot to pressure cook for 35 minutes letting depressurize naturally. Drain and rinse before adding to the dish.
On the stove:
If you don’t have an Instant Pot, you can easily cook chickpeas from scratch with a little planning. First you will need to soak the chickpeas which can be done one of two ways. 1. you can soak them overnight making sure they have enough water and space to double in size or 2. you can put them in a pot and bring to boil, then turn off the water and let soak for one hour. Again, make sure you have enough water and space that they can double in size.
Once you have soaked your beans, rinse them and then put in a pot with salty water. These will be cooking for about 2 hours so you don’t want as much salt as you would use for pasta, but you do want to add enough that you can taste the salt. The best way to get good at this is to practice. Each time you salt the water, taste it and when the beans are done taste them to see if they are well salted. A well salted bean should taste flavorful but not salty. If it tastes like you are eating salt, you added too much. If the bean lacks flavor then you didn’t have enough salt. For this recipe, also add 2 tsp coriander, 1 tsp turmeric, and 1/4 tsp chili powder to the chickpeas as they cook. Cook the chickpeas until they are soft but not falling apart (this will take 1.5-2 hours). We recommend checking the beans at about an hour and then every 20 minutes until they are soft but not disintegrating. Make sure your pot has enough water as I have definitely cooked all the water off before and burnt the beans! This may seem like a lot of work, however once you get the hang of it the work is almost all passive and the reward is high: chickpeas cooked from scratch taste much better and are much cheaper!
