Food Notes: 11/11

Vegan chickpea pasta, pizza history, the end of Italian pasta, daily beans, and more

We all make mistakes. In this case, I accidentally made a Vegan chickpea soup. Oops.

Here’s the thing. You might notice this newsletter is arriving a day late (or two, depending on your time zone). But it’s been one of those really messed up weeks where public schools randomly closed leaving us without any childcare.

So we were all a bit melancholy after working extra long days scheduled around providing childcare. Four-year-olds, amiright? We still had to make dinner, and so I set about plotting what to make. Then, I had a vision: a Tuscan-style chickpea and spinach soup.

I wasn’t thinking traditional Tuscan beans. We were deep in the trenches. We needed cream, fat, nostalgia, anything to provide relief of 6 hours of YouTube Kids and too many unfinished client deliverables. What we needed was semi-trashy comfort food, a creamy, Tuscan-something from Olive Garden rather than wholesome from Tuscany.

This wasn’t a shop around and compare notes situation, so I landed on the first recipe I came to, which was this one that turns out to be from a plant-based blog. Oops.

From the start, I decided to start modifying this thing, not because it was vegan—which I totally overlooked—but because why not? First, I skipped the sun-dried tomatoes. Those are mostly just a scam in America. There’s rarely much sun involved in sun-dried tomatoes, at least since they became the trendiest must-have ingredient a few decades back. Do you remember when every salad, pasta dish, and vaguely Italian recipe included sun dried tomatoes? That was the ‘90s for you. I suppose what wanted in my mind was something reminiscent of those happy go-lucky years surrounded by American prosperity.

At the grocery store I grabbed some mushrooms. We hadn’t eaten mushrooms in a while, and they were on sale. Since mushrooms take on just about any flavor you put with them, I thought they would be a safe addition.

And then we came to the coconut milk. So here’s the thing— the recipe suggested whole cream as a substitute. I was entirely willing to do it. I love cream. I live for cream. I add cream to things I’m not supposed to. But I wanted this hearty bean soup to last a few days in the refrigerator, so I opted for the coconut milk instead, thinking it would last longer.

Back at home, I started cooking . I wasn’t paying too much attention to the ingredients. I like things fast and loose, and besides I’d already basically thrown this recipe out the window. Did I mention the four-year-old was trying run around outside with a flashlight? He was adding all kinds of chaos to the situation. Anyway, I poured in a can of tomato paste, but turns out I probably only should have used 2 tablespoons, at least according to the recipe. At this point, I was well on my way to making an Italian inspired curry.

And since I didn’t think I was making a vegan dish, I poured in some chicken broth. The recipe calls for vegetable broth, but as an omnivore, I prefer the umami flavor of a meaty broth. Perhaps vegetable broth should have clued me in that I was following along a vegan’s recipe.

I did realize my mistakes the moment I tasted it. I had made a spectacular curry. Creamy, spicy, but not really one bit Tuscan, or even Italian. There wasn’t much to do other than serve it.

Overall it was a great tasting stew. If I had served it over rice and simply called it a chickpea curry, I don’t think anyone would have been disappointed. My wife felt like I had misled her by dropping the word Tuscan in front of the recipe, and then she rightly accused me of finding a vegan recipe.

As predicted we had enough leftovers for lunch the next day, but then we got pizza. It sat in the refrigerator for a few days before I pulled it out to make for lunch this afternoon. I was so deep in pumping out a client website I was building, I entirely forgot about the bowl sitting in the microwave until dinner time.

Accidentally Un-Vegan Tuscan Chickpea Curry

Ingredients

• 38 oz of chickpeas

• 6 oz tomato paste

• 8 oz mushrooms, but only if they are on sale

• 1 giant bag of fresh spinach

• A few cloves of garlic

• 1 can coconut milk

• 32 oz of broth (chicken, unless you’re vegan, and then go with vegeatble)

• 1 onion

• Several pinches of red pepper flakes

• Dash of lemon juice

Instructions

• Dice the onion

• Finely chop the garlic

• Cook gently in olive oil

• Add mushrooms and brown

• Add red pepper

• Season with salt and peppper

• Drain, then add chickpeas

• Stir and simmer for a minute

• Add the tomato paste and broth

• Stir together and add spinach

• When spinach is wilted add in coconut milk

• Taste and season with salt, pepper, and red pepper

• Stir and simmer for about 20 minutes while it thickens

• Squirt a dash of lemon juice and stir

• Serve over ditalini or rice

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