Spiced Chickpea Stew with Coconut and Turmeric and Plant-based Eating
Watching: Reply All Episode #155 — Friendship Village
I don’t want to read your ramblings, I just want the recipe: Spiced Chickpea Stew with Coconut and Turmeric
Star Rating: Three stars
At some point in the last year I was sucked into the Dax Shephard ‘Armchair Expert’ podcast. I can’t remember which episode I listened to first, and I definitely don’t recall loving it out of the gate, but overtime I’ve been wooed into those long episodes of meandering conversations. If there’s one episode I recommend you start with it’s this one with California’s first Surgeon General, Dr Nadine Burke Harris, talking about the impact that childhood trauma has on health and longevity. Certainly not a conversation I expected from that random dude on Punk’d.
I got a little behind on my listening and late last year while playing catch up I was taken by the episode with Jonathan Safran Foer. He was the novelist wunderkind in the early 2000’s who wrote ‘Everything is Illuminated’ and ‘Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close’. More recently he’s turned to non-fiction covering factory farming in ‘Eating Animals’ (highly recommended read), and climate change in ‘We Are the Weather’.
A few events coalesced very early this year which made me seek out more information about climate change — most notably the fact that the majority of my home country, Australia, is on fucking fire. Australia’s successive governments have ignored all climate change warnings and continue to be in the pockets of the coal industry, and it seems like this fire season we’ve really reaped what we’ve sown. Current estimates suggest that over 1 billion animals have died so far, and those that remain will not have an ecosystem to support them. It’s been the hottest year, in the hottest decade, on record. Fires have been burning for over two months without any sign of when they’ll stop. If this isn’t the time for action, I’m not sure when is.
I wanted to know what I could do on an individual level to reduce my impact on the planet. I downloaded ‘Eating Animals’ and devoured it (don’t worry — books are vegan) in a matter of days.
And something in that book changed me.
I’m not going to go into the science — I’ll misrepresent it, or get it wrong — but factory farming, beyond being incredibly cruel and producing meat with literal faeces in the flesh, is one of the biggest — if not the biggest — contributor to climate change. The logic of moving to a plant-based diet was so clear that it was hardly even a decision. One of the most impactful actions an individual can make to reduce their contribution to climate change is to significantly reduce, if not totally eliminate, animal products. (The other three are getting rid of your car, flying less, and having fewer children.)
Now, I love meat. Steak is delicious and tasty and incredible. Nothing makes me happier than seafood in all its forms. While I’m not a massive fan of pork chops or bacon, you can pile me up with salami, prosciutto, and jamon, and even though I know it’s really, really bad you could find me guiltily eating foie gras about once a year (and LOVING it).
I do have a head start on the dairy part, seeing as I haven’t been able to eat dairy basically my whole life. I’ve been told that for most people moving to a plant-based diet it’s not the meat that’s tricky to avoid, but dairy. I have a decade and a half of experience doing that dance and this is literally the first time I’ve been thankful for it.
So… what does that mean for what I’ll be cooking this year? My diet already contains a lot of vegan food, but everything I write about here is going to be vegan moving forward. Thankfully plant-based food is delicious, and something everyone should be encouraged to include more of in their diet whether it’s for health reasons, or climate, or simply to mix things up.
So after all that — on with the show.
This was good but it’s going to need some playing around with to make it great. It was missing some kind of extra earthy spice base like cumin or curry to add to the turmeric and coconut — the flavour just wasn’t deep enough. I seasoned it only two out of the four (!!) suggested times and still found it to be a little salty, but I think I’m particularly sensitive to salt. When I make it again I’ll season once while sauteing the onions and aromatics, and then once more after the stew has reduced for about 30 minutes as I think it got too concentrated in the reduction process. I had some fresh coriander in the fridge so I added that as garnish with the mint, as well as some thinly sliced radishes because they needed to be used and have become my latest obsession. I finished it with a squeeze of lime which helped cut through the salt and made the whole dish a little brighter.
I served it with Trader Joe’s Brown Rice Medley, which was delicious AND a good source of iron.
Overall, there were elements of this dish I loved (the mashed chickpeas to thicken the stew especially) and I think it would be really great if the flavours were a little more robust. I’d also add another vegetable, like broccoli or zucchini, to bulk it up a little more.