tutorial tuesday: garbanzo beans w/tomatoes, rice, & allspice

This particular dish is another adaptation of a winning recipe that Seth found while flipping through one of my many cookbooks that sits neglected on the kitchen counter, Gourmet's Five Ingredients. I have a lot of cookbooks (I just counted and yah... there are about 40). There is a used book store downtown that we like to pop into about once a month and I'm pretty sure that cookbooks are the type of book I buy the most there (with occasional memoirs, history, or lit books), and yet, I tend to do most of my recipe searching online.

Ever since I set the goal for myself of making 25 new meals this year, Seth has picked about half of them and his choices have been consistently delicious. This meal was no exception!

Garbanzo Beans w/Tomatoes, Rice, & Allspice

• 2 cans of garbanzo beans (aka chickpeas), rinsed and drained.
• 1 can stewed tomatoes
• 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
• 2 tbsp dried parsley
• 1 cup crumbled feta
• 1/2 cup cooked white or brown rice

First off, cook your rice. I do mine on the stove-top using this method: One part rice to two parts water. Bring water to a boil and add a little bit of butter and salt. Once boiling, add your rice. Return to a boil and then turn heat to low, cover, and simmer. 18-25 minutes for white rice, 45-60 minutes for brown.

Slip the skins off of the beans & discard (I threw mine in the compost bin! HUZZAH!). Simmer with tomatoes (and their juice), parsley, allspice, and 1/3 cup water for 10-15 minutes over medium heat. Use your spatula to break up the tomatoes as much as possible. Add feta, salt and pepper to taste, and cooked rice and simmer for an additional few minutes.

Seriously. It's that easy. The thing that took the longest was getting the skins off of the beans, but I developed a pretty good system using one hand - I put the bean between my thumb and first two fingers and squeezed JUST enough that the skin popped into my fingers and the bean dropped into my palm. It took awhile, but was fairly easy.

This recipe is definitely being put into my regular rotation, as I am always on the look out for tasty, cheap, meatless meals.