Bean feast

Cooked a yummy dinner this evening. Hooray for Alison Holst! This was in her big red book. Everyone who is from New Zealand will know which recipe book that is, and it will likely be irrelevant information for non-Kiwis. Alison Holst is one of the patron saints of New Zealand cookery, the other being the Edmunds "sure to rise" company. Someone I knew when I was a student used to regularly praise St Edmund and St Alison.

I cooked a batch of chickpeas today in my crockpot - no soaking needed, you just whack them in with the water and cook on High for 5 or 6 hours.

4 o'clock rolled around and I needed to be inspired about those chickpeas (I think they're also known as garbanzo beans?). So out came my trusty big red Alison book. I cooked up the Bean Feast (but adapted it to what I had in my fridge):

In my trusty cast iron dutch oven I fried up (in lard Mmmmm)
2 onions,
2 cubed potatoes (skin on),
2 cubed carrots
and the chopped stalky leafy bits off a broccoli.

When this was good and hot I added
1t paprika,
2t salt,
1t oregano,
2t basil,
a small tin of tomato paste (about 1/4cup ish),
the beans (it had been 2 cups when they were dried beans)
and 2cups of the beans' cooking fluid.

This all got simmered together for about 15 minutes or so. Then I added
the head of broccoli, chopped into florets
and 1 red capsicum (bell pepper), sliced

I popped the lid on, turned the heat off and forgot about it until 5 o'clock, when I started the brown rice cooking and turned the heat back on for the bean feast to warm it through and finish cooking.

Yummo. Especially with some unsweetened yoghurt on the top. Miss4, as usual, ate mostly rice and spurned the topping, while Miss1 ate mostly topping and spurned the rice.

This recipe makes a ton of very filling food - good for potluck dinners. We've got 2 meals in the freezer out of this recipe, leftover from what I cooked this afternoon.