I’ve been on a chickpea kick lately, enabled by a stockpile of dried chickpeas and Ella Quittner’s extremely thorough guide to cooking them well. Her guide includes pressure cooker times — exactly what I needed.
But canned chickpeas are one of the great gifts of the supermarket, something to always keep on hand at home if you aren’t a dried-bean person (or if, like me, you often forget to plan ahead). If you have a can or two, you can easily make a number of great chickpea recipes for dinner — including the reader-favorite coconut curry chickpeas below.
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1. Coconut Curry Chickpeas With Pumpkin and Lime
In the United States, canned pumpkin is typically deployed in desserts. But I think pumpkin is most delicious in savory recipes, like this South Asian-style dish from Melissa Clark, in which it’s simmered with chickpeas, coconut milk, jalapeño, garlic and garam masala.
2. Crispy Mustard Chicken With Bread Crumbs
I find it impossible to resist crispy chicken, and I won’t even try when it comes to this new recipe from Melissa, which blessedly is baked, not fried. Using panko instead of finely ground bread crumbs amplifies the crunch.
3. Ginger-Scallion Steamed Fish
The chef Connie Chung devised this dish to capture the ginger-scallion essence of Cantonese steamed whole fish, but in a way that was easy to serve and eat in a fast-casual restaurant. So think of your kitchen as a fast-casual restaurant and make this very simple recipe, adapted by Ali Slagle, which uses boneless cubes of fish and gently steams them to juiciness.
4. Orzotto Alla Carbonara
“This is carbonara for the clumsy, the impatient and the greedy.” Eric Kim is speaking right to me with his new recipe, which uses orzo instead of spaghetti in carbonara — that Italian paean to salty cured pork, eggs, Pecorino Romano and a storm of black pepper. Orzo actually makes the dish easier to cook, and creamier, too.
