Miss Rachel

Curried cauliflower, chickpeas, onion, spinach and tomatoes over rice. In a large skillet, saute a coarsely diced onion in some oil (I used about 1 T of coconut oil) with a few cloves of garlic (crushed), 1 T of curry powder, 1/2 t of cayenne, and a little salt. Add 1 15 oz. can of diced tomatoes including their liquid. I also added about half a can of water. Bring everything to a boil and once it’s bubbling, add cauliflower florets (I used a 12 oz. bag). Cover and turn heat down a little so mixture is still bubbling somewhat. After about 5 minutes, add 1 15 oz. can of drained, rinsed chickpeas and let simmer for another 5 minutes. Then add spinach (I used a 6 oz. bag) on top of the mixture and let wilt for a couple minutes; then stir in the spinach and let cook for about three more minutes. Serve in bowls as is or over the grain of your choice. (I used brown basmati rice. I don’t have much white rice left.)

This dish would work with other types of beans and possibly other vegetables. Making it further enforced my belief that one should always keep cans of beans and tomatoes on hand for dinner creations.

Most of the time I don’t follow published recipes, but there are some that I have tried that make such a good impression I return to them. One such recipe is Tatie Wawo-Runtu’s Spinach with Shallots from Madhur Jaffrey’s World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking, an excellent cookbook that I recommend you seek out. The recipe is very simple: it just requires spinach, shallots, a chili pepper and oil. It requires a LOT of spinach - 2 lbs - but as you know spinach cooks down a great deal.

I toasted and steamed some Israeli couscous and served the spinach over it. Delicious!