Recipe: Chickpea Puttanesca
A meat-free pantry dinner for all you chickpea lovers
The idea behind this recipe is a simple one: What if we use chickpeas instead of pasta in spaghetti alla puttanesca?
Puttanesca is a weeknight workhorse in my home: I tend to keep the key ingredients — tomatoes, anchovy, garlic, olives, capers, chili flakes — on hand. Likewise, I always have canned chickpeas in my pantry, so melding the two just made sense to me.
Braising canned chickpeas is such a good move for making them feel a bit more like a main course and less like an add-in. As the chickpeas simmer and then roast in the puttanesca sauce, they take on all those bold flavors. Not surprisingly, these chickpeas are delicious the next day, the flavors intensifying as the mixture thickens in the fridge. This recipe also makes use of two of my favorite easy meal upgrades: Finishing your dish with a fresh herb and something crunchy. In this case, we’re going with parsley and toasted panko breadcrumbs, respectively.
I hope you enjoy this recipe as much I do! Please me know if you make it by sharing your results in Table Chat and tagging me on Instagram: @hillarydixlercanavan.
And if you like this recipe, here are some others you might like too:
Puttanesca Sauce (Grace Parisi, Food & Wine)
Weeknight Puttanesca (Ali Slagle, I Dream of Dinner via Bon Appéttit)
Feta and Tomato Braised Chickpeas (Sheela Prakash, The Kitchn)