When I’m cooking and eating at home, I enjoy chopping up every fresh vegetable and herb I can get my hands on to build a vegetable sauté. When we’re prepping and eating aboard our sailboat, I pack shortcuts like canned beans and premade sauces for easy meals.
That was how I created this chickpea skillet recipe. It uses fresh vegetables that travel well and canned chickpeas instead of my standard home-cooked dried beans. For flavor, it relies on chermoula, an herb-heavy North African sauce. If you make Chermoula-Yogurt Dip but leave out the yogurt, you create the base sauce that can be used as a marinade, salad dressing or easy way to spice up a vegetable skillet meal.
I’ve found that chermoula keeps well for two weeks in the refrigerator, so I usually make a large enough batch for several meals. The oil separates and hardens at fridge temperature, but it stirs back in once it liquifies again. Even better, chermoula freezes well. I divide it into a silicone tray with 1-ounce cubes to easily thaw just what I need for this and other meals.
I typically serve this vegetarian skillet meal over couscous, prepared using my favorite technique: Pour boiling water over instant couscous seasoned with butter, cinnamon and salt and cover until the grains absorb the liquid and fluff quickly with a fork. Tangy, salty feta cheese rounds out the flavors, although you can leave it out as vegan option.
When we’re cruising, I prep this dinner at the same time as Chickpea and Vegetable Couscous Salad to eat for the next day’s lunch. Onion, carrots, garlic and chickpeas appear in both dishes, but they taste different in the cooked skillet meal and the chilled salad. The salad’s lemon-and-spice dressing also hits differently than the herb-forward chermoula.
The flavors vary enough that I’ve served these hot and cold couscous dishes side by side in workshops and watched people clean both from their plates. Vary them even further with a wider array of seasonal vegetables, like asparagus, snap peas, broccoli, green beans, potatoes and winter squash.
Chickpea Vegetable Skillet with Couscous and Feta
Serves 4
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
3 carrots, sliced on an angle
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 15-ounce can chickpeas, drained
2 small zucchini, sliced
1/4 cup chermoula
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1/4 cup water
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
2-1/2 cups Pour-Over Cinnamon Couscous
4 ounces feta, or to taste
In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the onion and carrots and sauté for about four minutes, or until tender. Stir in the garlic, chickpeas, zucchini and chermoula and warm until fragrant.
Stir in the tomato paste and water. Bring the mixture to a boil, and then reduce the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes, until the sauce thickens slightly. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve over warm couscous and top with crumbled or cubed feta.
Julie Laing is a Bigfork-based cookbook author and food blogger at TwiceAsTasty.com.