Crispiest chickpeas and charred broccoli with gochujang tahini yoghurt
a salad from pantry ingredients
Welcome to To Vegetables, With Love, a celebration of a vegetable life, less ordinary. ‘ Find archived recipes on my recipe index.
My book Tenderheart is available from Books are Magic, Kitchen, Arts and Letters, Book Larder, Bold Fork Books and also here or here.
This week’s recipe is free for all.
I love shopping for groceries and it’s an adventure I embark on each day, even when there isn’t anything needed. Over the years, my daily supermarket visit has become my emotional support. While I relish the endless possibilities of each day that freelance life affords me, it is still reassuring to have an anchor, one activity that creates a semblance of order amongst the disorder. I find this harmony in the supermarket aisles.
Despite my supermarket dependence, I set myself a challenge this week: create a recipe without shopping for ingredients. In reality, I really enjoy cooking with parameters. Limitations force me to think more creatively. To conjure more with less. Limitations and reliance on pantry staples were guidelines I set myself when developing recipes for Tenderheart.
The ingredients I had on hand:
· Broccoli
· Chickpeas
· Coconut yoghurt
These three ingredients were to be the foundation of the recipe. But how can I coax more from each?
Crispy chickpeas are now commonplace in modern food vernacular but how do we get them even crispier, without having to use more oil. I turned to a technique I first shared in Tenderheart (in the grilled baby bok choy with miso-gochujang butter and crispy chickpeas recipe), where I dust the chickpeas in chickpea flour and roast them at high temperature. The chickpea flour not only forms a crispy exterior around the inner ‘pea’’, but I chose it mostly for flavour - while cornflour/cornstarch or potato starch would also work, chickpea flour imparts its signature nuttiness, reinforcing the chickpea flavour. The chickpea-iest chickpea ever…also the crispiest.
My next task was to level up the coconut yoghurt. I love coconut yoghurt - it has a fresh flavor that brings interest to the plate. It’s not the same flavour profile as tart Greek yoghurt but it can more or less be used in the same way. To tame its sweet undertones, I added tahini paste for earthiness, along with gochujang for punchy spice and a vibrant hue.
For the broccoli, well, little needs to be done to make broccoli perfect. I prepared it my favourite way, charred in my pan for smoky edges.
The resulting salad brims with maximum texture and big flavours. Each bite is exciting. Let the winter salad festival roll on.
Weeknight wonders for this week, all NYT Cooking recipes have gift links:
Monday: When I can’t think of what to cook, I make this chilled soba noodle salad with marinated cucumbers, sesame and avocado
Tuesday: It’s Tuesday, so let’s make cauliflower ‘chorizo’ tacos
Wednesday: Excited to share this new recipe on NYT Cooking - Roasted Spiced Squash With Whipped Feta and Pistachios. I’m so hungry looking at his photo.
Thursday: Make a pot of rice and this sweet and sour cauliflower
Friday: Making this is Snap Pea, Tofu and Herb Salad With Spicy Peanut Sauce like giving yourself the night off from cooking
🥦 My cookbook, Tenderheart is for cooking vegetables, all year round. Pick up your copy here. It is also mostly vegan (or vegan-izable) and gluten-free adaptable.
Crispiest chickpeas and charred broccoli with gochujang tahini yoghurt
© By Hetty Lui McKinnon for To Vegetables, With Love.
If you don’t have gochujang, substitute with another spicy condiment like chili oil/crisp, doubanjiang, harissa paste or salsa macha.
Serves 4
500 g cooked chickpeas (about 2 x 400 g cans, drained)
35 g (1/3 cup) chickpea flour (besan)
2 teaspoons gochugaru or ½ teaspoon red pepper/chilli flakes (or to your taste)
sea salt and black pepper
extra virgin olive oil
2 heads broccoli (about 675g / 1.5 pound), cut into small florets
2 scallions, thinly sliced
Gochujang tahini yoghurt
1/2 cup (125g) coconut or Greek yoghurt
2 tablespoons tahini paste
1 tablespoon gochujang paste
1 clove garlic, grated (I use microplane)
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
sea salt and black pepper
Preheat oven to 425˚F / 220˚C.
Place the chickpeas into a medium bowl and add the chickpea flour, gochugaru or red pepper/chilli flakes, and season well with sea salt and black pepper. Drizzle generously with olive oil and toss well until the chickpeas are well coated and there is no more dry flour. Transfer to a baking sheet and roast until golden and crispy, giving the pan a shake after 10 minutes, for a total of about 20 to 22 minutes. Remove from the oven and set aside.
Meanwhile heat a large skillet over medium high heat. When hot, drizzle with oil and add the broccoli (you’ll need to work in batches as all the broccoli will not fit at once), taking care not to overcrowd the pan. Season with sea salt and black pepper and leave to fry, undisturbed, for 2–3 minutes, until charred; turn the broccoli over and cook the other side until charred and crisp-tender. Remove from the pan and allow to cool. Continue cooking the remaining broccoli.
In a medium bowl, add the yoghurt, tahini, gochujang, garlic and olive oil and whisk until smooth. The sauce should be look enough to dollop so if it’s too thick, add a tablespoon or more of water, until it’s smooth and loose enough to fall off the whisk. Taste and season with salt and black pepper.
To serve, spread half of the gochujang tahini yoghurt onto the bottom of a serving plate, top with the broccoli and then scatter over the crispiest chickpeas. Dollop the remaining yoghurt on top, drizzle with little more olive oil, scatter over the scallions, and finish with a final season of salt and pepper. Serve immediately.
Io Vegetables, With Love is dedicated to vegetables and it is a joy to bring you a new recipe every week. Thank you to everyone who subscribes, especially to paid subscribers who make this work possible.
Just made this, using full fat yoghurt mixed with coconut cream. Gorgeous! Thank you!
So I’m in Odesa and one of my favourite places is a (mostly vegan) spot called Gaia - I always get the same thing - hummus with roasted Brussels sprouts, broccoli and peas - tonight all 3 of us had it for dinner - so similar to your lovely plate!