Weekday Dinners: Spaghetti with Smashed Chickpea Sauce
This weekend, I had a vision: warm smashed chickpeas dripping with olive oil, bright with lemon and parsley, and pungent with garlic. I didn't know what I wanted to do with the sauce/salad/spread running through my mind; I just knew that I wanted it. So I made it. At some point my roommate walked through the kitchen. "That smells delicious," he said. I pointed at the garlic sauteing on the stove. "Ah, that explains it. What are you making?" I didn't answer because I still didn't know. I finished mixing everything together and stuck it in the fridge—after thoroughly checking the seasoning, of course.*
Then, it snowed. It was the first snow of the season, and to me that calls for something warm and comforting, like a big bowl of pasta. I'm always happy to just eat spaghetti tossed with (lots of) butter and parmesan, but this time I wanted something else in it too. Like protein. So I got out my spaghetti and butter and parmesan...and my chickpeas. Which are now a sauce, because that's what happens when you put things on pasta. They become a sauce.
Smashed Chickpea Sauce/Salad/Spread
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
Put the chickpeas in a large mixing bowl, and roughly mash. (I used a potato masher, a fork would probably work too.)
Mix in the parsley, and set aside.
Saute the garlic in a lot of olive oil on low heat for about 5 minutes. You want to use a lot more olive oil than seems necessary for just the garlic because you do need a lot of oil for the chickpeas, and now it's infused with garlicky goodness.
Pour the garlic and olive oil onto the chickpea and parsley mixture. Add the juice of one lemon and a glug of balsamic vinegar. Throw in a pinch each of red pepper flakes, cayenne, smoked paprika, and salt. Grind a whole bunch of black pepper on top, and stir everything together.
Adjust the seasoning to your tastes, and eat with a spoon. Or with spaghetti. Or in a sandwich. Or whatever else you can think of.
*I ate half of it out of the mixing bowl with a spoon—as I said, it can be served as a salad.
