Photography by ROSS WILLIAM HAMILTON With the farmers markets of late summer overflowing with produce, "meatless Mondays" are awfully easy this time of year. But since I'm a cook on a tight budget, meat doesn't make nightly appearances on my table the rest of the year, either. We pretty much eat like peasants at my house -- albeit well-fed and happy ones.
I've found that the trick to cooking cheaply -- and healthfully -- is to make vegetable- and legume-based meals that are flavorful and complex enough that meat isn't missed. Two cases in point: Spanish-style chickpeas with greens and chapons (large, crusty, super-delicious croutons) and a North African-spiced lentil stew sharpened with pomegranate molasses.
For the first dish, I use dried chickpeas that I soak overnight in salted water then simmer with a few aromatics until tender. Cooked this way, the beans taste better and have a better texture than canned beans, plus the cooking liquid becomes flavorful enough to use as a replacement for vegetable or chicken broth. I flavor the chickpeas with a soffritto of onions, peppers and loads of garlic spiked with paprika and saffron. (If you must add meat, feel free to garnish with cubed bits of sauteed Spanish chorizo -- impossibly addictive stuff.)
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The lentil stew starts off a pretty classic affair, but then I spike it with cumin, caraway, chile and garlic -- essentially the flavors of harissa, the North African condiment. A combination of sun-dried tomatoes, sumac and pomegranate molasses adds a particularly bright, almost fruity flavor to counter the earthiness. The dish is something of a blank slate and can be gussied up with all kinds of garnishes. From braised greens to labneh (yogurt cheese), there's not much that doesn't taste good piled on top.
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