Chermoula spiced chickpeas in stuffed & roasted peppers

Here’s a tasty Moroccan inspired recipe that’ll fill you up and make you feel healthy at the same time.  Anything with lemon, honey and ginger sings cleansing or purifying and accompanied with the right amount of spiciness you’re destined to feel renewed.  This John Torode chermoula paste recipe lay unexplored amidst the pages of a 2006 GoodFood Magazine.



(From here I digress and go off on a rant for a little bit…ignore at will)
Food, like fashion, has its fads and figaries and du jour it’s all about foraging and wild garlic.  In the food world you’ll have those who know their amanita (psychoactive/poisonous mushroom) from their shiitake just like you’ll have those who know their Jimmy Choos from their Louboutins and on both counts I would consider myself somewhere in the middle (though probably edging more towards being in danger of picking a poisonous mushroom).  To some, food/fashion and the knowledge thereof is an obsession – you could nearly say an addiction albeit a relatively healthy addiction though one or both may be destructive on waist-line and wallet.  The two worlds of food and fashion often meet and in the mission to look good in one’s clothes or perhaps to just tie a zip that once closed with ease you’ll read in food and fashion magazines about the latest diet.  There is all sorts of craziness and varying nutritional advice being bandied about in relation to ‘healthy eating’ and ‘diets.’  With recent suggestions of banning advertising of certain foodstuffs targeted at children in a bid to conquer obesity and an emerging fad of tube-feeding for size 00 brides I just want to scream COP ON and then mutter FFS accompanied by my trademark rolling eyes.
I mean what does ‘I’m on a diet’ even mean?  Your diet is what you eat not what you don’t eat. So a ‘no carb diet’ makes zero sense no matter what way you look at it.
Those in search of an answer to their dieting/weight misery already know the answer.  It is simple and sensible.  It is the reason why ‘everything in moderation’ and ‘a little of what you fancy does you good’ have become cliches because therein lies the answer -moderation- and if you’ve overdone it and need to tie that zip then ‘eat less and move more’ for a while.
Rant over..now back to something tasty and filling.
(I halved John Torode’s original quantities & significantly reduced the spicing quantities)
Chermoula Paste
You will need:
1 red onion
1 fat clove garlic
thumb sized piece fresh root ginger
juice 1 lemon
50 ml olive oil
1 tbsp honey
half tsp of cumin
half tsp of paprika
half tsp of turmeric
half tsp of hot chilli powder
Method:
Roughly chop the onion, crush the garlic then peel and grate the ginger.  Combine with all the other ingredients in a food processor to make a paste.
Chermoula spiced chickpeas in stuffed & roasted peppers.
Serves 4.
You will need:
1 quantity chermoula paste (as above)
1 400g can chickpeas
1 courgette
125g rice pre-boiled (left over is fine)
4 peppers
Method:
Preheat the (fan) oven to 190C / Gas Mark 6.
Drain and rinse the chickpeas and combine with the chermoula paste.
Cut the courgette in thick slices and then quarter these to bite sized chunks.
Mix the courgette and cooked rice in with the chickpeas and chermoula paste and stir until everything is coated.
Slice the tops off the peppers and scoop out the seeds.  Remove the stalk and centre piece from the cap and then use this to sit and balance the pepper on top of (as pictured above).
Fill the peppers with the chermoula spiced chickpeas.
Roast in the pre-heated oven for 30 minutes.
Serve with a few green leaves.
The courgette and pepper will still retain a little bite and it’s best to peel away the slightly charred skin of the peppers as you are eating them.
Enjoy.
Til next time, Sheila.