Hello, my dear food lovers. I have a great recipe for you; a chickpea-date beef bowl. This is an easy and quick dish to prepare for lunch or for a week dinner. Besides the beef and the sweet dates, you also have the creamy chickpeas, aromatic garlic, crunchy bell-pepper and fresh parsley.
Is it just me or you also think dates are a great sweet addition not only to desserts but also to main dishes? I think they go perfectly with meat, rice or bulgur. Well, probably it’s not just me, but the whole Middle East and North Africa, too. Heheheh.
Anyway, I love this kind of dishes, where you can prepare a delicious meal using just one pot. And I love combining ingredients which my grandmother would never think of using in the same dish. Although the ingredients are very basic and simple, the result is delicious and flavourful. All the ingredients are very easy to find in every supermarket or grocery store.
I used Deglet Noor dates, which are semi-dry but still soft. The best and the softest ones are the Medjool dates. Pick soft or semi-dry dates (without the stone) for this recipe.
Ingredients for 3-4 portions of chickpea-date beef bowl:
- olive oil
- 1 onion (chopped)
- 3 garlic cloves (chopped)
- 8 dates (Medjool are the best, but I used Deglet Noor)
- 400 g ground beef
- 1 Tbsp tomato paste
- 100 ml beef stock
- 200 g chickpeas (from a can)
- 1 red bell pepper (cut into cubes)
- 50-80 g Feta cheese
- chilli
- parsley (chopped)
- salt
Wash, clean and cut the bell pepper into cubes. Wash the parsley and leave to drain. Chop the garlic, onion and the dates as well.
In a larger pan, drizzle some olive oil. Once it gets hot put in the onion, garlic and the dates. After the onion becomes glossy, add the beef. Stir fry it for 10 minutes or until light brownish. Then add a spoon of tomato paste, pour in the beef stock and season. Cook for a couple of minutes.
At this point, add the chickpeas. They are already cooked, so they only need to get warm. And I added the bell-pepper only at the end because I wanted it to stay crunchy.
Serve this delicious chickpea-date beef bowl with some Feta cheese. Don’t forget to sprinkle it with some chilli and fresh parsley for the extra kick. Prepare this dish either on a cold evening or on a rainy day.
Enjoy!
