One Pot Vegan Chickpea Pasta

In this recipe, we will take an Italian classic and make it with what was in the cupboard

1. 1 carrot
2. 1/2 red onion
3. 1 bay leaf
4. bagel seasoning
5. garlic or garlic seasoning
6. small bunch parsley leaves
7. salt
8. black pepper
9. 3/4 cup dried green chickpea (hara chana)
10. some smaller pasta (we are adding chickpea, so probably don't use pasta made of chickpeas)
11. water
12. Instant pot or similar

Optional Non-Vegan

1. pecorino romano

I used green chickpeas (hara chana), which cook similar to regular chickpeas but are a bit smaller and green in their dried form. For more information on these, I recommend checking out this guide. They can be found in some Indian grocers or areas of India. You could also use canned garbanzos/chickpeas and would not need to soak/boil, but this is a shortcut.

Soak the chickpeas over night in water after a few rinses, they will be much larger after absorbing water. The next day cook chickpeas in instant pot for 38min High Pressure, let it sit for an hour or so to let the steam give some bonus cooking. When its cool you can store it or continue on. When ready to start cooking, divide the chickpeas into 2 groups. Puree one group of them with olive oil and a bit of water. Put aside.

Puree the tomatos, I used an immersion blender, but have heard a food mill will keep them a redder color.

cut into onion/carrot 3-4mm cubes. chop parsley, should be maybe enough to half fill a wooden spoon. The original recipe called for rosemary, but it was unavailable at the time this was created.

start instant pot on "low saute" with some olive oil.

when the oil is warm, add the onion and carrot cubes, parsley and the bay leaf

put the lid on and wait 5min.

add a bit of water and some garlic, then saute 10 more minutes with the lid. I discovered mid way that I did not have garlic, so I used some random "Sesame Garlic" spice from my cupboard that I extracted with a chopstick.

The carrots and onion should be soft and seasoned. I added another spice since the first one was not cutting it, this one also had sesame seeds and promises of garlic. Next add the tomato puree to the instant pot and cook for a couple of minutes to cook the tomato.

Remove bay leaf. Up until now, we've used "low saute", but we need to cook pasta, so bump it up to "high saute"

Add salt and pepper, maybe some more "everything seasoning"

Add the pasta and chickpeas, incorporate well.

Add a cup of water and keep stirring for 12 minutes, it is important to stir. You may need to add another cup or two of water along the way. This is a one-pot pasta, so no strainer is needed, the water absorbs.

My pasta was from Halloween (3 months old) in a unlabelled bag and no instructions, so I had to test it when it felt done. It had bat, owl, pumpkin and spider shapes in about 3 colors.

Add the chickpea puree and mix for a minute or two, now might be a good time to adjust the salt. If you need to cook off some water, do that too. Now its ready to eat!

Up until now, the recipe is accidentally vegan. Here I added a few generous pinches of pecorino romano per a recipe I was very loosely following, but in retrospect the nutritional yeast would have kept it vegan and probably tasted about the same.

Maybe with garlic and rosemary, the pecorino would have mixed well 🤷‍♀️.

Reminder: If you're going for vegan, also make sure to check the pasta labels.

Its not the most beautiful dish, but tasted pretty good. You or your guests could try to eat this blindfolded for more of a zen experience, mine looked more like stroganoff. Perhaps some expert plating and garnishes could help. Cleanup is relatively simple due to the instant pot doing most of the work.

This recipe was made with ingredients from Canada, US, Mexico, India and Italy, I encourage local modifications where possible, many people will want chili flakes or have rosemary or garlic for example.

For a more authentic experience, I recommend checking out this recipe.