Quick to make chard and chickpeas with avocado sauce showcases two simple ingredients. Simply sauté chard and garlic, stir in chickpeas, and top with a quick and easy creamy blender sauce made with avocado, lime, and garlic. Ready in less than thirty minutes!
What’s the difference between chickpeas and garbanzo beans? This versatile bean goes by two names but they’re the same legume. Call them chickpeas or garbanzo beans, they’re one and the same.
Basic ingredients in Chard and Chickpeas with Avocado Sauce:
- For this chard and chickpea recipe, you can use drained canned chickpeas, or cook yours from scratch. Here’s how to cook garbanzo beans in a pressure cooker.
- Whenever you cook with chard, include the stems for texture, flavor, and bulk. Cook the stems until tender, just as you would chopped onion.
- The simple blender avocado sauce adds a Southwestern flair. Serve alongside steamed rice or quinoa.
Tacos anyone? Sometimes I make this recipe adding a minced jalapeño or serrano pepper, a teaspoon of ground cumin, and a pinch of cayenne, and tuck this filling into corn tortillas with salsa. Beans and greens are a great vegetarian combo in tacos. Like these lentil and greens tacos.
With their nutty flavor, sturdy texture, and “meaty” buttery bite, chickpeas are a vegetarian staple in cuisines all over the world. Protein-packed chickpeas appear in Italian pasta, and in minestrone soup. Their texture is delightful in Indian curry dishes like this one for potato and chickpea curry. This Indian spiced chickpea and chard curry is another recipe where chard marries chickpeas in amiable fashion.
Of course, there is hummus and falafel from the Middle East. The French use ground chckpea flour to make socca, a protein-rich pancake with crispy edges. Learn how to make socca and make my easy recipe for spicy chickpea socca.
The avocado sauce is a variation from a recipe in Judita Wignall’s cookbook, Raw and Simple. (Affiliate link.) Thanks Judita!
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Chard and Chickpeas with Avocado Sauce
Ingredients
Avocado Sauce:
- ¼ cup water
- 1 to 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
- ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1 clove garlic , minced
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- ½ avocado
Chard and Chickpeas:
- 13 ounces chard , washed
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1 clove garlic , minced
- 1 ½ cups chickpeas , canned or cooked from scratch, drained
- 2 tablespoon chopped cilantro leaves
- 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon or key lime juice
- 1 yellow tomato , diced (optional)
- sea salt and cayenne pepper, as needed
Instructions
To make the sauce:
- Scoop the avocado meat from its skin. Place in a blender along with the water, lime juice, salt, and garlic.
- Blend until smooth, adding water and/or lime juice sparingly if needed to get the ingredients moving around. Transfer to a bowl.
Cook the chard and chickpeas:
- Strip the chard leaves from the stems, reserving the stems if they are tender. Coarsely chop the chard leaves and dice the stems; set aside.
- Heat the oil in a large skillet. Add the chard stems, if using, and cook and stir for a couple of minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook another minute.
- Add the chickpeas, the chard and the cilantro. Sprinkle with salt and a good pinch of cayenne. Cook and stir until the chard has wilted. At the last minute, stir in the lemon juice and the tomato, if using.
- Remove from the heat. The tomato will become warm with the residual heat; don’t cook it anymore—you want the tomato to keep the same shape and texture as when you cut it. Serve with the avocado sauce.
How many servings does this make? · 19 December, 2017
Tammy,
The recipe feeds 2 to 4 persons. My husband and I share this amount–he is a big eater and eats enough for 2. If you serve with rice–I feel comfortable saying it feeds 4 persons. Thank you. I will add this info to the recipe. · 19 December, 2017
Delicious, just needed a touch of chilli. I will be making again, so simple · 25 July, 2021
Thank you! · 25 July, 2021