Potaje de Garbanzos de Baza

This is a chickpea stew that comes from Spain, specifically a small town called Baza in Andalucia. Thanks to colonization, it spread to Latin America, especially Cuba. I discovered it from this Spanish chef on Youtube, but below is my version which includes double the spices (and other spices) and double the vegetables (and others).

Two techniques I learned from this recipe are grating fresh tomatoes (which ends up looking like those crushed canned tomatoes, but fresher and in more controllable quantities) and creating a stew thickener from mashed eggs and bread. The combination of everything is incredibly flavorful and warms the soul.

I also learned how to speedily soak and prepare dried, uncooked garbanzo beans, which conveniently yields enough broth for this stew.

Ingredients

Serves 6-8, great reheated

• For main stew
  • 1 medium-large onion, diced
  • 6-10 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 green bell pepper, diced
  • 1 red or yellow bell pepper, diced
  • 2 cups carrots, diced into thick pieces (if some crunch desired) or thinner pieces (if no crunch)
  • 20 oz cooked garbanzo beans, or 10 oz uncooked garbanzo beans
  • 1 tomato, grated
  • 1 large potato, diced into about 1-inch chunks
  • 1 hot pepper, such as jalapeño, chopped
  • Olive oil
  • 3 cups of vegetable broth
    • you can use the spiced water from cooking the chickpeas if you're using uncooked ones
  • Spices
    • 1 tsp Spanish sweet paprika (or any paprika)
    • Freshly grated black pepper
    • Salt
    • Mediterranean spices, or whatever for some extra fun
    • 1 tsp garlic powder
    • 1 tsp onion powder
    • 1-2 bay leaves
• For thickener
  • 4 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1 egg (2 for indulgence)
  • 2 slices baguette, or 1 good hot dog bun, or 2 slices of bread, etc.
  • 1.5 tsp dried parsley, or 1 handful fresh parsley
  • Salt
  • Olive oil
  • mortar and pestle for mashing