Quick Chickpea and Quinoa Curry

After a weekend filled with lots of sunshine and dining out, I was ready to get back to the kitchen on Monday night.  I clipped a recipe from Everyday Food awhile back for a Quick Chickpea Curry and I decided this would be a perfect dish to help me get me back to some healthier eating with a lot of flavor.  Per usual, I did a little modification to the recipe to make it my own.

First, I gathered my ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 large yellow onion, chopped (the original recipe calls for the onion to be diced small)
• 6 small garlic cloves, minced (the original recipe calls for 3 garlic cloves, minced)
• 1 tablespoon curry powder
• 1 cinnamon stick (3 inches)
• A pinch of ground cloves
• 2 cans (15 ounces each) no-salt-added chickpeas, rinsed and drained
• 3 tablespoons ketchup
• coarse salt and ground pepper
• 1 cup chicken broth and 1 cup water (the original recipe calls for 2 cups of water)
• 1/2 cup quinoa (this is not in the original recipe)
• Lemon wedges, for serving

The preparation for this recipe was super simple.  I chopped up the onion.

And I drained and rinsed the two cans of chickpeas.

In my Dutch oven, I heated the olive oil at medium heat and added the chopped onion to the pan.  I cooked the onion until it was dark brown around the edges.

I then added the garlic, curry, cinnamon and a pinch of ground cloves to the pan and gave everything a stir.

I added the chickpeas, ketchup, a pinch of salt, a few cracks of peppers, one cup chicken broth and one cup water.  I added the broth to add some extra flavor to this dish.  To make it completely vegetarian, you can use a vegetable broth or just two cups of water.

I had about a half cup of quinoa leftover and thought it would make a great addition to the chickpea curry.  I added the quinoa to the pan and gave everything a stir.

I brought the curry to a boil and then reduced it to a simmer, covered and cooked it for twenty minutes.  After the twenty minutes were up, I increased the heat to medium-high and cooked it for another five minutes until the sauce was slightly reduced.

I served the chickpea and quinoa curry in a bowl with a squeeze of lemon juice.  This dish was simple, healthy and hearty, but full of so much flavor - the perfect dinner to fuel me for the week.  I just ate a small bowl since I was stuffed from my huge lunch at Tossed but Bret ate his curry with a side salad.

This dish was unintentionally meatless but I didn't miss having meat in it at all.  What is the last meatless dish you cooked or ate?