Vegetable Stew With Chickpeas, Eggplant and Zucchini

If an occasional vegetarian meal is appealing to you, this Vegetable Stew with Chickpeas, Eggplant and Zucchini is a great choice. It uses many different vegetables, providing nice texture and chew for a plant focused dish.

Salting Eggplant

One key step in preparing this recipe is to salt the cut eggplant to draw out some of the moisture so that it won’t absorb too much oil while cooking.

It used to be that you would salt eggplant to remove some of the vegetable’s bitterness, but in modern day, eggplant is bred to be milder. The salting in the recipe is really more to preserve the texture while cooking.

Preparing the Vegetables

For preparing the vegetables the 7-5/8" Petite Chef knife is about all you need.

To cube the eggplant, trim off each end and then cut in half lengthwise. Lay the halves flat on the cutting board and cut the halves into strips lengthwise. Rotate and cut crosswise to dice. You may need to cut some of the pieces down, as you want them all to be of uniform size so they cook evenly.

For step-by-step instructions on how to do it, take a look at Cutco’s handy step-by-step tutorial, How to Dice Eggplant.

The Petite Chef can also be used to slice the zucchini, carrots and celery but, as with the eggplant, try to keep everything of uniform size, as best you can.

The same knife also works great for removing the kernels from the ears of corn.

Take a look at Cutco’s informative tutorials for cutting vegetables, if you want to brush up on your knife skills.

For the chickpeas, I recommend draining and rinsing before adding them. It helps to remove any preservatives and some of the gas.

This Summer Vegetable Stew with Chickpeas, Eggplant and Zucchini is a great way to showcase all the fresh produce coming from the garden this summer. It’s also a good recipe to play around with, using other vegetables like bell peppers, green beans and yellow squash.

Serve it with some crusty bread for an easy summer meal.