I love the flavour of a Tuscan-style ‘Marry Me’ sauce with spinach, cheese, cream, herbs, spices, garlic and sun-dried tomatoes! But, typically I make these sorts of sauces with double cream, which is lovely but has quite a bit of saturated fat. So, I wanted to reimagine this dish as something higher in fibre (as part of my little Make It High Fibre series), high in protein, lower in saturated fat and still delicious. This is what I came up with…
INGREDIENTS
Sauce:
Butter and olive oil
Shallot
Garlic
Chilli flakes
Oregano
Sun-dried tomatoes
Tomato purée
Sun-dried tomatoes
Cottage cheese
Everything else:
Chickpeas (and their liquid – so I used high-quality jarred)
Spinach
Lemon juice
Fresh parsley
Parmigiano Reggiano (or any other Italian hard cheese)
Accompaniments:
Any whole grain
Sourdough bread
TIPS & NOTES
This is a simple recipe, that’s quick, easy and weeknight-friendly. I just really recommend using high-quality jarred beans with a stock. If you can’t access something like this, you will can instead add around 100-150ml of water and a vegetable stock cube to the sauce alongside your drained and rinsed canned chickpeas. Personally, I don’t tend to recommend using the liquid from canned beans because the beans are cooked in the can, so it can cause gas and not taste very nice.
The recipe, alongside a slice of sourdough bread delivers 16g of fibre and 31g of protein per serving. Using wholemeal bread can bump up both metrics even more.
Healthier Marry Me Chickpeas
DESC
Ingredients
- 2 cloves of garlic (chopped or minced)
- 1 shallot (chopped)
- 1/2 a tsp of chilli flakes
- 1 tsp of oregano
- 1 tsp (15g) of tomato paste
- 175g of cottage cheese
- 100g of sun-dried tomatoes (chopped)
- 50g of Italian hard cheese (finely grated, or chop 3/4s roughly and reserve the rest to grate on as a topping later)
- 60g of spinach (roughly chopped)
- 570g jar of chickpeas in stock (see Tips & Notes for alternative options)
- Juice of 1/2 a lemon
- A small knob of butter
- A drizzle of olive oil (use the oil from the tomatoes, if you like)
- Salt and pepper to taste
Directions
- Add the oil and butter to a wide-based lidded frying pan over a medium heat and add the garlic and shallots – sauté for a couple of mins until fragrant
- Add salt, pepper, the oregano and chilli, then the tomato paste and cook it off for a minute
- Add the tomato and aromatic base to the blender with 3/4s of the Italian hard cheese, the cottage cheese and 50g of water (if needed to get the blender to move) and blitz until smooth
- Add the sauce back to the pan and add the chickpeas and sun-dried tomatoes to simmer on a low heat for 8-10 mins
- Add the spinach and cover to steam for a couple of mins
- Add the lemon juice and stir everything together
- Serve topped with the reserved Italian hard cheese grated over it
Let me know if you try my twist on ‘marry me’ sauce!
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