I hope everyone is healthy and doing great :)

I want to share a vegetarian recipe I like a lot not only for how tasty it is, but also for how well it goes down in the stomach. We're not vegetarians at home, but we do love vegetarian dishes, and I make them more often now, for the sake of our health. This one is must try, and it's so good for our body.

• 2 cups of raw chickpeas, soaked in water from the night before
• 400 grams of potatoes
• 1 cup of sweet chili
• 1/2 cup green bell pepper
• 1 red onion
• 1 tablespoon of fresh garlic
• 2 tablespoons of tomato paste
• 2 tablespoons of lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon of hot paprika
• 2 medium bay leaves
• 1/2 tablespoon ground cumin
• 3 tablespoons of ground curry
• 4 cups of water
• 1 cucharadita de sal
• fresh cilantro for garnish

The first thing to do is to soak the raw chickpeas overnight; this will make them easier to cook if you don't want to use the pressure cooker. They'll double in size.

Cut the vegetables into small pieces, except for the red chili; this latter should be cut into thin julienne strips and added to the stew almost at the end (to add a touch of freshness and to keep its shape and provocative color).

The spices go into the cooking pot first. In a little olive oil, sauté a little bay leaf, hot paprika, ground cumin, and ground curry. Then add the chopped vegetables and the chickpeas.

While the chickpeas and chopped vegetables absorb the flavor of the spices, crush the garlic and squeeze the lemon. Add the crushed garlic and lemon juice to the stew, along with the tomato paste and salt.I use lemon juice to get the garlic out of the mortar more easily.

So that the potatoes keep their shape and do not lose so much starch in the stew broth, cut them into beveled slices, thick ones.

Mix the ingredients a little, so that the broth covers them and put the lid on the pot. Let this cook for 20 minutes over medium heat before adding the red aji dulce and cilantro.

Spicy dishes need a lot of freshness to enjoy the flavors without the taste going to numb. I love fresh cilantro to help achieve this.

In Venezuela, you never know when the "sweet" chili will be hot, ironically. When this happens, simply remove the seeds and veins. This is how I did it because the stew already had an acceptable point of spiciness due to the hot paprika I'd used.

Put the lid back on the pot and let it cook for 5 more minutes. Then you can take the pot off the heat and finish by garnishing with fresh cilantro.

Sometimes I like to put some meat on the table and if we don't eat it at that moment, then I save it for later. On this occasion, I served fried pork strips marinated in oregano and salt.

But I'm telling you, you can eat this dish as a meatless lunch and it's a delight.

Bon appetite!

All text and images are my own. I have taken the pictures with my Redmi 9T cell phone. And if any GIFs here, I've used GIPHY(https://giphy.com/create/gifmaker) for all them.