To correct or not to correct? As I read through your lovely and flattering comments, the first thing I do is correct any typos that I notice. Is that OK? I usually ask you to correct mine, if I notice. Auto correct on my iPhone is great, but it can be a drag too, often correcting to words I do not want (it does ‘do’ for ‘so’ often, ARGH!). Anyway, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Breakfast on the weekend usually has a bit more pomp and circumstance than the weekdays, mainly because I’m not rushing to get ready for work. I was dying to try an idea I found on Dara’s Generation Y Foodie and Kelly’s Inspired Edibles blog; Dara made a pizza with a white bean paste base instead of a white béchamel that I thought was pure genius and Kelly took an old favourite of Mac and Cheese and pulled the proverbial rug right out from under it and made it healthy using chick peas instead of noodles. And it got me thinking…a bean paste as a thickener…
You will recall that we had a half a tin of chick peas left over from our Moroccan Mussel recipe the other night and the bean paste béchamel was really itching to get out of my head, so I came up with this lovely cheese sauce. You can pour it over crèpes like I did, or you can use it as a base for pizza as Dara did or better yet, pour it over cauliflower or broccoli! The possibilities are endless. Thank you Dara and Kelly for this inspiration.
Gluten Free Cheese Sauce
Serves 2-4
Ingredients:
- 1 cup chick peas, drained and rinsed (you can use any canned bean for this recipe, but I would stick to the lighter ones, like navy beans, or black eyed peas or white beans)
- 1/2-1 cup low sodium chicken broth or vegetable broth
- 1/4 cup finely grated flavourful cheese like Parmesan and Gruyère or sharp cheddar
- pinch of salt
Directions:
- Add the chick peas to your immersion blender container (usually a tall thin cup), add 1/2 cup broth, salt and purée until smooth and about the consistency of crèpe batter adding the stock as required. Remember you will be adding cheese to this so it will thicken up.
- Pour contents into a sauce pan and begin heating up slowly. Add the cheese and stir until the cheese has melted. The cheese won’t stick to the beans as well as it would the béchamel, so you will likely have to emulsify again so that it’s not grainy. Return to the heat and stir. You may need to add a bit more stock at this point, depending on how thick you would like your sauce.
- Serve over crèpes or what ever you wish.
That is really an amazing idea!
I would have never thought of using chickpeas as a thickener but the question I have is the same as Charles’s, does it taste like hummus?
As for the typos, yes please. Fix any mistakes you find in my comments
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Thanks Sawsan, it does have a mild chick pea flavour, but not hummus. The cheese flavour came through very well.
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That sounds indeed genius with beans. I ll try this soon, what a great find!
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Thanks Helene, let me know how it works out!
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wow! That’s interesting! It’s a wonderful and healthy substitute too!!
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Welcome to my blog, and thank you!
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What a brilliant idea! I would have never thought of making a cheese sauce from chick peas!
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Thanks Ann, and welcome to my blog. I also made a paste out of navy beans, their texture is smoother.
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What a great idea Eva and thank you for the shout out! I think it’s brilliant that you used chickpea to thicken this sauce and you’re quite right, many sauces do have binders/fillers/thickeners which often contain gluten. Nifty idea and it looks great too! Happy to hear you correct typos… hee.hee 😉
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Thank you kindly Kelly. I did the same thing with navy beans and the result was incredible,
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Great idea! I’m going to try this as a replacement for pasta dishes too. Wish me luck!
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Thanks BFN, let me know how it works out.
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this sauce would go so well with almost everything! Love it
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Hi Jessica, not sure why, but your last couple of comments were caught up in the spam filter. I have let them out, hopefully it won’t happen again. And thank you for the compliment.
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This is such a great idea… my first thought was “does it taste like hummus?”, lol, but I guess once the stock and cheese is added, probably not at all. I really love the idea of this…. damn, I can’t say that enough – it’s so much healthier to regular butter/flour based sauces. I’m going to try this the next time I have to make a sauce for something – thanks for the wonderful idea Eva!
As for the correcting – personally I don’t at all believe in editing peoples’ comments – even if it’s just something minor, like correcting a typo.
The comment box, at least on my site, is the platform where people can say what they like, how the like (within reason of course – obviously, 2000 word racist rants are going to get deleted pretty fast :p). I work with people from about 25 different nationalities and already know from experience that while people usually appreciate having mistakes corrected, it can wear after a while to the point where they’ll get upset.
Not only that but I can well imagine that it must take a very long time – just one extra hassle to have to worry about. My opinion – if the comment can be understand, even with typos, leave it be. If it’s completely unintelligible, which is rare, ask for clarification and encourage discussion and exchange between the person who wrote the original comment 🙂
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And in a comment about typos, I go and make one – duhhh… I obviously mean “understood” at the end, not “understand” 😀
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Fret not, I shan’t correct it 😉
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Thanks for the detailed response. BTW, JT agrees with your the comment re corrections. For me, personally, I would be mortified if I was immortalized with a typo! But that’s why we’re all so interesting, our differences!
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Yeah – I can understand that being an issue for some people. I just know that if, for example, I was commenting on a French or Swedish blog, as happens from time to time, of course my written skills in these languages are far from awesome… I’d just be happy if I could engage with the other visitors to the site – I wouldn’t personally mind at all whether my comments were filled with spelling or grammatical mistakes 🙂
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This is the first I’ve heard of this but it sounds like a great idea! I bet you could sub it in in quite a few dishes too!
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Thank you Lorraine; I’ve used puréed vegetables for years to thicken sauces, but the beans add a bit more substance to it, as would béchamel. It is very versatile indeed.
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I would never have thought to use chick peas as a base for cheese sauce. Very clever Eva. I’m always looking for ways to sneak veggies and healthy bits into my cooking. And yes, please correct away!
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Thank you. I did the same thing with navy beans, Barb; very delicious indeed,
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What a fascinating and delicious idea! I love it.
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I made a version with navy beans, Angie and it was incredible!
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I knew you would! You have such lovely, healthy recipes in your blog.
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I would have never thought of using chickpeas in this fashion either. Fascinating.
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Thanks Maraia, it is quite an interesting flavour, I’m keeping this in my back pocket for those heavy sauces.
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Hi Eva. Yes, please correct any errors I make in my comments — I hate it when I make one, push the button and then see a typo. I never would have thought of using garbanzo beans in this way, but now I can give it as an option when I use bechamel.
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Thanks Sharyn. The beans are definitely a good alternative to béchamel.
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What a great idea! One of our local food bloggers wrote a whole book on the uses of beans.. it was her way to add a healthy protein to meals. I have seem to have lost my spelling mojo.. so by all means, correct me!! Espec if it comes to amounts in my recipe;)
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Thanks Barbara. Not that you make spelling errors, I was just was curious. Can you post the link to that blog?
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Great idea, Eva. Sure beats mine of doubling the recipe so that I don’t have a half-can of beans languishing in the fridge. And, by all means, feel free to edit my comments. I just don’t want you overcome by the burden of doing so. That’s a whole lotta editing!
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Thanks John. No worries about the comments, you have very few typos even though you had said ages ago that proofreading was not a forte.
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I’m definitely going to try this sauce. I’m going to try Kelly’s take on mac and cheese too. We can’t get enough chickpeas here as I mentioned. Now I have chickpea recipes galore waiting to be tried! And absolutely – please feel free to correct any typos in my comments. 😉
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Thanks Kristy, I made the same sauce without cheese using navy beans, and YUM! Must give that a try.
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What a genius idea! Thanks, Eva!
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Thank you kindly, Bill.
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Great idea and it is gluten free.
Yes, please correct any errors in my comments.
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Thanks Norma! It’s quite versatile, feel free to use any bean.
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What a good idea. I cooked a pasta tonight with chick peas and I only needed half a can. As I poured half a can into the pot I thought, ‘What am I going to do with these leftovers?’ And I couldn’t think of anything so threw them into the pot. Had I got this post two hours earlier…
And thank you for being my auto-corrector. I hate to have my comments sitting there looking illegible. xx
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It’s a pretty tasty Sauce base, Charlie, I do hope you can try it sometime soon. I made a similar version using navy bean paste with Dijon and it was delish!
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