My family loves this homemade Italian dish made with garbanzo beans. Any kind of strand spaghetti works nicely with it, and great northern white beans can be substituted for the garbanzo beans. Serve with fresh Italian bread and a bright green salad. Add 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes at the end if you like your dish hot.
| Prep Time: | 15 mins |
| Cook Time: | 20 mins |
| Total Time: | 35 mins |
| Servings: | 4 |
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon sea salt, divided
- 1 (16 ounce) package linguine pasta
- 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, or more as desired
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 (10 ounce) bag baby spinach leaves, chopped
- 3 large tomatoes, seeded and diced
- 1 (15 ounce) can garbanzo beans (chickpeas), rinsed and drained
- 1 teaspoon chopped fresh marjoram, or more to taste
- freshly ground black pepper to taste
- ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes, or more to taste (Optional)
- ¼ cup freshly grated Pecorino-Romano cheese, or to taste
Instructions
- Bring a large pot of water with 2 teaspoons sea salt to a boil. Cook linguine at a boil until tender yet firm to the bite, about 11 minutes. Drain, reserving 1/2 cup of water.
- Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Cook and stir garlic in hot oil until fragrant, about 1 minute. Increase the heat to medium-high and add spinach, tomatoes, and garbanzo beans; cook and stir until spinach begins to wilt, 1 to 2 minutes more.
- Season the spinach mixture with remaining teaspoon sea salt, marjoram, black pepper, and red pepper flakes. Reduce heat to low. Stir drained linguine with the spinach mixture to evenly coat. Add extra olive oil or reserved pasta water to achieve preferred level of moisture in the dish. Top with Pecorino Romano cheese.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 613 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 104 g |
| Cholesterol | 8 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 11 g |
| Protein | 23 g |
| Saturated Fat | 3 g |
| Sodium | 1685 mg |
| Sugars | 4 g |
| Fat | 12 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
I made it with a few tweeks, so delicious my daughter who doesn’t like half the ingredients ate a bowl full. Ingredients: chickpeas, spinach, purple onion, garlic, red and orange baby bell peppers, mushrooms, Cumin, Trader Joe’s 21 Salute, Old Bay, Italian seasoning, garlic powder Once it was all tender I add my pasta!!! Thank you for sharing ❤️ Lynise
This was a “what do we have in the cabinet to make this work” . So swapped the pasta for tri colored rotini, and also added some bell peppers (red,green, and orange) and some onions (just because we love the extra veggies) some additional seasonings. Very flavorful, and just all around tasty. Certainly will be an add on to the growing family menu ‼️ Thank you for sharing .
This had great potential but it was a little blah. It needed more flavor. Everyone liked it but we were all adding spices to flavor it up.
My tomatoes weren’t ripe and I had no fresh marjoram so I swapped in a can of fire roasted salsa style tomatoes and dialed back the red pepper flakes and used an eighth of a teaspoon dried, ground marjoram and a half a teaspoon of dried parsley. Worked. Kids liked it. Good way to get them to eat spinach.
Switched the pasta to bow ties and now it is in our ‘meatless Monday ‘ rotation!
Great flavor and easy to adjust to suite your palette. I, too, chose to use smaller noodles for ease of wrangling everything in one bite. You may also substitute any type of bean to slightly alter the flavor. I halved the spinach and added chopped red cabbage as well for a little more texture and ‘crunch.’ Will definitely be making this again!
I know it calls for a strand pasta but my handicapped stepson has difficulty with managing long strand pasta. I used rigatoni rigate and it was just fine. This dish was unexpectedly well-received by my family. It was a real hit!
This was quick and delicious! Hubby went back for seconds. 🙂 I only tweaked it a little. I cut way back on the spinach, using only 4 cups chopped. I used 1 can petite diced tomatoes instead of fresh, I added some red wine after I added the tomatoes, chick peas, and spinach. One reviewer said it was hard to keep twirled pasta and the goodies on a fork, so after the pasta cooked and before I added to the goodies, I used scissors to cut it into 2-3 inch pieces and it worked perfectly! I did add a little pasta water a splash of wine, and about 1 extra Tbs of olive oil to moisten it a bit. This is definitely added to my recipe rotation!
Yes to both. As the pasta was cooking, I sauteed some shrimp with the garlic for additional protein. And I used flavored (Garlic &onion, but any would be good) canned tomatoes instead of fresh. Very good recipe.
I changed this a little by adding a bit of V8 juice (it’s what I had on hand-it could have been extra tomatoes, tomato juice etc) plus some white wine for extra liquid and flavour. My 3 fresh tomatoes were a bit too small. Towards the end I also added some of the pasta cooking water. I cooked this a bit longer than stated in the recipe. I also added the red chilli flakes early on, lots of black pepper, a few shakes of dried onion, Italian herbs, and Chef’s Shake. I mashed up some of the chickpeas to make it more of a sauce, then I served it with toasted bread crumbs (be careful, they burn easily!) and shredded parmesan on top. I made farfalle pasta instead of linguine or spaghetti. Everyone loved it! Fast and easy & tasty. The extra spices and wine elevated this from a 3 to a 4.
Very, very nice. A surprisingly tasty meal considering there are only three main ingredients: tomato, chickpeas and spinach. This is the first time I cooked with spinach and misjudged the amount I should use. Remember: spinach shrinks A LOT. I had to chop and add more three times. This dish has a very subtle taste. I used Parmesan cheese which gave it a little kick. Next time I think I will use double the ingredients. Thank you for this recipe!
A very quick meatless dinner recipe. I increased the garlic and it tasted phenomenol. The best part is that it was so quick to make which is why I gave it 4 stars. Thanks for this quick and tasty recipe!
Pasta with Spinach & Chick Peas Haiku: “Gotta switch pasta. Can’t decide, use fork or spoon? Taste was pretty good!” I followed the recipe, using spaghetti instead of linguine (close enough) but we were ultimately discouraged at not being able to both twirl the noodles and stab/scoop chick peas at the same time. If I make this again, I would use a smaller noodle, and let the tomatoes and chick peas simmer longer b/c our chick peas stayed more like pebbles than we’d have liked for the mere handful of minutes that it simmered in the instructions.
Delicious but would try a different type of pasta than linguine. With the chick peas a shorter pasta would be easier to handle.
This is now in my menu routine. I used wine instead of oil or pasta water. We Loved Loved it