Chickpea Chipotle Tostadas (Easy)

What can I say? I love this meal! My entire family loves this meal! Totally meat-free and you don't even miss the meat! I can eat two of these and I am stuffed. The chipotle peppers add just the right amount of kick to this dish. It calls for two peppers, I like to use 3. It is a very easy recipe to prepare. The original recipe says to fry your corn tortillas first but I prefer to do that last so they are hot when you are ready to sit down to the meal. You can keep the chickpea chipotle mixture warm once you have made it in a covered container or in the microwave. If it cools down too much, microwave it for a minute to make it hot again.

Recipe credit: Southern Living

Ingredients:

• Vegetable oil (I prefer olive oil)
• 12 corn tortillas
• 1 medium onion, chopped 
• 1/2 red bell pepper, chopped 
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 1/2 (15-ounce) cans chickpeas, rinsed and drained
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro (I use one entire bunch)
• 2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 1 (8-ounce) container sour cream 
• 1/2 cup salsa verde or green chile sauce (I used World Table Roasted Salsa Verde from Walmart) (picture down below)
• 1/2 head iceberg lettuce, shredded (I prefer to buy the bag of the already shredded iceberg lettuce)
• 6 plum tomatoes, chopped (Roma tomatoes)
• 5 ounces reduced-fat feta cheese, crumbled

Directions: 

1. Sauté onion, red bell pepper, and garlic in hot olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat 5 minutes or until tender. Add chickpeas, chicken broth, cilantro, and chipotle peppers; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer 5 minutes. 
2. Transfer and process chickpea mixture in a food processor until smooth. If you do not have a food processor you can use a hand blender to process until smooth. Return mixture to skillet. (I did not feel this was necessary) Simmer, stirring occasionally, until very thick. NOTE: I found that I did not need to pour this pureed mixture back into the skillet to thicken because it was thick enough after being pureed in the food processor. I also added the lime juice and salt to the mixture while in the food processor. Once blended I transferred the mixture to a container and covered it with a lid to keep warm.  
3. Stir together sour cream and salsa. 
4. Chop up your tomatoes for topping and your lettuce if you bought a head. 
5. Add about a tablespoon or two of oil to a skillet. Fry tortillas, 1 at a time,(my pan could fry 3 at a time) over medium-high heat 30 seconds on each side or until crisp and lightly browned. Drain on paper towels and keep warm. 
6. Spread chickpea mixture evenly over tortillas. Top evenly with lettuce and tomato. Drizzle with sour cream mixture, and sprinkle with feta cheese. Serve immediately.

Start with a medium-sized onion and half of a red bell pepper.

Sauteing to soften up.

I know the recipe says to use 1 1/2 cans of chick peas but I pretty much used all of them, maybe left a quarter of a cup out.

Make sure you drain them and rinse them first.

Add the chick peas next to the softened peppers, garlic, and onion along with the cup of chicken broth.

The chilpotle peppers. Smell so good, spicy too!

Dice up. I only show two here but I did cut up a third one for this meal.

I use one entire bunch of cilantro. Love cilantro! Chop it up!

I added the chipotle peppers and cilantro, heated it through then the next step will be to blend it in the food processor.

Getting ready to puree this mixture. It is steaming hot. It is so colorful.

The "meat" of the meal.

The salsa verde I mixed with the sour cream. Very tasty! A must on your tostada as well as the feta cheese is a must to complete this taste explosion in your mouth with that first bite!

I dice up the tomatoes after I have made the chickpea mixture and the sour cream mixture. My feta was not crumbled so I had to cut it up into pieces as well. I actually prefer to buy the chunk of feta and then chop it up. The pieces are all the same size unlike crumbled feta has big and small pieces.

All the toppings ready for the dinner table.

Corn tortillas are not huge so your basic fry pan can hold 3 at once. This was my last step of the meal preparation so they would be hot and crispy for the meal.

All 12 corn tortillas lightly fried in olive oil, not submerged in oil.

The family dinner table. I placed everything on the table and let everyone make their own tostada(s). You first grab a corn tortilla, spread a generous amount of chickpea paste over it, add tomatoes, shredded lettuce, drizzle some sour cream salsa over that, and finally top with feta cheese. All ingredients combined together are what make this meal awesome! Don't leave any of them out! You will be missing out on a great taste in your mouth!

One of the two that I made for myself.