Crispy chickpea and tuna salad

This is a variation of a recipe I saw on Serious Eats that I thought had some good flavors, but didn't combine them in the best way to really bring them out. You might disagree so take a look at the original too if you think you might want to make it. ... Now that I look back on that recipe, I see that they adapted from Nami-Nami who got it from Pertelote who posted what I presume to be her original creation back in May '05. Her version; with its dried chickpeas, copious roasted piquillo peppers and smoked paprika; is rather different than what I made, but sounds pretty darn good, so clearly this is a dish amenable to variations. Here's mine:

Ingredients:
1 15-ounce can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
5 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons whole cumin seeds
1 teaspoon whole fennel seeds
1/2 teaspoon chili flakes
1 handful small red and yellow bell peppers (or one standard-sized pepper), thinly sliced
1/2 roasted red pepper, chopped
1 medium onion, diced
2 teaspoons hot paprika
1 4-5 ounce can tuna, flaked and, if not packed in its own juices or olive oil, drained [I'm a recent convert from supermarket pouch tuna to canned bonito del Norte tuna from the local Spanish market. The top brands, like Ortiz, can get pretty pricey, but the cheaper ones are still pretty good.]
2 Tablespoon champagne vinegar
1 large handful flat-leaf parsley, stems removed and leaves chopped
Salt and, optionally, pepper

1. Heat half the olive oil in an 8-inch non-stick or cast iron pan over medium-high heat. When the oil is shimmering, add the whole spices, chili flakes and the chickpeas. Cover with splatter screen because all three will start to pop. Cook, stirring frequently, until chickpeas are a deep toasty brown--maybe five minutes. Remove to a bowl, including the spices, but leaving as much oil as possible. Add a good pinch of salt, mix well and try to restrain yourself from eating them like popcorn. Or forget the rest of the recipe and eat them like popcorn; That's a fine choice too.

2. Turn the heat to medium-low and add the rest of the olive oil, the onion, the fresh peppers and another pinch of salt. Sweat for ~10 minutes, until the onion is soft and translucent, turning down the heat if it starts to brown. Add the roasted red peppers and paprika a few minutes from the end.

3. While the onions and peppers are cooking, put tuna, parsley and vinegar in a large bowl. When the vegetables are ready, dump them in and scrape out the pan into the bowl. Stir to combine. Mix in the chickpeas just before (adjusting the seasoning, and) serving to maintain their crispiness.


Both the chickpeas and the whole spices give a nice extra crunch to the textures of the salad, and the cooked chickpeas have the light, slightly puffed texture that good french fries can get from the escaping steam. It's personal preference if you prefer that to the creaminess of raw chickpeas; I know what my choice is, particularly against the softness of the soft sweated onions and peppers and the unctuousness of the olive oil.

The salad is fragrant with spices and bright with the vinegar and fresh with parsley. Those three elements are blended together into a backdrop to the earthy chickpeas, whose flavor have been deepened and rounded out by the toasting, sweet tuna and savory peppers. There are nice moments when you crack open a fennel or cumin seed, boosting that flavor and changing the whole character of that mouthful. I also suspect that the sauce would be a mucky sludge if all those spices were in powder form so I'm pleased to have avoided that.

If there's a weakness here, it's the tuna which has a little trouble standing up to the other elements and only pokes up its head when you find a particularly large piece. There's nothing about these flavors that requires fish; beef or lamb would be a nice substitutions. Or, if you wanted to go vegan, firm tofu's texture would work and it should absorb the flavors nicely.

Chickpea pasta casserole

No preparation pictures tonight since I just threw together ingredients I had in the house for a quick dinner and didn't expect to post about it. Also this is pretty close to a recipe I wrote about back in November '07. But it was such a good result with so little time and effort involved, I figured I ought to share it. And it's different enough from that earlier post that it's worth calling a variation, anyway.

Ingredient amounts are going to be even rougher than usual here.

1 large handful ditalini or other small pasta (broken spaghetti shows up in a similar Mexican dish)
olive oil
1/4 pound Spanish chorizo, thickly sliced and then each slice halved
1/4 cup yellow onion, diced
(an equal amount of green and/or red pepper would be a nice addition, but mine had gone fuzzy in the refrigerator)
1 handful broccoli rabe stalks with heads and flowers (I still have plenty of this left so I'm throwing it into everything until it all goes yellow.), chopped
1 large handful medium shrimp (I left them in their shells, but that meant I couldn't devein them so probably better to shell and clean them and add them later in the process
1 medium tomato, roughly chopped
1 14 ounce can of chickpeas
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon sweet paprika
1 large pinch fresh thyme (or frozen in my case)
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 handful parsley, finely chopped
1 large squeeze lemon juice

0. Bring a pot of water to a boil.

1. In medium saucepan, heat chorizo and olive oil over medium heat until chorizo has rendered a good bit of fat, but hasn't shriveled into little crunchy bits. Remove chorizo.

2. Add ditalini and plenty of salt to boiling water. Boil five minutes.

3. Add onion (and pepper) to pan with a pinch of salt. Sauté, stirring frequently, until softened. Add broccoli rabe and cook until wilted.

4. Add tomato to pan, stir briefly, add shrimp (if in shells), chickpeas with liquid, pasta, wine, paprikas, thyme and salt to taste. Stir well and simmer for around five minutes until shrimp and pasta are just cooked.

5. Finish with parsley and lemon juice. Let sit for a minute for parsley to cook slightly before serving.


Looking at it now, I'm not sure if casserole is quite the right term. Casseroles generally have a binder, don't they? But this isn't pasta and sauce either. It is half pasta, but the rest isn't particularly saucy. Whatever it is, it's pretty tasty. The little liquid there mixes the flavors of many of the components into a nice melange and, since there's plenty of starch, it sticks well to the components and brings the flavors together. The tomato has almost entirely collapsed, but the broccoli rabe and the ditalini are still firm. The suasage and shrimp have a little chew and the chickpeas are creamy, but not falling apart. So, a nice variety of textures. Overall, not bad at all for an improvisation.

CSA week 13 - Sort-of-Spanish carrot top soup

I started with this recipe for Tuscan carrot top and rice soup, but made one change that led to another and another and eventually ended up over in Spain.

Ingredients
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, minced
2 small carrots, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
1/2 cup diced ham
1/2 cup diced Spanish chorizo
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
salt and pepper to taste

3 new potatoes, diced
1 can chickpeas, drained
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika

6 cups chicken broth
1½ cups carrot tops, chopped

1. Heat the oil in a large, heavy-gauge soup pot. Saute the onion, carrots, celery, garlic, ham, chorizo bay leaf and thyme for 5 minutes over low medium until the onions are soft and translucent. Add the salt and pepper, potatoes, chickpeas and the thicker bits of the carrot stems. Cook for another 2 minutes. Pour in the broth, and bring to a boil.

2. Cook for 10 minutes or until the potatoes are almost tender. Add the carrot tops, mix well, and cook for 10 minutes more. I also added an egg to poach, but that's my thing so you should just roll your eyes and move on. You might want to include tomatoes, but I find the combination of them with the smoked paprika tastes muddy. A good idea with a different sort of paprika, though.

3. If you're not going to add an egg (and if you don't want to poach, a chopped hard-cooked egg would be nice) finish off with a bit more olive oil instead. And if you left out the meat earlier, you could blend some of the solids to thicken the broth, but I figure the pork products would gum up the works so I skipped that.

The result is a respectable if not extraordinarily distinguished bowl of soup. There are no jarring discordancies of flavor, but it's not one of those refined perfect combinations either. I found that as the carrot tops cooked to a pleasant texture, their distinctive flavor faded. It seeped out to give the broth a distinct carroty note, but there's enough else contributing that you won't call it carrot soup in a blind taste test. You would probably call it tasty, though, so good enough.

That's two in a row where I've buried the CSA ingredient under a bunch of other flavors. It'll be three when I do the kale-wrapped sticky rice. I'd best put that off until later in the week then and do the Mexican whatever or the tatsoi stir-fry next.

Macedonian chickpea stew

I was all set for an event post tonight. I had my ticket for New Times Iron Fork competition: five, prominent I presume, local chefs battling Iron Chef-style for the Golden Fork Award. We in the audience wouldn't get to taste, of course, but we'd have samples from twenty local restaurants instead. But I worked a bit late, hit some traffic on my way to the venue and by the time I got there the parking lot was full and the line out the door. So I went home. I hope someone writes it up and has lots of pictures. It seems like it might have been fun.

I had no plans for dinner so I decided to catch up on my food blogs to see if anything caught my eye as doable with what I had on hand. One thing, from The Kitchn which I've just started reading recently, did. Kitchn is kind of a link-blog so they pointed out to this recipe for a lemony chick pea stir fry on a different blog and that pointed out to another blog with a different version.

I decided I wanted a more proper sauce than those recipes provide so I looked through my refrigerator to see what I could use. I came quite close using a tamarind chili sauce I've got, but I settled on a bottle of pinjur, a Macedonian condiment/ingredient made with roasted eggplant, garlic, parsley, olive oil and walnuts. The bottle I've got adds roasted red pepper which is not uncommon and tomatoes which probably is. Once I made that decision I looked up traditional Macedonian flavors to see what else to add. More parsley and paprika (not the smoked sort) as it turns out. So here's how it went:

Ingredients
1/2 can chickpeas, drained, liquid reserved
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1/2 medium yellow onion, minced
1/4 red pepper, minced (pre-roasted wouldn't be bad)
1 small yellow squash, in 1/2 inch slices and chopped into bite-sized pieces, not necessarily in that order
a few ounces firm tofu or some appropriate meat: lamb I suppose or chicken would do. I chopped my tofu into sub-centimeter cubes. Real meat probably ought to be roughly ground.
hot paprika to taste, paprika quality and intensity varies widely. Use your own judgment.
1 small handful parsley, roughly chopped
2 sizable dollops pinjur
oil for frying
white vinegar or lemon juice

1. In a medium non-stick pan, heat 1 Tablespoon of oil on medium-high heat. Add the chickpeas and a pinch of salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until they start to brown.




2. Add garlic, onion and pepper. (If you're using roasted red pepper, don't add it yet.) Turn heat up a little and cook until chick peas start to crisp up, smell really good and turn a golden brown. Remove all to a bowl.





3. Leave heat at medium-high-high, add some more oil, let it heat up a bit and then add the squash and tofu (or meat), a pinch of salt and paprika. Cook until squash is soft and browned. It took me around four minutes but my pan was overcrowded.

4. Return chickpea mixture. Add pinjur, chick pea liquid and parsley (and roasted red pepper if you're using it). Stir to combine and heat through. Check for seasoning and add a splash of vinegar and maybe a little fruity olive oil.

5. Serve warm with some pita bread if you've got it.


All the flavors work quite well together, fairly accidentally but predictably as nothing here, bar the mildly flavored squash, is unusual for Macedonian cuisine. It was a quick cooking process so it hasn't really melded into a whole; it's more a medley of flavors as different combinations brush up against each other in each spoonful. It's a good combination of textures too; both the chick peas and the tofu are meaty against the soft squash, peppers and eggplant. It turned out rather better than I had any right to expect considering; it's actually quite presentable.

Migas de pan - a second try

I've got about half a big loaf of bread left over so I thought I'd take a second crack at migas. There are a few things I figure I did wrong the first time around.

First, I went overboard with the olive oil. No need to drown everything, particular as the sausage is going to release some fat itself.

Second, I mistook it for a stir fry and cranked up the heat in a way Spanish chorizo and bread crumbs both don't react well to.

Third, I cut the bread crumbs too small so by the time they were crisp on the outside they were crisp on the inside too which is not good.

Finally, I worried too much about what was or wasn't supposed to go into it. This time I improvised a little and didn't concern myself with a proper traditional Central Spanish recipe.

So, this time, along with the chorizo I added some southern-style uncured garlic sausage. Garlic sausage is universal and southern and Spanish styles aren't a huge distance apart. I also added some shrimp and jamon serano after the sausages, onion and pepper had spent a couple minutes over medium heat.

I prepared the bread crumbs by tossing them with a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper and pimenton and letting them soak it in while the other ingredients cooked. On a whim I added half a can of chickpeas in with the bread crumbs. That must be traditional somewhere in Spain. I gave them around seven minutes in the pan before mixing all the other stuff back in and letting it cook for one more minute to let the bread soak up some of the accumulated juices.

And finally I served it topped with some chopped roasted peppers. I skipped the egg this time mainly because I seem to have used the last egg I had some time earlier this week.

The results are much improved. I pulled the bread a little quick so only a few bits crisped up, but it is softened up from staleness and soaked with flavor so no biggie. And the garbanzos are a good contrast in texture with their firm bite.

Big benefits from cutting back on the oil as I can actually taste the vegetables this time around. And since the meat isn't all shriveled up and dried out, each retains its own specific flavor contributing to the whole. The shrimp particularly are a nice addition with their sweetness balanced against the smokey saltiness of the rest of the dish.

It's not perfect; for one thing I cut the bread crumbs too big. The result is more panzenella than pilaf and I think the second is what I'm aiming at. Also, I forgot the tomatoes. It could use tomatoes. As for the egg, I dunno. It really didn't need any more fat, but the egg yolks would have bound it together a bit. I'll add an egg to a leftover serving and see how it goes.

Overall a respectable result and a pretty good dinner. I think it went well enough that next time I might experiment with flavors and do a non-Spanish version. I have a vision of a breakfast migas de pancakes I kind of want to try but I don't have all the details worked out yet.

Deep fried chickpeas and a general theory of bar snacks

I was watching Alton Brown's new series, Feasting on Waves, earlier this week and I found myself with a sudden urgent need for Caribbean snacks. Of course I don't have any of the proper ingredients in the house (and I'm surprised that they aren't more easily available here in Miami. Maybe just not in my neighborhood.) so I had to improvise. Luckily I had a couple of Caribbean spice blends handy and the knowledge that you deep-frying just about anything starchy will turn it into bar-food. I haven't found any legitimately trustworthy information on the processes, but the untrustworthy info says that both starch and fat slow your absorption of alcohol. The starch by absorbing the alcohol and releasing it slowly and the fat by physically blocking absorption. Probably nonsense.

Anyway, frying chick peas works on the french fry principle. The hot oil heats the water inside the food; the steam bursts out forcing apart the particles of food and making it light and fluffy. Meanwhile, the surface is browning and crisping under the oil's more direct assault. The nice thing about chick peas is that the outer skin sometimes detaches so you get a thin crispy shell with an air buffer beneath so it doesn't start reabsorbing remaining moisture from inside and getting soggy immediately the way french fries do. You already know you can do this with potatoes, yams, yucca and the like, but it also works with peanuts and other real nuts if you can find raw ones to do it with. I think the effect that puffs up krupuk, shrimp crackers, is different--just air escaping, not steam. I'm pretty sure there are Indian snacks that expand when you deep fry them too, but I'm not having any luck looking them up as I have no idea what they're called. Anyway, the trick is getting the temperature right so both the inside and outside are done at the same time. I do it by instinct at this point so I don't have any useful advice here other than to make sure whatever you're deep frying is good and dry before you start. I'll just say that deep fried chick peas are pretty tasty on their own and better when dusted with salt and whatever spices you're in the mood for. I used canned, as that's what I had. I'm curious how differently a dried and soaked chickpea would respond to deep frying. The firmer texture may make them explode like popcorn instead of just puffing up. I'm going to have to try that.

CSA week 15 - leblebi-esque escarole and chikpea soup

I was looking at the escarole and cannellini bean recipe in this week's newsletter and thinking that the chickpeas I had handy would substitute well for the beans I didn't. A quick search turned up this recipe for an escarole and chickpea stew that seemed promising. The author said it was based on leblebi, a traditional Moroccan breakfast soup. Well, it turns out there are a few different dishes that go by that name but when I came across this recipe I was hooked.

It hasn't really come out in the dishes I've talked about on the blog but I'm a huge fan of garnishes. My favorite presentation is a simple dish surrounded by a dozen bowls so everyone can personalize their serving. So this list of leblebi garnishes:
Lemon wedges
Coarse sea salt
Harissa
Chopped fresh tomatoes
Chopped green and red bell peppers
2 hardboiled eggs, chopped
Rinsed capers
Sliced pickled turnips
Flaked canned tuna fish (oil- or water-packed)
Freshly ground cumin
Finely chopped fresh parsley
Finely chopped cilantro
Sliced preserved lemons
Croutons or sliced stale bread
Thinly sliced scallions, both white and green parts
Olive oil

called out to me.

There's nothing to the soup itself: four cups of chicken soup (I used half my stock and half from a can), one can of chickpeas, one head of escarole. Simmer until tender (around five minutes I found). It's everything else that makes the dish.

The most important garnishes are the stale bread underneath and the loosely poached egg and harissa on top. Harissa, if you didn't read my previous post on it, is a North African chili oil. The particular bottle I've got has the other ubiquitous North African condiment, preserved lemons, mixed in. I also added tomatoes, green pepper, capers, scallion, cilantro and parsley, black olives (which weren't on this particular list but they're also typical for North Africa), sea salt and olive oil. I probably wasn't suppose to use all of that at once, but I liked having a different combination of flavors and textures in every spoonful. Five minutes cooking didn't give time for the soup's flavors to blend. The escarole and chickpeas retain their character in the crowd. This is simple (sort of) hearty comfort food. You can tell that even if the flavors are unfamiliar. My only advice is to go easy on the harissa and preserved lemons or they'll walk all over the other flavors.

One final thing just so Googlers with different terminology can still find this recipe: garbanzo, garbanzo, garbanzo, garbanzo. There, that should do it.

Pasta with Chickpeas, Chorizo and Bread Crumbs

Here's another modification of a New York Times recipe. This one comes from Mark Bittman's Oct. 17, 2007, Minimalist column where he recommends forgetting all the advice you've heard about adding just enough sauce to pasta to coat it and quadrupling the amount of sauce instead. "What do you wind up with? Pasta more or less overwhelmed by sauce, which you can view as a cardinal sin or as a moist, flavorful one-dish meal of vegetables with the distinctive, lovable chewiness of pasta." Or, in words he doesn't use, a casserole. Fine by me. I never get that light saucing to work out right anyway.

When his column came out I saved the chorizo and chickpea example and I've just now had the chance to try it out. Bittman's schtick is very simple recipes so I usually end up adding a few ingredients and steps. Usually adding them back into a recipe he simplified, I figure. This time I halved the recipe, doubled the sausage back to where it was, added onion and tomato and some spice. I strongly considered adding some smoked paprika, but this is a Bittman recipe: if there was pimenton, he would have left it in. He can't get enough of that stuff and I can't say I blame him at all.

Here's what I came up with:

Bill's variation on Bittman's Pasta With Chickpeas, Chorizo and Bread Crumbs

Extra virgin olive oil, as needed

1 teaspoon butter

1/4 pound cooked Spanish chorizo or kielbasa, chopped
(really, since this supplies the only cuisine-specific spices in the dish, you could use any sort of cooked sausage you like, but you'd probably want to make further changes if you go far afield. I could see a version with Chinese sausage and rice stick pasta. I used a Portuguese chourico this time, but it wasn't as spicy as advertised. Next time I'm likely to switch to a linguica or andouille.)

1 clove garlic, finely minced

1/4 cup onion, finely minced

1 small tomato, chopped (The tomato doesn't get cooked so use a nicely ripe flavorful one. I like Campari for this sort of application.)

1/2 cup coarse fresh bread crumbs or one thick slice of hearty bread chopped to 1/4" cubes or smaller

2 cups cooked chickpeas, with their liquid

1/4 pound cut pasta, like ziti or penne (Use the small bore versions of these. Shells would work, too. Nothing too much larger around than the chickpeas.)

copious amounts of Vulcan salt
(This spice blend from Spice House includes Salt, Louisiana Chile Mash, Garlic, Habanero Chile, Shallots, Tellicherry Pepper, Lime Peel, Pimenton de La Vera, Picane, Cumin, allspice and Vinegar. Regular salt and a good bit of Tabasco would probably be a fine substitute. If you go that route, go light on the chickpea liquid to compensate for the extra water.)

1. Set a pot of water to boil and salt it. When it comes to a boil add pasta and cook until not quite tender.

2. Meanwhile, put 1 tablespoon olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat and add chorizo; heat, stirring occasionally, until chorizo is lightly browned, add onion and garlic (and some Vulcan salt), cook until onion has softened then remove with a slotted spoon and set aside. Add tomato to bowl with chorizo and onion.

3. Lower heat to medium. Add 1 tablespoon olive oil and butter. When the butter has stopped fizzing add bread crumbs and sprinkle with Vulcan salt. Toast, shaking skillet frequently, until bread crumbs turn golden brown and crisp, 10 minutes maximum. If necessary, add a little more olive oil. Remove to a bowl.

2. Add 1 more tablespoons olive oil to skillet (or, as I did, drain pasta and add the oil to the pot. I was using a pretty small skillet for the previous steps) and, over medium heat, chickpeas and their liquid. Bring to boil, then add pasta. Cook, stirring occasionally, until pasta is tender; stir in chorizo mix, heat through, and taste and adjust seasoning.

3. Serve chickpea-pasta mixture in bowls, garnished with crisp bread crumbs and, if you've got any handy, a sprinkling of parsley. A salad and a glass of red wine wouldn't go amiss either.

Yield: 2 large servings.

So, how did it turn out? Pretty tasty, I think. I'm glad I used whole wheat pasta (according to reviews, Ronzoni is the best brand) because it kept a firmer texture to contrast with creaminess chickpeas. The added onion and tomato added nicely to the body of the sauce so I think they were good additions. Without them, you'd be completely dependent on whatever flavors leaked out of the chorizo to add interest to the sauce. Despite having a fair number of ingredients, it was a quick and simple recipe to make so I could see keeping chickpeas around to make this a regular weekday option.