- Even for carnivores like myself!
Spinach with Chickpeas.
Pound the bread, garlic and cumin seeds in a mortar and pestle, either separately or together, depending on the size of the mortar.
Pour the still-hot oil onto the spinach and add the pounded bread, garlic and cumin.
If there's any left over, it can, of course, be frozen and later (gently) microwaved at a future date. When microwaving, use a medium setting and stir often
Spinach with Chickpeas.
As with all of the best recipes, it's a to-taste one.
Ingredients:
Spinach, fresh or frozen - frozen is best as you can calculate better how much you're going to get after boiling it.
Salt.
Several peeled cloves of garlic.
Dry bread.
Whole cumin seeds.
Sweet paprika powder (preferably Spanish).
Olive oil (preferably Spanish).
Pre-cooked chickpeas - if you have some (a lot) left over from a chickpea stew, even better!
Vinegar (preferably white wine or cider).
Method:
Boil the spinach in salty water and drain. I usually keep some of the water back to use as a base for soups.
In a small frying pan and using quite a bit (slightly more than you would normally use) of olive oil, fry the bread until it is golden brown. Remove the bread from the oil and then fry the cloves of garlic idem. Fry at a low temperature. It does not matter if the bread soaks up a lot of the oil, but please do not fry in smoking oil as this burns the oil and we are going to need it later.
While frying the bread and garlic, put the drained spinach into a frying pan, sprinkle liberally with the paprika and gently heat to remove the excess water, stirring often.
| Image courtesy of recetas-algarra.blogspot.com |
Pour the still-hot oil onto the spinach and add the pounded bread, garlic and cumin.
Pour in some vinegar, add the chickpeas and cook the whole together over a low heat, moving it continuously until all of the water has evaporated and it has the consistency of the example in the photo.
Serve piping hot and enjoy with a good white or rosé wine and plenty of crusty bread.
If there's any left over, it can, of course, be frozen and later (gently) microwaved at a future date. When microwaving, use a medium setting and stir often
If you are feeling particularly adventurous, you can add beaten egg to the dish before serving. This adds a certain creaminess, but makes it a bit bland - a good way of reducing the punch of the spices if you think you've added too much.
My general tip for herbs and spices is add twice as much as you feel comfortable with - but that, of course, is a personal opinion.
For the true carnivores: You could always try frying some chopped bits of bacon or diced cured ham until crispy in the olive oil before anything else, and chucking it onto the dish just before serving so that when served, it still retains that wonderful fatty crunch.
A digression: It wasn't that long ago in England that you could only buy olive oil in small bottles from the chemists to relieve earache or earwax. How times have changed! Where now the oft-criticised "Greasy Dago" of times past? I'd still rather fry my chips in lard, though. Heart attack city, but well worth it! As they say in Spain, "You've got to die of something some time".
For the true carnivores: You could always try frying some chopped bits of bacon or diced cured ham until crispy in the olive oil before anything else, and chucking it onto the dish just before serving so that when served, it still retains that wonderful fatty crunch.
A digression: It wasn't that long ago in England that you could only buy olive oil in small bottles from the chemists to relieve earache or earwax. How times have changed! Where now the oft-criticised "Greasy Dago" of times past? I'd still rather fry my chips in lard, though. Heart attack city, but well worth it! As they say in Spain, "You've got to die of something some time".
Use of cooking oil in the UK increased hugely, from virtually nil, in the second half of the 20th century. For a long time cooking with oil was considered a "foreign" habit. Today, our local supermarket has a large section devoted to cooking oils and not one, but a range of brands of olive oil.
ReplyDeleteThis change parallels the rising popularity of bottled water. In the 1960s, about the only brand available was Evian and that only from posh stores like Selfridges. At 4 shillings a bottle it was expensive and people didn't see the point of it, anyway. Compare that with today when you see people strolling in the street with a mobile in one hand and a bottle of "spring water" in the other.
A couple of comments:
ReplyDeleteA lot of olive oil labelled as "Italian" is in fact usually Spanish. Many Spanish olive oil companies are owned by Italian conglomerates.
After the oil harvest the port of Seville is lined with ships that transport the oil to Italy whre it is then bottled and labelled as "Product of Italy". Anyone who buys olive oil in British supermarkets should, therefore buy the Spanish version which is usually cheaper and just as good, if not better.
One of the few good things of living in Seville is its tap water which is consitently reckoned to be among the best in Europe. I only buy sparkling mineral water. Spain is also one of the few countries where a litre of wine is still cheaper than a litre of mineral water - I think that in the US a litre of petrol is cheaper than either!