Vegetarian – Page 4 – The Constables Larder

Chilled Potato, Leek and Onion Soup (with alfalfa / tomato garnish)

(part of From Provence to the Catskills, our celebration held as part of of the Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24 blog event)

The amuse bouche for our 24, 24, 24 dinner was to be inspired by Elizabeth David, a brilliant chef who by many accounts woke the English up to Mediterranean cooking in the 1950s. We wanted something relatively light that could be served in small portions, and Elizabeth David’s potato and watercress soup in French Country Cooking caught our eye.

In our actual implementation, I took the dish more in the direction of a vichyssoise, and garnished with alfalfa and tomato.

Chilled Potato, Leek and Onion Soup (with alfalfa / tomato garnish)

Serves 2 large bowls or 6 small portions

4 medium red potatoes, peeled
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 white onion, thinly sliced
2 leeks (white to light green portion), diced
3 1/2 cups of whole milk
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
pinch of nutmeg
Handful of cherry tomatoes, carefully minced
Handful of alfalfa sprouts, chopped

Boil the potatoes until tender. In a separate saute pan, melt the butter on low heat and cook the onions and leeks for 20 minutes, stirring periodically.

Normally I would just use a food mill for a vichyssoise, but we wanted the texture to be really smooth so I added the step of quickly pureeing the potatoes, onion and leeks in a food processor once everything was cooked. Then shift the combination to a food mill on a fine-mesh setting, and run it through the mill into a bowl.

Add the milk, salt, pepper, and nutmeg and stir. Then stir in the white wine. Taste for salt and pepper, and you can err just a little bit on the salty side as its effects will be reduced when chilled. Chill in the fridge.

To serve, chop up some alfalfa sprouts and finely mince up some cherry tomatoes (try not to mush it up with the knife). Garnish the top of your servings with a pinch of alfalfa and then a pinch of the tomatoes. Serve with a small spoon.

One of the key criteria for this first course was that we could make it in advance, and serve it with minimal final prep work, since the second course was a complex pudding / souffle. We served it with white wine and it was a hit at the table. The above amount make enough for two full bowls of the soup, and was more than enough for the 6 portions we needed to kick off our dinner.

Romanos in sauce; Cuban Black Bean combinations

I discovered romano beans earlier this summer at our local farm in the Catskills and have been going back to them ever since, usually quick-sauteing or parboiling with minimal treatment such as lemon or a small amount of butter, or including in a cold tomato salad. I had not thought of slow cooking them with a rich sauce, but that’s where this bubbling fount of ideas called the food blogosphere comes in. Smitten Kitchen caught a New York Times article that I missed and brought this approach to my attention. So thanks Deb!

Tonight I wanted a hearty “one pot” meal, so I took a kind of bolognese approach and the result was delicious and filling.

Romano Beans in Meat Sauce

serves 2

2 handfuls of romano beans
1/2 lb ground beef
1/2 onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
2 large white mushrooms, or handful of smaller, diced
6 skinless plum tomatoes
1/3 cup tomato puree
1/2 cup red wine
1/3 cup of water
oregano
sage

In a large saute pan, pour in a touch of olive oil and brown your ground beef, then set aside. Add a touch more olive oil, and saute the onions, then add the carrots and mushrooms and cook for several minutes. Add in the whole plum tomatoes without breaking them open yet, add the tomato puree, and return the ground beef to the pan.

Add a couple pinches of salt and ground pepper, a couple pinches of dried oregano (or a bit more if using fresh), and a pinch of dried sage. Add the wine and water (or if using canned tomatoes, as I did, some of the juice from the can). Stir gently so as not to break open the tomatoes, loosely cover and let cook on medium low heat for 10 minutes.

While this is cooking, wash the beans, cut off the ends, and cut the beans themselves to 2″ length or so to make more manageable to eat. A nice aesthetic touch I picked up from Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food is to slice the romano beans at a consistent 45 degree angle.

Break apart the tomatoes and taste for spices. Stir the beans into the pan, loosely cover, and cook on low heat for 30 or 40 minutes.

Part 2
Cuban Black Beans

I’ve already blogged this marvelous black bean recipe from Gregory Triana of Blue Cashew in High Falls, NY, so am just going to write a few notes here. Sunday was miserably humid outside, so we took refuge in air conditioning and that made making the beans possible. If you know you can be somewhat near your kitchen over a few hours, this is a great recipe for black beans, with a fabulous sofrito of green pepper and onion. See the recipe here. And you know I love Low and Slow cooking!

I make it differently almost every time, and often bump up the amount of green pepper, onion and cumin from the recipe. Making it is work, no question, but once made there are so many uses that are usually incredibly fast to put together.

You can make great quesadillas, by adding some corn, scallions, hot peppers of some kind, cilantro, shredded monterey jack cheese, and in my case, some smoked ham:

You can serve it as a side dish (that’s a sliced red jalapeno around it):

I’ll also mix it into a salsa, such as the below which has chopped tomatillos, a jalapeno, a red hot chili pepper, fresh corn niblets, cilantro, and the juice of two limes (obviously topped with some avocado). I think it’s an ugly picture (nothing to see here folks, move along!), but it tastes great with some chips!

And finally, this picture has no bearing whatsoever, except that I snapped a pic of some ingredients going into the black beans and liked it:

Why is it that tomatoes spelled with an “e” and tomatillos is spelled without? Ponder.

Favorite food locations; damn good corn fritters

Watching the Paris photos over at Stacey’s Snacks has made me think about memorable food in far off places. I had only traveled around the US before I met Lisl, but marrying an Australian comes with a substantial increase of global travel. It seems to be part of the contract, but there are worse trades! I’m convinced that at any point in time at least 10% of the total Aussie population is overseas. While we’ve certainly had great meals all over the place (mussels in Bruges and some of the gastropubs in the English countryside outside of London come to mind), my personal top food locations are Greece and Italy.

In Greece, Lisl dragged me a little island called Serifos in the Cyclades. We had a friend that knew all the locals, so we got to experience the “authentic” restaurants rather than the fancy tourist places. In Italy, Lisl has so far “dragged”me (yeah, twist my arm) to Rome and the Cinque Terre. In Rome, we would wander around the streets and eventually see it – the place we *had* to have dinner that night. In both Greece and Italy, the produce was so fresh and the treatment brilliant and not over-complicated.

Where are your favorite food locations?

All this came back last night when we had a fabulous meal at the Greek restaurant Peryali in Manhattan, an old favorite. Speaking of Australians, the night before last I tried out an Aussie recipe for corn fritters that flat out rocked. It came by way of an old post from The Wednesday Chef and discovered through foodblogsearch.

Paranoid me is going to post the ingredients here, on the off-chance that Wednesday Chef ever decides to take down her blog (I hope not but this is so good that I am resorting to a “backup”). To read about the process, please head over to her blog.

The dipping sauce

We had most of what the recipe called for, however we were out of scallions and cilantro (dammit!) and so swapped in shallots. I also only had 1/4 cup rice vinegar for the dipping sauce, so made up the difference with apple vinegar (it was still very good). The only change that I made voluntarily was to the batter, where I only used 1/4 cup of water and added 1/4 cup of beer (I love beer batters!).

Munchkin was a very good helper.

The fritters were served with swiss chard, with the leaves and stems chopped separately and sauted with a chopped onion in a couple tbsp of olive oil. I spotted this in Alice Waters’ Art of Simple Food. Start by cooking the chopped chard stems for several minutes, then add the onion for several minutes, then the chopped leaves. Salt to taste (adding the right amount of salt is critical).

Ingredients for Corn Fritters

Dipping Sauce
1 red jalapeno, finely chopped
1/2 cup rice vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup sugar
1 small clove garlic, minced

Fritters
1 cup flour (or 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup rice flour)
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 cup water
2 cups corn kernels, cut from 3 large cobs
4 spring onions, finely sliced
3 tablespoons chopped cilantro
Oil

Vegetarian Chili

The first project with my Rancho Gordo beans was a vegetarian chili using some of the fresh vegetables from the farm stand. This is another “get it all in the pot and let it cook for a while” dish. For this project, I used the Pebble beans, and of course you can use other, more commonly found beans (a common mix is kidney, pinto and great northern). The colors were a wonderful mix of browns and oranges — it was like Fall in a pot.

Vegetarian Chili

Serves 4 – 6, depending on bowl size 😉

1 lb pebble beans (or other bean mixture)
3 medium tomatoes
7 or 8 tomatilloes
2 red hot chili peppers
2 hot cayenne peppers (if available, otherwise use red chili peppers or jalapenos)
2 ears of corn (1 for chili, 1 for garnish)
2 onions (1 left whole, 1 chopped)
4 scallions, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, minced
2 bay leaves
2 tbsp ground cumin
2 tbsp fresh oregano, chopped (or half as much dried oregano)
salt
cilantro
natural greek yogurt

Just a few of the ingredients

Prepping the beans
Rinse and quickly pick over the beans to remove cracked beans or small stones. Soaking is optional (just requires longer cooking), but beans are easier to digest if you bring them to a boil for a couple of minutes, then turn off the heat to let them soak for over an hour. When done soaking, drain and rinse in a collander.

Rinsed Pebble beans, pre-soaking

Cooking the beans
Peel off the roughest outer layers of an onion and poke a few holes in it with a knife, making one large enough to insert a bay leaf. Place the rinsed beans and onion in a heavy bottomed pot (I like using my cast iron dutch oven), fill with cold water about an inch over the tops of the beans, and bring to a boil. Once the water is boiling, reduce to a simmer and cook for 45 minutes or so. Save at least 4 cups of the cooking liquid, and then drain the rest, putting the beans to the side in a bowl.

Cooking the Chili
Preheat the oven to 280F.

Chop up the onion and scallions, mince the garlic, and saute in the dutch oven on medium-low heat with a little bit of olive oil. If you have time to skin and de-seed your tomatoes, do so, then roughly chop them up and add to the pot. Remove the husks from the tomatilloes, dice, and add to the pot. Cut the kernels of an uncooked ear of corn and add to the pot. Add the oregano and ground cumin, 2 tsp of salt, and 2 of the hot peppers, minced. Finally add in the beans and a cup of the bean-cooking liquid, and mix it all together gently. As you will see in the below picture, I also kept and added the whole onion from cooking the beans.

Cover and place in the oven.

At this point, you can cook on low heat for as long as you have (or can bear), but at least another hour. Check every 30 – 45 minutes and add more of the bean-cooking liquid if it is looking dry. I probably ended up adding at least two cups of liquid. About an hour in, I removed the whole onion and added a fresh bay leaf. Continue to taste for the desired balance of cumin, salt and heat from the fresh peppers, and adjust accordingly. I used 2 red chili peppers and 2 fresh cayenne peppers, but with fresh peppers heat can really vary so treat carefully if you have a sensitive palate. When you add more heat, let it cook until your next checkpoint before tasting again and adding.

Depending on your desired texture and aesthetics, if you want to thicken up the chili, put one or two large spoonfuls of the chili in a food processor and roughly puree, then stir back into pot. (Note: it isn’t quite as pretty if you do this, but you do a get a wonderfully thick “comfort food” texture.)

Before serving, chop up some fresh cilantro and cook an ear of corn (method of cooking is of no matter – I microwaved it still in the husk for 2.5 minutes) and cut off the kernels. Add a dollop of yogurt (or sour cream) to each bowl and garnish with the fresh corn kernels and cilantro. Other nice garnishes are diced sweet red pepper, grated cheese, and diced red onion. It can be fun to serve each garnish in an individual bowl so your eaters can take their pick.

Additional notes:
Using the oven isn’t necessary, but I find that it reduces any risk of burning at the bottom of the pot (a handy thing if you get tied up by, say, a mischevous 3 year old and forget to check on it for a bit) and makes it easier to keep the chili at a low simmer. In my case, I actually started the chili yesterday evening and left it in the oven with the heat turned off when I went to bed (while placing the extra bean-cooking liquid in the fridge). When I woke up, I added some more liquid to the pot, brought it all to a boil again on the top of the stove, and then placed back in the oven for a few more hours.

If you don’t have fresh hot peppers, you can use chili powder, but remember to start light (say, a tsp or two) and build up to the desired heat level, and you might also scale back the garlic, cumin, and oregano since chili powder is a mix of spices.

Finally, those of you who have been reading this blog are picking up that I am more about country/peasant/comfort food than haute cuisine. While I had to resist mightily from adding any meat to this chili dish, it came together well and was a filling and truly delicious meal.

Geeking out with beans

My Rancho Gordo beans came today! Let the games begin!

When we dropped by Gills farm stand last weekend, they had fresh black-eyed peas. Some of the pods were really green and soft, with young, green beans that hadn’t fully developed (you can vaguely see them in the background above, out of focus). To any black-eyed pea experts out there: does that mean they were picked too soon?

And Now For Something Completely Different…
Tonight my attention was starting a lamb and lentil (part of the geeking out with beans day) braise which will be finished off tomorrow when I get home from work. So for dinner we whipped together linguine with a simple tomato sauce. Once upon a time, I used to think you had to cook a tomato sauce for hours but it’s really not true. Tonight’s version took about 40 minutes and was great.

Chop and saute an onion in olive oil, followed by chopped mushroom, sweet yellow pepper, and a whole bunch of parsley. Let it all cook for a few more minutes, then add a can of whole, peeled tomatoes with some salt and pepper. Simmer the sauce for 30 more minutes before breaking up the tomatoes into smaller chunks with a spatula. Taste for salt and serve on some al dente linguine. Fresh, simple, fast, healthy, tasty and filling. All good descriptors for a work-night meal.

Lastly, we’ve created an email for the blog for anyone who wants to contact us but doesn’t want to leave a public comment: larder -at- constable -dot- net. Pardon my spelling it out that way, but spam bots are such a scourge!

Swiss Chard Gratin, Dry Rub Pork

Anyone who reads this blog has already noticed that sometimes I get in the mood to do a recipe and heat of the oven be damned! Tonight was one of those cases after I saw an Alice Waters recipe for Swiss Chard posted by The Wednesday Chef. It had to be eaten.

But before I talk about the recipe, I had a question for you foodies out there — I know that Alice Waters inspired, well, everybody, but who do you consider was particularly influenced by her within the following generations of leading chefs ?

Swiss Chard Gratin

Adapted from The Wednesday Chef who adapted from Alice Waters. This amount serves about 4 as a side dish. The use of a cast iron pan in making this dish reduces washing up!

1 bunch of swiss chard (8-10 large leaves)
1 cup breadcrumbs
unsalted butter
1 onion, diced
1 tbsp flour
1/2 to 1 cup milk
pinch of ground nutmeg

Tear up some bread and make pea-sized breadcrumbs in a food processor. Melt a tablespoon of butter in a large cast iron pan and lightly brown the breadcrumbs over medium heat. Remove and set aside in a small bowl.

Preheat oven at 350F.

Get some lightly salted water boiling in a large pot. Wash the chard and cut away the stems. Thinly chop the stems (just like chopping celery). Place the chopped stems in the boiling water and cook for two minutes, then add the green leaves of chard, and cook for another three minutes, then drain in a collander and press some of the excess moisture out of the leaves.

Add 2 tsbp of butter to your cast iron pan and saute the diced onion over medium-low heat until it turns translucent. Remove the chard from the collander, loosely chop, and add to the cast iron pan. Add some salt and continue sauteing for several minutes.

Add the flour and stir in well. Then add 1/2 cup of milk, the pinch of nutmeg, and stir and cook for another 5 minutes. You want the mixture to be moist but not soupy, so continue to add small increments of milk as you go to keep the proper level of moisture.

Remove from heat, and taste for salt. You can optionally add a little more butter here (say 1/4 tbsp cut into small pieces and sprinkled around). Sprinkle the breadcrumbs on top evenly and place in the oven for 20 to 30 minutes.

Let’s just say that I did not leave leftovers.

Dry Rub Pork

I continue to experiment with dry rub combinations. Tonight I removed sugar all together and combined roughly equal portions of mustard seed, coriander seed, cumin seed, black peppercorns, and salt in a mortar for grinding. I rubbed the spice mix on the pork and let the chops sit for about 40 minutes before grilling — searing on high heat for 2 to 3 minutes a side and then moving to indirect heat on the grill for a few minutes more (these were big chops). The result was very good.

Dinner all combined was the grilled pork chop, side of chard gratin, and a side of some roma beans boiled for 2 minutes on the side and a touch of salt — all paired with a nice Malbec.

Tomato Salad; Bitten pasta recipe; photoshop irritation

Who doesn’t love summer tomatoes?

This was just sliced tomatoes with oregano, basil, salt, pepper, olive oil, and a touch of balsamic vinegar. Nothing fancy, just happiness. We served it with some bread, the pesto from yesterday, and homemade hummus (ever since reading I Found Happy’s recipe I’ve been making my own hummus… don’t know why it never occurred to me to do before!) .

Biting into Bitten
For dinner, we decided to try a recent recipe from the NYTimes Bitten blog: Pasta with Eggplant, Tomato and Breadcrumbs (click on that link for the recipe). We made it without the pancetta, but felt that it was missing something in the end result (still quite satisfying however). My own notes/changes for next time: make sure that the breadcrumbs are well browned; throw the chopped tomatoes in at the very end so that are barely cooked; experiment with lemon or cumin to punch up the flavor a bit, or drop the vegetarian angle and add the pancetta.

Pile o’ basil

Making the sauce did make for this amazing orange (orange tomatoes) and purple combination. The lighting in the kitchen wasn’t ideal for a picture, but there was some serious color going on.

Photoshop Grrrrr
So I tried once again to edit my digital pictures on my Mac laptop (which I use for work), but continue to face this irritating problem where Photoshop CS3 screws up the color profile and washes out all the color when saving as a jpeg. I’ve tried one workaround I found googling, but that has not worked. I was able to salvage yesterday’s lamb pictures somewhat, but who wants to look at a picture of a greyish tomato? Newwwpp! So I had to wait until I got home to my personal Windoze machine tonight to redo the pictures and post this. Adobe, I love your products, but you messed up on this one. More net research required methinks.

P.S. I meant to do a shout out to my former work colleague Allison Hemler for kicking off her internship at Serious Eats and getting her first post up. We miss you AH, but good to see you taking on such cool new projects!

Tomato & Black Eyed Pea Thai-inspired Salad

If you are looking for ways to use your summer tomatoes, and want to try an interesting salad dressing, you might enjoy this combination. I used a Thai-inspired base dressing normally used in Yum Nuea, but then mixed with basil (in Yum Nuea, you add cilantro, ginger and serrano peppers).

The resulting salad was a satisfying meal unto itself (the black-eyed peas were critical to making it hearty), and an interesting new flavor which we enjoyed.

The following amounts served two

Dressing
2 tbsp cup lime juice
1 to 1 1/2 tbsp fish sauce
1/2 tsp sesame oil
Several drops of dark soy sauce

1/2 cup of black eyed peas
2 ripe medium or large tomatoes
Handful of cherry tomatoes
1 red pepper
Red onion
Handful of basil leaves
Several leaves of lemon basil

Cooking the black-eyed peas: I put the black-eyed peas in a bowl to soak in the morning before heading to work, but that is optional. In any case, put the beans in a pot of cold water about 1 inch over the top, bring to a boil, then lower to a gentle simmer and cook until tender (about 25-30 minutes if soaked, and another 15 minutes or so if not). I made a larger batch, but used roughly half a cup in the salad.

In a small bowl, combine the dressing together, finalizing amounts to taste (start with minimal soy sauce and add drops to taste — like you experience with salt, if you go overboard with soy sauce by accident, you are better off starting over than trying to fix).

Cut a few thin slices of red onion, break into smaller pieces, and soak in the bowl with the dressing while you finish the rest of the salad.

Slice your large tomatoes into thin crescents. Halve your cherry tomatoes. Remove the stem, seeds and inside of the red pepper and chop into bite-sized pieces. Do a loose chiffonade of the basil leaves, i.e. cut into very thin strips (note: I didn’t bother rolling up the leaves before cutting, which is a common chiffonade approach).

Combine everything into a bowl, toss, let sit for just a few minutes, toss again and serve. We paired this with a nice rose.

Eggplant, Zucchini & Basil Gratin

[Update 8/30/09 a year later, I made this dish again and loved it as much, if not more. I am updating the recipe to be less of a record of the original creation and more of a general recipe).

I seem to be on this vegetarian comfort food kick. Tonight’s dinner was a lovely success, layering eggplant, zucchini, cheese, breadcrumbs and basil. I completely winged it (having only about 2 brain cells left to rub together after a late night and a long day) but at the first bite Lisl and I were both at “wow!” I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised… melted veggies with gobs of cheese and olive oil? As Mr. Powers would say, yeah baby!

3 golden zucchini (green or summer squash fine as well)
2 medium Japanese eggplants, peeled (Italian eggplant fine as well)
1 cup coarse bread crumbs (whole wheat or rustic white)
large handful of basil leaves
1/2 cup coarsely grated mozzarella cheese (version 2: manchego)
1/2 cup coarsely grated monterey jack cheese (version 2: cheddar)
1/2 cup coarsely grated parmesan cheese
extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

In a food processor, pulse your bread into coarse breadcrumbs. Preheat oven at 350F. In a baking tray, spread out the crumbs and bake, occasionally stirring around, until lightly browned.

Peel the eggplant with a vegetable peeler and slice lengthwise into slices about 2 millimeters thick. (Optional: salt both sides of the eggplant and place in a colander to drain for about 20 minutes. Dry the slices with paper towel. Then slice the zucchini the same thickness.

Heat a large pan with olive oil on medium to medium-high heat and saute your eggplant and zucchini for 30-40 seconds a side, adding more olive oil to the pan between each batch. You don’t need to cook the slices all the way, just enough to soften them.

In a deep, medium-sized baking dish baking dish, layer your gratin by alternating the ingredients as you wish, or in this order:

eggplant
a mixture of the 3 cheeses
zucchini
salt and pepper
scattering of breadcrumbs
layer of basil leaves
cheese
eggplant
zucchini
salt and pepper
cheese
basil
eggplant
zucchini
salt and pepper
final, more thorough layer of cheese
final, more thorough layer of breadcrumbs

Don’t be afraid to cut your slices of eggplant or zucchini into the necessary size to fit the gaps in a layer. Where it calls for salt and pepper, just add 2 or 3 turnings of a grinder. The order of the layers and ingredients is anything but scientific — the flavors will blend together nicely.

Out of focus picture but you get the point…

Optional: drizzle some olive oil over top.

Baked for 50 minutes at 350F. You get a delightful crust and a totally melted core. The layer of basil really permeates this dish nicely. It’s rich, but oh so satisfying. This dish can handle a hefty, peppery red wine should you be so inclined.

I’ll end with a few “ingredients” pictures.

I love how this one came out.

Chickpea Stew (and mag cover whimsy)

Tonight I adapted a recipe from the Sept 2008 edition of Food & Wine, a chickpea and spinach stew (original recipe here). I can’t resist saying, the cover of the magazine absolutely cracked me up. It read:

our 20 best fast recipes ever

So does a food mag have to be like Cosmo now? And I query: do they really come up with 20 new best sex positions each month? (I refer to Cosmo there, not F&W, although I guess that could be an interesting editorial direction…) . At least F&W stuck to a round number, unlike Details which prefers things like 133 ways to look great… I’m imaging the editorial cutting table: “sorry Boss, we tried to make it to your 135 quota but just couldn’t get there!“

Enough amusing myself — onto the food! This is a great dish, and while I’m sure the original recipe is good, I had to go my own direction. I diverged from F&W in a number of ways: smaller portion, longer cooking (I know … efficiency yada yada yada but it’s a STEW, not a chickpea stirfry for crying out loud), and slightly different ingredients (for one, I can’t stand raisins in cooked food but that’s just me — I’m a “savory” type).

Chickpea Stew

1/2 lb of dried chickpeas (approx)
7 oz bag of baby spinach
1 medium yellow onion or half a large vidalia onion
3 roma tomatoes
1 medium garlic clove
small pinch of saffron
1 tsp hot hungarian paprika
1/2 tsp cumin
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper
olive oil (extra virgin if you have it)

The Chickpeas
You can easily use a can of pre-cooked chickpeas, but I don’t like the taste of the liquid you get with canned beans, so I try to cook from dried beans whenever time permits (one also has more control over tenderness that way). Before I went to work this morning, I soaked about half of a 1 lb bag of dried chickpeas in a bowl of cool water.

Rinse the chickpeas, placed them in a medium pot and covered with water about an inch above the chickpeas. Bring them to a boil, lower heat to a simmer, and cook for about an hour (you can add things like a carrot, onion, parsley stems, or bay leaf if you feel inspired). If you don’t have time to soak, but want to use dried beans, you’ll probably need to let them cook for another 40 to 60 minutes. Once your chickpeas are done, save three cups of the cooking liquid, drain the pot and return the chickpeas and 1 cup of the cooking liquid to the pot.

The Tomatoes
I skinned and seeded the Roma tomatoes. If you are in a hurry, you can skip this step, but it is a nice touch. To skin a tomato, cut a shallow X at the bottom (I find with the oblong roma tomato, it is easier with slightly bigger crosshatch cuts than normally needed) and place it in boiling water for about 30 seconds. Once it cools, the skin should come off easily. Quarter the tomatoes and use your fingers to gently scoop out the seeds. Then loosely chop into smaller pieces and add to the pot with the chickpeas. Turn on the heat and get the chickpeas, liquid and tomatoes to a simmer.

The Onion
Chop your onion and saute it with a tablespoon of olive oil until it just turning translucent, then add to the pot. Keep the saute pan handy for the spinach (below).

The Spices
Mash a medium-sized clove of garlic with the flat of your knife and remove the skin. Then chop and place in a mortar. Add the ground cumin, hot paprika, 1/4 tsp of salt, and (very optionally, given the price of saffron) a pinch of saffron threads to the mortar. Pound into a paste and then add to the stew pot, along with a bay leaf, the tomato paste, and 1/2 cup of the reserved liquid (if you forgot to reserve any, just use water). Stir and keep at a low simmer for 20 minutes.

You want the stew to be slightly liquidy but not soupy, so continue adding the reserved liquid as needed as the stew thickens, stirring periodically. Add salt and pepper to taste (I estimate that I added another 1/4 tsp of salt here). You might also decide to add more cumin if you want a stronger spiced meal.

Adding the Spinach
As the stew is lightly simmering, saute the baby spinach in a tablespoon of olive oil for a couple of minutes until it has just cooked down. Drain in a collander and press on the leaves to drain the extra liquid. Mix the spinach into the stew pot and let simmer for another 10 or 15 minutes, adding any extra reserved liquid to achieve the consistency you want, and tasting for spices.

When you serve, you can drizzle a little more olive oil and/or grind a little black pepper on top of each bowl. I ate this with some grilled sausages, but frankly it would be a great, very satisfying meal unto itself with a big hunk of good bread. I want to try it again adding carrots, parsley, and another version with more heat from hot peppers.