Fried chickpeas with chorizo and spinach

Straight from the New York Times' (Wed Feb 24 2010) Mark Bittman (I am a fan), this simple dish was perfect on a cold night. The chorizo is the cured  & dried Spanish kind, not the loose fresh Mexican kind. Frying the chick peas gives them has a nice crunch they normally don't have.

Ingredients:
1/4 cup olive oil, plus a little extra for drizzling
2 cups cooked chickpeas, as dry as possible (use paper towels or a dish towel to blot them dry)
Salt and pepper to taste
4 oz dried chorizo diced
1/2 lb spinach
1/4 cup Sherry (I skipped this)
1 to 2 cups bread crumbs

Heat the broiler

Add 3 tbs olive oil to skillet big enough to hold beans in a single layer over medium high heat. When oil is hot, add chickpeas, salt and pepper.

Reduce heat to medium  and cook, shaking pan to brown chickpeas, - about 10 minutes. The beans will get a nice color.

Add chorizo and cook another 5-8 minutes,

until the chorizo gives up some color and starts to crisp.

Remove chickpeas and chorizo to a bowl

Add remaining oil to the pan, when hot add the spinach, season with salt and pepper,

Cook over medium low heat until spinach is very soft and almost all liquid has evaporated. This will cook very quickly.

Add chickpeas and chorizo back to pan, toss to combine.

Add bread crumbs and drizzle with olive oil.

Put pan under broiler to lightly brown the top.

 Serve hot or room temperature.

This the the second time I've made this. It is surprisingly filling and delicious!

Until next time, Eat Well & Keep Digging!

The Gastronomic Gardener
Garden blog http://amidwestgarden.blogspot.com/
Cooking blog http://ihopeyouarehungry.blogspot.com/
Twitter - www.twitter.com/DavidPOffutt

http://www.facebook.com/TheGastronomicGardener

Lamb Chops, Brussels Sprouts and White Beans

One of my favorite meals is lamb chops.  I started these yesterday. 

Let's start with the marinade. Olive oil, rosemary, garlic, Calamata olives.

Chop the garlic.

Strip the rosemary.

Place the olives, rosemary and garlic in the food processor. 

Process ingredients, while adding olive oil until it becomes a smooth fragrant purple paste.

Nice Racks!

Place Racks and marinade in large ziptop bag.

Massage marinade into lamb. Place into refrigerator until an hour before cooking. Refrigerate for  several hours or overnight, up to a 24 hours.

One of the nice things about this meal is you can prep most of it the day before. This is the case with the Brussels sprouts.

Trim and halve sprouts.

After steaming  (yes I forgot the picture) for about 6 minutes, put steamed sprouts in  cold water bath . At this point they may be drained and stored in the refrigerator before final prep.

Cut two bacon strips into lardons.

Brown in pan.

Remove lardons and drain all but 1 tablespoon of fat. Add sprouts, cut side down.

Cook until a slight char on the cut side and sprouts are heated through.

Now to get the beans going.

Ingredients
2 cups cooked white beans
2 tbs olive oil
2 carrots finely diced
2 celery ribs finely diced
2 small onions finely diced
2 cloves garlic diced
2 tbs butter
bay leaf

Breakdown the vegetables.

Oil, onions carrots celery, garlic.

Add stock butter and bayleaf. 

Simmer and stir uncovered until creamy.

While beans are cooking roast the chops. 425F for 18 minutes.

Remove and tent with foil for 5 minutes.

Sadly they were just overcooked. I like them a little pink.

Finally we can plate them up, a bed of tender beans, two double cut  lamb chops, and Brussels sprouts.

This was a lot of steps but nothing difficult.

Until next time, Eat Well & Keep Digging!

The Gastronomic Gardener
Garden blog http://amidwestgarden.blogspot.com/
Cooking blog http://ihopeyouarehungry.blogspot.com/
Twitter - www.twitter.com/DavidPOffutt

http://www.facebook.com/TheGastronomicGardener

Steak on the Barbie + Mysterious Shadows

I had not had a steak in a long time. Last night just seemed like the right night. A little nip in the air, a glass of red wine. Let's fire up the grill.

I had this steak waiting for such a day, I'd taken it out of the freezer a day or so ago, and out of the fridge an hour before prepping. It is huge and will serve 2.

A little salt and pepper, and get the cast iron pan on fire. Start the grill as well.

It fills the pan!

Two minutes a side.

Add a pat of butter, and into the grill, pan and all until internal temp of 125.

While the steak was finishing in the covered grill, I was surprised to see the evidence of a thought to be extinct creature, the Backyardasaurus.  It appears mates were moving through the neighborhood. While they look like herbivores, perhaps they were drawn by the smell of the cooking steak?

With the steak off the grill and resting, a quick sauté of spinach and Korean greens, with a little olive oil and garlic.

Time to carve and serve! It looks charred but it is just a nice crust

Delicious!


I am getting found of the pan to grill technique. It works well for me.

Eat Well and Keep Digging!


The Gastronomic Gardener
Garden blog http://amidwestgarden.blogspot.com/
Cooking blog http://ihopeyouarehungry.blogspot.com/
Twitter - www.twitter.com/DavidPOffutt
http://www.facebook.com/TheGastronomicGardener

Cleaning & re-seasoning a Cast Iron Pan

I was fortunate to have a friend give me a cast iron pan - a Griswold #9 pan. They had picked it off a curb after it had failed to sell at garage sale for $15.  It is worth at  least three times that! He wasn't using it and it was taking up space in storage so he made a gift of it. Thanks buddy!

Aside from a few pits, a little rust and caked on grease it was in great shape.

Cleaning
First I scrubbed it with a metal scouring pad, boiling water and soap. Then I put the gas grill outdoors on preheat, and turned the oven in the house to its lowest setting - 170F for mine.

I put the pan on the grill for 30 minutes at the same preheat. The idea is to carbonize any remaining crud. It worked like a charm.

This is what it looked like after it cooled for 30 minutes.

You can even read the stamp on the back now.

One more scrub with hot soapy water and we're ready to start the seasoning part of the process.

Seasoning
1. Crank the burner on high and heat the pan for 5 minutes.
2. Add high smoke point oil (I used peanut) and swirl around  the pan. I took some paper towels (Be careful, the oil is hot!) and spread the oil all over the pan, inside and out. Discard paper towel. I suppose you could use a rag too if you want to be "greener".
3. Next I put the pan upside down over a sheetpan with the handle resting on the lip of the sheetpan. This allows extra oil to flow off.

4. Let it sit in the warm oven for 30 minutes, remove and let cool. Wipe it out again.
5. Repeat steps 1 through 4 2 more times.

Looks pretty good. I"ll use it to cook the "test patty" from the bratwurst I'm making later today.

So there you have it, all it took was a little elbow grease and time. You may be able to skip the first soapy water scrub and go straight to the super hot grill. Seemed pretty effective.

Eat well & keep digging!


The Gastronomic Gardener
My garden blog http://amidwestgarden.blogspot.com/
My cooking blog http://ihopeyouarehungry.blogspot.com/
Twitter - www.twitter.com/DavidPOffutt
http://www.facebook.com/TheGastronomicGardener