Spanish-Inspired Chickpeas and Chorizo with Sherry and Chili

I apologize for my prolonged absence.  Or rather, I am sorry I had not had time to write, but I am not sorry for the reasons – being busy happens to all of us, and I am no exception.  In consolation, I bring you chickpeas with chorizo sausage and chili in sherry sauce – a meal that is not only pretty to look at and easy to make, but is very rich in fiber, and also happens to be one of my most favorite things to eat.  One of my many favorite things to eat, but still!

Warning to the timid – this is not food for the faint of heart, as it packs not only a good amount of heat from the fresh chili, but a flavor punch that will be there whether you are as chili-happy as I am or not.  But if you love Mediterranean food in general, and garlic and chili in particular, then I urge you to make this – you will not have any regrets!

Recently, due to the impending summer and the need to look great in a swimsuit in Barcelona come July, I have been on a lose-weight track.  Which, for me, translates to tossing sugar and avoiding refined carbohydrates – I guess it is a personally-designed permutation of a LCHF eating style.  Chickpeas (along with other legumes), due to their high fiber and protein content, are an ideal solution when you (me in this case) are tired of the green salad and a piece of random protein, or want a bit of comfort food without the sugar high.

I would even go as far as to say that unless you are one of those people who definitely dislike legumes, this is a meal you need to make because it really compromises on nothing – from flavor, to its nutritional content, to the ease of preparation and the beautiful presentation, it wins on all points – at least it does for me.

I won’t lay any claims to the Spanish authenticity of this dish, nor, indeed to its authenticity in any cuisine, except that it is authentically inspired by the flavors of Spanish tapas, and more than one ingredient in it is Spanish, which to me justifies the Spanish-inspired claim.

Another plus of this is that most of the ingredients are storecupboard staples and can be easily kept on hand – chickpeas keep virtually forever if dried (or canned), and for a week or so in the fridge if cooked, and raw chorizo keeps in the cold meat part of the fridge for weeks.  And I am the sort of person who has onions, garlic and chilies on hand more or less at any time – though should you find yourself lacking garlic or chili, a bit of garlic granules or chili flakes won’t ruin this dish.  However, I’d urge against substituting both and/or onions with dried products – the quick preparation and the simple composition of this means that fresh ingredients really do shine – and removing or substituting more than one of them does take its toll.

Anyway – here’s what you need to make your own if when you decide to make it:

Feeds 2 hungry people

• 2 cups of chickpeas, cooked.  You can use canned (drained and rinsed) chickpeas, but I cook my own from dry which in my view results in much better flavor.  However, if you really can’t be bothered, 2 cans of chickpeas will do.
• 1-2 links raw chorizo sausage, cut into small quarter-circles
• 1 red onion, peeled and chopped
• 1 large red chili, deseeded and chopped
• 3-4 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped finely
• 1/2 teaspoon of sweet or hot paprika powder (go with sweet if you are worried about too much heat, but I use hot)
• 1 tomato, chopped into small bits
• Extra-virgin olive oil, a generous slug
• 1 sprig of rosemary, leaves torn off and chopped
• 75-100ml sherry – dry or medium.  I use Amontillado, which I keep on hand for cooking in general – it’s amazing in cream sauces, and anything to do with mushrooms, too.
• Sea salt (ground or flaked) to taste

What to do:

• Heat up your generous amount of oil in a saute pan to medium-high heat.  Reduce heat a little (5-6/9 for me).
• Toss in the onions and fry them until they are translucent and just begin to color.  Move to the side and add chorizo sausage.  Fry for a few minutes until the oil colors red from the paprika in the sausage, and sausage looks about 2/3 done.
• Move sausage over to the onions and sprinkle the paprika powder on the sausage area.  Add the chili to the pan and fry until it turns bright orange (a minute or so).
• Add garlic and fry just until it goes bright white and aromatic.  Add chopped tomato and cook a further few minutes until it is softened and heated through, then add chickpeas and mix everything thoroughly.
• Add the sherry, stir and cover, allowing the flavors to mingle for a few minutes, and the sauce to reduce.  Season with salt to taste.
• Serve in bowls, sprinkled with some fresh chopped rosemary or thyme.

In my opinion, this can make a lovely festive dinner if paired with a bit of green salad and a glass of good wine of your liking.  And some crusty bread if you aren’t avoiding it like I am.  Just saying.

Scampi with Sherry and Lavender

Many people use lavender – as perfume, or bathing, or a variety of other things, but have you ever considered using it as a seasoning?

Lavender is part of the same family as rosemary, and as such, generally works fine in any dishes where rosemary can also be used.  It has a strong, sweet but a little harsh scent (familiar to most if not all).  A small caution for using lavender in food – it can turn slightly bitter if you go too generously with it.  Use the same guideline as you would with hot spices – try a little and gradually increase the amount if you feel it’s not enough.  On the other hand, because of how strong the fragrance is, a little really does go a long way.  There is no need to pour it on by the teaspoonful – a few dried flowers scattered over your meal do more than enough to impart the flavor.

This is a dish of giant prawns in which I incidentally decided to use up some slightly-softening tomatoes and a bit of sourdough bread from the day before which was going slightly stale.  The reference to “scampi” is not in terms of what species of crustacean I use, but the American prawn or shrimp dish, of which this is a more robust variation.

It takes nearly no time, tastes fantastic and uses up leftovers all at the same time.  It can go really well paired with a salad of some sort of bitter greens such as baby leaf salad or arugula, but it’s just fine as it is on its own as well.

What you need (feeds 2):

• 8-12 giant prawns or 300g tiger or whiteleg prawns (the commonly sold varieties), shell cut on top, and deveined.
• 2 tomatoes
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 3-4 cloves of garlic
• Pinch of red chili flakes
• Pinch of dried culinary lavender buds. Note: when buying lavender, please make sure it’s untreated and suitable for consumption.  Spice shops and gift shops in botanical gardens will frequently stock it, but I am sure it is possible to get culinary-grade lavender on the net as well.
• 75ml sherry (not sweet, I use Amontillado)
• Sea salt to taste
• 5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• A few slices of sourdough or other crusty bread with strong crumb (somewhat stale ok).  Really, you can probably do this well with just about any decent bread, but for the love of little green apples, please, please don’t try this with the insipid white spongy bagged … stuff (I hesitate to call that bread), it will disintegrate on contact with liquids and you will get disgusting mush.
• Some chopped flat-leaf parsley to decorate (entirely optional).

What to do:

• Drain your defrosted and deveined prawns in a colander.
• Preheat broiler (top grill) of your oven to 220°C.
• Blitz garlic in a food processor to small shreds.  Add tomatoes and blitz to a coarse slurry.
• Add sea salt, chili, lavender buds, sherry, lemon juice and 3 tablespoons of olive oil, and blend to combine.
• Place your prawns in a bowl, pour over the sauce you’ve just mixed, and swish around to combine.  Ensure all prawns are at least moistened by the sauce.
• In the meantime, cut up the bread – reserve a few of the nicer slices for toasting and cut the rest up into 2-3 fingers lengthwise each.  Drizzle the slices reserved for toasting with the remaining olive oil on both sized (use more if needed) and allow to rest.
• Pour the prawns and sauce into a ceramic or glass baking dish and spread out into a single layer.  Add the cut-up fingers of bread at a tilt (close to horizonal) in a sort of a falling-domino pattern around the edges of the dish, submerging the edges of them in the sauce.
• Place a non-stick frying pan on medium-high heat to preheat.
• Place the prawn dish under broiler (about 2nd rack from the top of the oven) and cook until the prawns are red and curled up, with edges beginning to char lightly.  The time will depend on your oven, how far the rack is in it, and how large your prawns were, but at a guess, they can be ready in as little as 10 minutes or as much as 20 (my giant ones took a while).
• While the prawns cook, lightly toast the reserved drizzled-with-oil bread slices in the pan and arrange them on plates.  Sprinkly with flaked sea salt and some lavender buds if desired.
• When the prawns are ready, remove from oven and plate the prawns and the sauced bread quickly.  You can sprinkle them with a little chopped parsley if you like the look of greens among all of that gold and red, but I was happy with it as-is, with a few piercingly purple-blue lavender buds scattered on top.

Black tea with a touch of honey or coffee will work equally well with this.  Or, if doing this for dinner, a crisp white wine would work really well too.  The sauce, for the record, tastes utterly amazing and the toasted sourdough is great for sopping it up after the prawns are all gone.  Just thought you should know.  ;)

Of Empty Wine Rack and Entertaining (and removed boxes, as an aside)

Yes, I know I’ve not written in a while, and for that I have only myself to blame. Well, that, and the invasion of boxes, necessity of doing official paperwork to do with moving between different countries, and the winter plague*cough*flu*cough, all of which I have wrestled with during the past weeks.  There is also an entry on social context of food which I have been writing for a while, but have not yet finished – though, as I am now resuming my social schedule and the apartment is beginning to look less like a cardboard jungle, and more like someplace I can invite people into, it is quite fitting to get it finished and posted.

With that in mind, my eyes fell on our wine rack, which in the past months has gotten emptied/sadly neglected, and now houses just a couple of random bottles, and my quince rum sitting rather lonely in its mostly-empty expanse.  The wine rack, therefore, is also in need of being populated, and the question I pose to myself is what should go into it, and in what combinations.  And so, the following list of things I would want was born.

Yarden Mount Hermon Red

Mind you, we are not big drinkers ourselves.  We aren’t even middling, to be honest – I think our average alcohol intake amounts to a couple of glasses of wine a week when we aren’t entertaining, and so there are considerations not only of what to stock the wine rack with, but how to balance the number of bottles of any given kind.  Now, unless my count is wrong, I have five or six spots in the refrigerator rack for white wines, and eight empty (twelve total, but the bottles there now can be moved) spots in the built-in wooden rack for red, rose and whatever else.

So, what would I want to have there (and can acquire with reasonable ease in Systembolaget state-monopoly shops in Sweden)?

In no particular order:

• A Chianti or other Sangiovese-based dry red wine.  I like Tenute Piccini Selezione Oro Chianti Riserva, but it’s not normally carried by Systembolaget, though their regular one is.  Perhaps try that one, or find another.
• A Pinot Grigio.  Preferably Italian, though I have heard that Romanian and Moldovan ones are very good as well, and Systembolaget carries a few.  Banrock Station is Australian, but is also worth noting.
• Yarden Mount Hermon Red by Golan Heights Winery.  One of the better commercially-available Israeli export wines.  And they do have it here!  Yay yay yay!
• A couple of bottles of Georgian wine (not US Georgia, but the original one).  Kindzmarauli or Akhasheni preferably, but Hvanchkara would not go amiss either.  Not the foggiest idea how to go about getting those in Sweden.
• A Beaujolais-Villages, as some of them can be very soft, without too much tannins.  Need to see what is locally available.
• A White Zinfandel (Cabernet Blanc).  Preferably American, and is likely easy to get hands on.  Yes, I like the fruit-punch wine too!
• A dessert wine, such as Beerenauslese.  Or a variety of Eiswein.  Or a Vin Santo, om nom nom!
• A bottle of Amontillado Sherry – more for cooking than drinking, though I never turn my nose up at drinking it on its very own!
• Some sparkling wine.  I am not an expert in that by a far stretch, but I dislike it chalky or too dry, which rules a lot of it out outright.

I am of the conviction that a good wine is good more than once, and thus the above wish list is probably more than enough to populate the racks with surplus (should I get my greedy paws on it all, which I hope I can, eventually).  As mentioned above, considering my incredible lack of prowess at selecting bubbly beyond sweet Italian Asti, I will leave the selection of actual Champagne (and Cognac and Whisky) to T, since he is far more of an expert in those than I.

The point of what to drink, of course, is still secondary to the question of who to drink it with.  Thankfully, now that I am back here, there isn’t a serious lack of people to [feed] socialize with!  In fact, with the boxes removed and most of the book piles brought at least to a semblance of order, T and I both declare this place officially no longer dangerous open to the public friends and relatives to visit!  Again.  Especially if they are prepared to be force-fed entertained!