The Daily Spud » Pulses

Cheap As Chickpeas

Daily Spud — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 22:56:38 +0000

“I’ll not starve.”

That was the thought that crossed my mind as I pondered some weighty financial issues.

“I could always live on chickpeas” (and, before you ask, there is an implied “and potatoes” in that sentence).

I know for a fact that the modest sum of €3.30 will buy me a hefty 2kg of dried chickpeas at The Asia Market. Allow me to illustrate just how many chickpeas that is:

Chickpeas, lots thereof

I adore chickpeas and would really survive both happily and well if they were my dietary mainstay. I’d eat them in Indian-style curries, stewed Spanish-style with leafy greens, in their many Middle Eastern guises (of which hummus is king), in assorted salads or cooked on a pan burger style. That jar-full, for example, would make about 200 of these little baked chickpea burgers, which would, no doubt, keep me going for quite some time…

Baked Chickpea Burgers

Dried chickpeas are, of course, anything but convenient. They do require soaking overnight and cooking for hours on end (unless, like me, you have a pressure cooker). But they are cheap. And cheap in a good, nutritious way, not like industrialised and overly-processed foods which can be made cheaply but which lose so much of their value as real food in the process. With a little bit of advance planning and perhaps a weekend at your disposal, dried chickpeas will repay your investment well.

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Baked Chickpea Burgers

These burgers are packed with things that I love to eat with chickpeas, including garlic, ginger, carrot, coriander and parsley. As a change from frying, I baked these on an oiled tray which, I have to say, worked out pretty well. Like their deep-fried falafel cousins, these little burgers are lovely stuffed into pita breads and eaten with salads, yoghurt and tahini.

You can, of course, used tinned chickpeas here if you don’t have time, or can’t be bothered with the endless cooking required for the dried variety. If you are cooking dried chickpeas, though, do save the chickpea cooking liquid and freeze it – it makes a nice base for soups.

You’ll need:

150g dried chickpeas (or used tinned – you’ll need about 375g chickpeas once drained)
1 tblsp olive oil plus more for greasing the baking sheet
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
4 baby leeks or 5-6 spring onions, green and white parts finely sliced
0.5 tsp ground cumin
1 tblsp grated root ginger
1 medium carrot (about 125g), coarsely grated
2 tblsp chopped fresh coriander
4-5 tblsp chopped parsley (either flat leaf or curly)
1 tblsp lemon juice
6 tblsp rolled oats / porridge oats (or use wholewheat breadcrumbs)
1 tsp salt or to taste

You’ll also need:

A large baking sheet – mine was about 20cm by 30cm – or a couple of smaller ones.

The Steps:

If using dried chickpeas and you haven’t had time enough to soak them overnight, you can quick-soak them as follows: cover with several inches of cold water, bring to the boil and boil rapidly for about 2 minutes, then remove from the heat and allow to soak for at least an hour in the heated water.
Drain the soaked chickpeas, put into a heavy saucepan with about 1 litre of fresh water. Bring up to the boil, then simmer, partially covered, for about 1.5 – 2 hours or until the chickpeas are tender. Alternatively, if you have a pressure cooker, they’ll only need about 20 minutes of cooking once they’ve been brought up to pressure.
If using tinned chickpeas, just drain and rinse them.
Preheat your oven to 200C and brush your baking sheet(s) with olive oil.
Place a large frying pan over a medium heat. When hot, add the olive oil and swirl it around the pan. Add the garlic and leeks (or spring onions) and stir and fry for about 4 minutes or until the leek whites have become translucent.
Add the cumin, grated ginger and grated carrot to the pan and stir and fry for another couple of minutes, then remove from the heat.
In a large bowl, mash the chickpeas coarsely, either using a potato masher or a fork.
Add the carrot and leek mixture to the mashed chickpeas, along with the chopped coriander and parsley, lemon juice, oats and salt. Mix well to combine – you should end up with a fairly stiff mixture.
To make each burger, scoop out a generous heaped tablespoon of the mixture, flatten and form into a patty around 5cm or so in diameter and around 0.5 cm thick and place on the baking sheet. Continue until you’ve used up all of the mixture.
Bake for about 10 minutes, then flip the patties over and bake for another 7-10 minutes until golden.
Serve with pita bread, yoghurt and/or tahini and salads.

The Variations:

You could easily add some fresh mint here I think – either use it to replace the fresh coriander or use both.

The Results:

This amount make 12-15 burgers and feeds 3-4, along with pita breads and salads.

Spud Sunday: Christmas, Digested

Daily Spud — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 17:33:51 +0000

Frosty Christmas Morning

Everything outside was beautifully befrosted this Christmas morning. Inside, however, Santa clearly wasn’t sure whether I had been good or not this year.

Having just about regained my appetite in time for the biggest meal of the year, a power cut early on Christmas day looked like it might put the kibosh on all attempts to cook it. Thankfully, the electricity ~~repair man~~ angel stepped in and saw to it that everyone in the locality had the power to fuel their feasting (not to mention their colouredy Christmas lights).

So, following an interlude where we contemplated sandwiches for dinner, the lights returned and it was suddenly hell for leather in the kitchen – the Ma on meats and pudding and myself on stuffing, bread sauce, brussels sprouts, roasted carrots, parsnips and onions and, of course, my signature roasties. Heaving platefuls finally served and consumed by the troops with cranberry sauce, redcurrant jelly and general gusto, followed by trifle and pudding, for which there is never any room but which everyone eats anyway. And afterward, the inevitable retirement to the couch to snooze in front of the telly and digest. Unmistakeably Christmas.

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Feeling Better Already Potato and Lentil Soup

On the road to recovering from pre-Christmas dodgy stomach syndrome, I got to the stage where soup was the only thing that would do. This is what I made for myself on Christmas Eve and knew I was on the mend when I went back for seconds. Eating Christmas dinner the next day suddenly seemed possible.

It’s a simple soup and an easy one to remember – just equal weights of potatoes, red lentils, onion and carrot, plus some garlic, spices, seasonings and water or stock. It’s good for what ails you.

You’ll need:

olive oil for frying
150g onion (about 1 medium-sized specimen), finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
150g carrot (1 large), finely sliced
150g potato (1 small-ish spud), peeled and diced
150g red lentils, rinsed in several changes of water
1 tsp ground cumin
0.5 tsp turmeric
pinch of cayenne pepper
800ml water or light vegetable stock
1 tsp salt or to taste (less if using stock that’s already salted)
freshly ground black pepper to taste
squeeze of lemon juice (around 1 tsp or to taste)

You’ll also need:

A blender or food processor for blending the soup – an immersion blender is the handiest.

The Steps:

Place a medium-sized saucepan over a medium heat and, when hot, add oil to coat the bottom of the pan.
Add the onions and garlic to the pan. Stir and fry for about 3 minutes, until just starting to soften, then add the carrot and stir and fry for another 4-5 minutes.
Add the potatoes, lentils, cumin, turmeric, cayenne, salt and stock or water. Stir and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for around 30 minutes, until the vegetables have softened.
Remove from the heat and blend until smooth. It will be fairly thick, so add some hot water if you’d prefer a thinner soup and reheat gently.
Taste and add more salt if needed, plus a couple of twists of black pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice.
Grab a ladle, serve yourself a bowl, along with a dollop of natural yoghurt or sour cream if you feel so inclined, and let the soup do its magic.

The Variations:

If I’d had them to hand, I would have toasted about a teaspoon of cumin seeds and added them to the soup right at the very end of proceedings.

The Results:

Serves 3-4

Spud Sunday: The Way Of The Spud

Daily Spud — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 23:42:25 +0000

Y’know, a Paddy such as I could probably make themselves quite at home in the corner of Spain that is Galicia. The landscape is really quite green, the region does a good line in celtic diddly-eye music and the local cuisine features plenty of spuds. Walking through the countryside here, you might well feel like you have been transported to somewhere that has all of the appearances of the slow-paced, rural Ireland of times past, but with warmer weather and, it has to be said, better seafood.

The borderlands of Galicia and Castile y León

It was the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route that brought me to parts of Galicia and Castile y León this past week. The Camino, which stretches across Northern Spain and beyond into France and even further afield, is tremendously popular these days. It attracts all sorts of people with all sorts of reasons for wanting to tread its ancient pathways and, while I wasn’t necessarily there for the potatoes (which, if it were so, would surely constitute one of the more unusual reasons for doing the Camino), spuds did manage to permeate my week in their own way.

Walking the Camino route, I couldn’t help but admire the fine patches of potatoes and other vegetables along the way and, when it was time to eat, more often than not, there were pots of caldo gallego, a hearty galician soup with spuds, beans and greens, or slabs of tortilla española, the classic Spanish potato omelette, or pieces of trout, salmon or hake served simply with boiled spuds. When it was time to drink, well, patatas fritas aplenty were washed down with not a few cervezas.

So today, back in real, rainy Ireland and feeling a little nostalgic for those that I shared spuds with over the past week, I played some Spanish music, made my own pot of caldo gallego, checked my feet for blisters and, for just a little while, imagined that I was somewhere back on that ancient road.

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Caldo Gallego à la Spud

You’ll need:

100g dried haricot or cannellini beans or 1x400g tin of haricots or cannellini
750ml chicken or vegetable stock or water
500g potatoes
250g dark leafy greens – I used chard
1 large onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2-3 bay leaves
1 tblsp red wine vinegar
1.5 tsp salt or less if using stock that’s already salted
freshly ground black pepper
olive oil for frying

The Steps:

If using dried beans, you’ll need to soak them overnight or, to quick soak, place them in a saucepan with several inches of water, bring to the boil and boil rapidly for 2 minutes, then remove from the heat, cover and leave to soak for at least an hour.
To cook the soaked beans, drain them and then cover with the stock or water, bring to a boil over a medium heat, then reduce the heat, cover and simmer for about an hour or until starting to become tender. Alternatively, add the beans and stock or water to a pressure cooker, along with about a tblsp of oil, bring up to pressure and cook for about 8 minutes and allow the pressure to drop. Set aside.
If using tinned beans, there’s no need for soaking and cooking, just drain and rinse them.
If you don’t care for potato skins in your soup, peel the potatoes, otherwise scrub them well, and then chop into chunks, roughly 2cm across.
Wash the chard thoroughly and cut away any thick stalks. Cut the leaves into strips about 2-3cm wide and slice the stalks into pieces about 1-2cm long.
Place a heavy saucepan over a medium heat. When hot, add olive oil to coat the pan, then add the onion and garlic and stir and fry for about 2 minutes.
Add the potato chunks and stir and fry for another minute or two.
Add the bay leaves, salt, cooked beans and their cooking liquid or, if using tinned beans, add the beans plus stock or water. Bring to the boil, then cover, reduce the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes or until the potatoes start to become tender.
Add the chard stalks and cook for about another 5 minutes, then add the chard leaves and stir, allowing the leaves to wilt a bit and bring back to a simmer. Cook for another 10 minutes or so or until the greens are tender.
Add the red wine vinegar and a couple of twists of black pepper and stir to mix.
Serve with some nice crusty bread, not much else needed.

The Variations:

You could use butter beans in place of the haricots/cannellini, they’ll just need a longer initial cooking time – maybe 90 minutes or so, or 10 minutes in a pressure cooker.
You could also substitute other dark greens, such as kale, for the chard. If using, add it 10-15 minutes earlier in the cooking process as it needs a longer cooking time.
For a meatier soup, try adding chunks of chorizo towards the end of cooking.

The Results:

Hearty soup for 3-4 pilgrims

Salads Are Go

Daily Spud — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:57:01 +0000

Ok. The sun is out. I think it might be safe to make a salad.

A bean salad with a cider vinaigrette to be precise. Just because.

Well, no, not really just because. There is method in my saladness.

I was contacted the other day by the Temple Bar Cultural Trust to let me (and others in the Dublin area) know about their upcoming Midsummer celebration on June 20th and 21st.

There’s a full low-down on the festivities here but it will include a Midsummer fair on the 21st with food stalls, crafts, maypole dancing and more, with Meeting House Square being carpeted with grass for the occasion. All sounds rather lovely. I’ll be going armed with an appetite and a picnic blanket and hoping that the sun continues to shine.

The other thing that the festival organisers did was to offer one lucky Spud reader a case of goodies, which includes apple juice, cider, cider vinegar and balsamic vinegar, from Llewellyn’s Orchard Produce, and which can be collected by the lucky person from the organisers during the festival (or afterwards if you can’t attend). I, of course, get to pick who that lucky person is. (Ah such power, I hope that it doesn’t go, cider-like, to my head…)

So here’s the deal.

Leave me a comment letting me know if you want in. And with a valid email address please, so that I can contact you if you win. I’ll leave this open until midnight, Irish time, on Thursday June 18th and then pick a winner at random from the entries and notify them on the 19th, so that they can pick up their loot during the festival (if attending) or arrange to do so later on. I know this geographically limits the competition to folks in a position to pick up the goods from Temple Bar (unfortunately, they weren’t throwing in delivery too) – on the other hand, for those of you in the area, you’re in with a pretty good shot of winning, so, go on, de-lurk and let me know if you’re interested. Meanwhile, here is something that you can make using just some of that cidery loot.

Update: And the winner of those very tasty apple-y goodies is… Aidan O’Kelly. Congratulations Aidan & enjoy!

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Black-eyed beans with cider vinaigrette

The salad veg:

100g dried black-eyed beans or 1x400g tin of black-eyed beans, drained
150g sweetcorn kernels
10-15 cherry tomatoes
75g green olives
1 small leek or 3-4 spring onions
2-3 tblsp chopped flat leaf parsley

The dressing:

2 tblsp cider vinegar
6 tblsp olive oil
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 tsp honey
0.25 tsp lemon zest
1 small clove of garlic, crushed
coarse salt & freshly ground black pepper to taste

The Steps:

If you’re using dried beans and don’t have a pressure cooker, you’ll first need to soak the beans overnight or use the quick-soak method (cover the beans with several inches of cold water, bring to the boil and boil rapidly for about 2 minutes, remove from the heat, cover and allow to soak for at least an hour). To cook, put the soaked beans in a saucepan with roughly 3 times their volume of water, bring to the boil and cook for about 40 minutes.
If you’re using dried beans and have a pressure cooker there’s no need to pre-soak, just add the beans and about 750ml water and a tblsp of oil to your pressure cooker along with the beans. Bring up to pressure and cook for about 8 minutes. Let the pressure drop and drain.
If you’re using tinned beans, just drain ‘em.
Place all of the dressing ingredients in a screw-top jar and shake well. Alternatively, you’ll need to whisk the ingredients together very well so that they become fully emulsified.
Halve the cherry tomatoes, finely slice the white part of the leek (or spring onions, if using), pit the olives and slice or leave whole, as you prefer.
Combine the beans, sweetcorn, tomatoes, olives, leek and parsley and toss with the dressing.

The Variations:

I quite fancy some crumbled feta in this or you could go a more Mexican route and add green peppers and a little bit of chili heat.
For even more of a lemony tang, replace a couple of tsp of the cider vinegar with lemon juice.

The Results:

Salad portions for 3-4

The Daily Spud’s Dilemma

Daily Spud — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 23:54:07 +0000

I was confused earlier today.

As to what I should eat for dinner, I mean.

Of course, it’s not an uncommon dilemma. Much has been written about the complex web of issues that can underlie the seemingly simple question of what to eat. In this case, however, it was merely a case of indecision brought on by the weather. I mean, if the weather can’t make up its mind as to what it is doing, then how, dear reader, can I?

See, first it was warm, unseasonably warm and gloriously sunny for days. Then it started cooling off, before the temperature then decided to take an outright nosedive, accompanied by whipping winds and a biblical downpour that pummeled everything that remained out of doors. Eventually, the deluge abated but it was still cool enough outside that I wasn’t up for ditching my trusty fleece layer. And today, there was sun again and, despite the earlier chill breeze, a bit of warmth in the afternoon.

All of this has played havoc with my internal menu signaling system. I can’t tell – is it time for a summery salad or a wintery stew?

In the end, rhubarb chard held the solution to this particular omnivore's dilemma

As I contemplated this matter, I could see my somewhat battered-looking rhubarb chard from the kitchen window. The chard had itself been put through the mill by the recent weather. Encouraged to bolt at a fierce pace by our little blast of summer, then all but flattened by the downpour of the following week. The chard needed to be had for dinner and that was that.

And because I didn’t feel like putting any further thought into the matter, I used the chard to make my go-to leafy greens recipe with lentils.

And because I always enjoy this with rice and yoghurt, I saw no reason to do differently this time.

And because, as Mark Bittman has been known to point out, crispy fried onions go so well with this kind of lentil thing, I made those too.

The only thing now is, whatever shall I have for dessert?

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Lentils with Chard (and a couple of other things)

This is adapted from Madhur Jaffrey’s recipe for lentils with spinach from my well-thumbed copy of her Eastern Vegetarian book. The recipe calls for green lentils, which is what I usually put in, but this time around, I used the smaller, tastier, puy lentils, substituted chard for spinach and threw in some yoghurt and fried onions for good measure.

You’ll need:

400g swiss or rhubarb chard, or spinach
200g puy lentils (or use green or brown lentils)
1 onion, thinly sliced into half-rings
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp ground cumin
1.5 tsp salt or to taste
black pepper to taste
olive oil for frying

To top it off (optional, but nice):

a few dollops of natural yoghurt
another onion, sliced and fried ’til brown and crispy

The Steps:

Wash your chard well and pat dry. Separate the leaves from any thick-ish stalks and slice both the leaves and the stalks into pieces roughly 2cm wide.
Rinse the lentils in a few changes of water.
Place a large saucepan over a medium heat and add a glug of olive oil.
When the oil is hot, add the onion and garlic and stir and fry for about 2 minutes.
Add the lentils and approx. 750ml water. Bring to the boil, then lower the heat, cover and simmer until the lentils start to get tender. For puy lentils this should take 20-25 minutes, for green or brown lentils maybe 35-40 minutes.
Meanwhile, if you want to have some crispy fried onions as a garnish, place a frying pan over a medium-high heat and add some more oil. Slice another onion and add to the pan with a little salt. Stir and fry until the onions start to go brown and even blacken in spots and then remove from the heat. Should take around 15-20 minutes.
Once the lentils have started to get tender, add in the chard stalks and simmer for another 5 minutes.
Now add the cumin, salt and start adding the chard leaves in stages – as one batch of leaves wilts, it’ll make room for more.
Allow the mixture to come back to a simmer and let it bubble gently for another 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the chard is tender and well incorporated.
Add a few grinds of black pepper and stir to mix.
Serve with rice or Indian breads and with some yoghurt and fried onions on top.

The Variations:

You can use kale here instead of chard or spinach, but it needs more cooking time, so add it to the lentils about 10 to 15 minutes earlier in the cooking process.

The Results:

4 big hungry portions or thereabouts

Posh Spicy Beans

Daily Spud — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:59:49 +0000

If you haven’t already met, please allow me to acquaint you with some friends of mine. Yes, it’s time you got to know these Posh Spicy Beans…

It’s been a while now since KD introduced me to these guys, made by Olives et al and available for sale here in Fallon & Byrne (rumours of whose descent into administration I hope are greatly exaggerated). This particular way with beans was a new one on me, though I have since discovered that roasted or fried broad beans are popular as snacks in some Asian and Mediterranean jurisdictions. In any case, let me tell you now that these fancy little guys were (a) addictive (b) quite unlike other beans that I have had the pleasure of meeting (c) just the thing to accompany a cold beverage. I was very happy to make their acquaintance, even if they weren’t exactly that cheap.

Fast forward to my next visit to the Asia Market, where I came across dried split broad beans. I straight away got to wondering if I couldn’t recreate the glory of my posh spicy friends at home and for cheap. After a bit of foraging about on the internet and a few experiments in the ~~lab~~ kitchen later, I’m happy to report that I created that and more. I did, however, have to eat a lot of beans in the process, not to mention downing quite a few cold beers. All in the name of research you understand…

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Basic Roasted Broad Beans

You’ll need:

125g dried split broad beans
1 tsp coarse salt
4 tsp olive oil

You’ll also need:

One large cookie sheet or shallow baking tray – about 30cm x 40cm should do it – or use a couple of smaller trays.

The Steps:

Soak the broad beans for 6-8 hours or overnight.
When you’re ready to start cooking, preheat the oven to 180C.
Drain the beans, rinse well, place in a saucepan and cover with about 5-600mls of cold water.
Bring the beans to a boil over a medium-high heat and boil for about 7 minutes. This is just to soften them somewhat (so you should be able to pierce them with a fork, but they should not be remotely mushy). Without this step, I find the roasted beans to be just a bit too hard.
Drain the beans and allow to cool a little.
Mix the salt and olive oil and then toss the beans in this mixture.
Spread the beans out on the baking tray and place in the oven to roast for about 25-30 minutes or until golden.
Allow to cool on the tray and try not to eat too many of them before serving them to guests along with the beverage of their choice.

The Results:

Enough for 3-4 people to nibble on while having a nice cold beer.

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Bombay Beans

I was inspired by this recipe here to make this particular variation. Ajwain is a spice that’s somewhat like thyme but more pungent and with a real bite to it. It’s one of the characteristic flavourings used in bombay mix.

You’ll need:

125g dried split broad beans
1 tsp ajwain seeds
1 tsp coarse salt
4 tsp olive oil

The Steps:

Follow the basic recipe for roasted beans above, but, for a bit of added bite, add 1 tsp of ajwain seeds to the salt and olive oil before coating the beans.

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Posh Spicy Beans

This is my attempt at recreating the habas mojado pictured at the top of the post. The coating may not have adhered as well to the beans as the shop-bought version, but they were equally as addictive. They’re actually not overly spicy, so add more cayenne if you’d like a bigger chili kick.

You’ll need:

125g dried split broad beans
50g plain flour
25g coarse-grained brown sugar (I used unrefined demerara)
4 tblsps olive oil
0.25 tsp fine-grained salt
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1 clove garlic, crushed
couple of twists of freshly ground black pepper

The Steps:

Soak, boil and drain the broad beans as per the basic recipe for roasted beans above.
Preheat the oven to 180C.
Place the flour, salt and cayenne in a bowl and whisk together.
Gradually whisk in the olive oil. The mixture will have the consistency of a thick paste.
Stir in the crushed garlic, sugar and black pepper.
Toss the beans well in this mixture and then spread them out on the cookie sheet or baking tray. As the mixture is very sticky, the beans will tend to clump together, so you’ll need to pick the clumps apart so that the beans are spread evenly. Also, don’t worry too much about the fact that some beans end up with more of the coating than others. I didn’t and the results still tasted good.
Place the tray in the oven to roast for about 35 minutes or so. The coating should have browned lightly.
See how long it is before you can resist having one, and then another, and then another…

All Souped Up

Daily Spud — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 08:13:45 +0000

This soup is full o' beans

The time of year it is and the way I’m feeling says soup. Plain and simple. It’s cold without and cold within (cold and muzzy within my head, that is). My first thought was carrot and ginger soup (which is a favourite) but then I drifted towards something more substantial, and that lead me to think of this black bean recipe, which I adore. It’s one of those recipes that doesn’t have a long or complicated list of ingredients, but those that are featured just seem to combine to great effect. In its original format, the recipe is for a thick stew but, with a little more liquid added, it makes for a really hearty, chunky soup with a nice chili kick. The black beans used are those that are popular in Latin American dishes (sometimes called black turtle beans), as opposed to the (typically fermented) black soy beans found in Asian dishes, which are a different beast entirely. In any case, the soup version of this dish is exactly what I felt like today. That and a couple of hot whiskeys. Good for what ails ya.

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Black Bean Charros

This is a Mexican recipe from Madhur Jaffrey’s great World Vegetarian collection, just very modestly tweaked in terms of the proportions of onion and tomato used.

You’ll need:

225g dried black turtle beans, soaked overnight (or use the quick-soak method, see right); alternatively, if you can get tinned black beans, you’ll need around 5-600g drained weight
1 x 400g can of tomatoes
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
0.5 – 1 jalapeno or other fresh green chili, finely chopped
2 tblsps coriander leaves, finely chopped
1.5 tsp salt or to taste

The Steps:

If using dried beans and you haven’t had time enough to soak them overnight, you can quick-soak them as follows: cover with several inches of cold water, bring to the boil and boil rapidly for about 2 minutes, then remove from the heat and allow to soak for at least an hour in the heated water.
Drain the soaked beans, put into a heavy saucepan with about 1 litre of fresh water. Bring up to the boil, then simmer, partially covered, for about 1.5 hours or until the beans are tender. Alternatively, if you have a pressure cooker, they’ll only need about 10-12 minutes of cooking once they’ve been brought up to pressure.
If using tinned black beans, just drain and rinse them.
Remove about half of the cooked beans and place in a blender or food processor along with the salt and a little of the cooking liquid (or water, if using tinned beans). Blend to a rough puree.
Heat some oil in a large pan over a medium-high heat, add the garlic and onion, stir and fry until golden.
Add the tomatoes and the chili to the pan, bring to a simmer and cook gently, covered, for 10 minutes.
Add the coriander, the bean puree and the remaining un-pureed beans to the pan. Stir to mix and, if needs be, use some of the liquid that the beans were cooked in to thin the mixture to the desired consistency (or use water, if the beans were tinned).
Stir and bring to a simmer, then simmer gently for 5 minutes.
If you keep the mixture fairly thick, you can serve as a stew with rice or tortillas. Alternatively, if it’s a bit more liquid, it works really well as a chunky soup and, in either case, a dollop of sour cream makes a pretty good addition, if dairy is your thing.

The Results:

Stew or soup for 4-5 bodies that need warming up.

Mushy Chickpeas

Daily Spud — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:10:19 +0000

The pressure cooker was pressed into action today for the first time since its ordeal the other week, reverting to what it does best, getting pulses cooked in a vaguely practical amount of time.

That was always the trouble with dried pulses – the chickpeas, the kidney beans, the black beans, the butter beans et al. – cooking with them was anything but impulsive (unless, of course, you bought the tinned variety, which was always an option). Dried pulses, however, always involved a fair amount of advance planning: overnight soakage in water, then (in the case of chickpeas), 2 hours worth of simmering to get something suitably tenderised. The pressure cooker, along with the quick-soak method, revolutionised all of that.

With quick-soaking, the pulses are boiled rapidly for 2-3 minutes, then taken off the heat and left to soak in the hot liquid for at least 1 hour. Thereafter, pressure-cooking takes only minutes (20 of them, in the case of chickpeas), once things have built up the appropriate head of steam. I’m an ardent fan of the approach, given that my cooking over the years has involved an awful lot of pulses.

If, however, you should happen to put chickpeas or other pulses under pressure for significantly longer than the recommended time, well, they’ll get quite mushy indeed (and not in the emotional sense!). This is precisely what happened today when the resident sis decided to have a go at the chickpeas and got distracted somewhere in that critical pressure period. In the end, it didn’t really matter, though, as the chickpeas in question were destined (as they often are around here) for hummus, so they were going to get quite mushy anyway…

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Hummus

This is my own variation on classic hummus, which uses sesame seeds directly instead of the usual tahini (which is really just a roasted sesame paste). It also calls for less in the way of raw garlic than is typical, but add more if that’s to your taste.

You only need:

250g dried chickpeas (abt 600g cooked weight)
1 small clove garlic
1.5-2 tblsps sesame seeds
3 tblsps lemon juice (or to taste)
1 tsp salt (or to taste)

The Steps:

If using dried chickpeas, soak and cook using whatever method suits the time and equipment you have available. Reserve the cooking liquid. If using tinned chickpeas, just drain and rinse.
Toast the sesame seeds in a dry frying pan for about 4-5 minutes ’til they’ve turned a shade browner, then grind using a coffee or spice grinder.
In a food processor, first add the garlic and give it a quick whizz to chop it.
Add the cooked chickpeas, ground sesame seeds, the salt, lemon juice and (if you have it) a little of the reserved chickpea cooking liquid (or water if not). Blend to mix.
Have a taste and see how you like it. You may like more lemon juice and/or salt. If so, add small amounts at a time, reblend and taste.
If the mixture is too thick for your liking, add more chickpea cooking liquid or water.
If you want to be traditional about it, you can garnish the hummus with some olive oil and a sprinkle of paprika. Or you can just eat it as is with whatever it is you like to dip into it, be it pitta bread, carrots, broccoli, celery etc.

The Portions:

This is a big batch, enough for 6-ish as a lunch along with your choice of dipping bread and veg. Course, it’ll go further if you’re having other dips as well. I usually make batches this size or bigger and then freeze some in small, lunch-sized portions.

An Apology to my Pressure Cooker

Daily Spud — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 19:39:57 +0000

Dear Pressure Cooker,

I would like to apologise for what I put you through the other night. To tell you the truth, I am only just about recovering from the experience myself.

Let me start by saying that you have been a faithful kitchen servant for many years. I need only think of the speed at which you have allowed me to cook a myriad pulses: kidney beans for that tex-mex chili and the Nigerian stew with the peanut sauce; black turtle beans for Mexican “charros”; black-eyed beans to be eaten with sweetcorn and a cider vinegar dressing; butter beans later slow-baked with carrots, tomatoes and oregano; soy beans for homemade tofu (though that was only the once); and chickpeas a zillion ways.

You were never, alas, meant to be used for jam-making.

The other night, as I commenced the rhubarb and ginger jam experiment, it seemed like your pot was just about the right size for the amount of jam mixture involved. Oh how wrong I was. For jam, the pot should be deep enough so that the bubbling liquid does not splash beyond the bounds of the pot or run the risk of boiling over. It wasn’t your fault but, in this case, you lacked the depth required to succeed and I put you under pressure of a kind very different to the one you’re used to…

Once the jam reached its rolling boil, everything within about a one metre radius became a superheated splash zone. It looked like Mt. Rhubarb was erupting on the hob. Approaching in order to test the jam required lightening speed, nerves of steel and and a considerable amount of luck in order to avoid contact with the surprisingly far-reaching arcs of molten sugar.

Nor was this the only problem. I had probably added too much liquid to the rhubarb to begin with. The jam was runny and stubbornly refused to set. I found myself trapped in a cycle of boiling, adding lemon juice, and boiling some more, in the vain hope that this would coax it towards a setting point but, in the process, the mixture was becoming lemon jam with a hint of rhubarb and a distinct taste of burnt sugar. As for the ginger, well, its flavour had long since departed. And still the jam boiled on.

Eventually, long after I should have, I accepted the fact that the jam was past its setting point and just bottled the result. The awful discovery that followed, however, was that my jam-making efforts had left you encrusted with a thick black layer of carbonised sugar and I suspected that I might have done some irreparable damage. Hours of soaking with vinegar, followed by alternative therapies, such as oven cleaner and bread soda, were doing little to break down the carbon deposits. I feared the worst.

In the end it was you yourself who provided the solution, doing what it is you do best. With a little bit of water, I pressure cooked the carbon for a few minutes and, lo, it started to yield. A few further applications and the traces of the jam fiasco were all but faded. A future filled with speedily cooked pulses was coming back into view, a lesson was well learned and all was right with the kitchen once again.

There's light at the bottom of the pressure cooker once again

Mini Marrow-thon

Daily Spud — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 23:01:15 +0000

My own modest mini-marrow

Q. So when is a courgette not a courgette? A. When it grows up and becomes a marrow…

This being my first year to grow courgettes, I have watched with great interest the transition from imposing yellow flowers to fledgling courgettes to vegetables of serious marrow proportions (which is exactly what happens when you leave the plants unchaperoned for a few days at the height of a wet summer – now that’ll teach me..). Not that you should necessarily write off overgrown courgettes of course. The unchecked expansion which results in the achievement of marrow status doesn’t do the flavour any favours, but they might win you a prize if that’s your thing…

Keeping an eye on the prize... (image from www.guardian.co.uk)

The few marrowesque courgettes I produced weren’t prize winners by any means and, happily, were still worthy of being transformed into courgette & onion pickle. Besides, I should mention that I have form when it comes to oversized courgettes. One summer during my college years I was given a beastie which was well on its way to marrow-hood and, poor student that I was, I think I dined on it for about 2 weeks. I did at least discover that frying slices of said mega-courgette in olive oil with fresh rosemary leaves and a splash of lemon juice was a rather good way of dealing with the situation. I still like to cook courgettes that way, though this summer, when I felt like a bit of a kitchen production coming on, my mini-marrows got used in this variation of a wonderful Denis Cotter recipe:

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Gratin with Courgette, Puy Lentils and Tomatoes

Some of the home-grown participants...

I actually happened upon this while looking for things to do with the rather handsome rhubarb chard that had managed to survive the seasonal slug onslaught. The original recipe (which can be found here) called for a kilo of chard, which was beyond my humble yield. I did, on the other hand, have rather a lot of courgette…. not to mention onions, which also snuck in.

The Veg:

600g courgette
250g swiss or rhubarb chard
400g fresh tomatoes
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic

The Other Gratin Innards:

100g puy lentils
150ml white wine
Sprig of fresh thyme, leaves picked

The Topping:

55g hard cheese (parmesan, pecorino, …)
55g fresh breadcrumbs

The Steps:

Preheat oven to 180C.
Slice the tomatoes thickly, place in an ovenproof dish, drizzle with some olive oil, season with salt and pepper and roast for about 15 minutes.
Cook the puy lentils in boiling water for 15-20 minutes until tender but with a little bit of bite, then cool under cold running water and drain.
Separate the chard stalks and leaves. Cook the leaves in boiling water for about 5 minutes, then rinse in cold water, drain and chop. Season and mix with the cooked lentils.
Slice the courgette into about .5cm rounds. Slice the chard stalks into pieces about 1cm thick.
Heat some olive oil in a pan and add the finely chopped garlic, thyme, chard stalks and courgette. Stir and cook for about 5 minutes, then add the wine, cover and simmer for about 15-20 minutes until the veg are soft. Season with salt and pepper.
Meanwhile, slice the onion and add to an ovenproof dish (measuring about 20x24cm) along with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Put into the oven for about 10 minutes, so that the onions are not brown and cripsy and still have some bite.
Remove the dish from the oven and add the roasted tomatoes, then the lentil mixture, followed by the courgette mixture. Scatter with the grated cheese and breadcrumbs and return to the oven for about 10 minutes.