December 14, 2011 Dinner – Chick Pea soup with Braised Sausage and Cabbage

December 14, 2011 Dinner – Chick Pea soup with Braised Sausage and Cabbage

I am planning to serve Spanish dishes for Christmas Eve this year.  Let me extend an invitation to each of you who read this blog to join us for Christmas Eve.  Our house is located at

1415 Park Ave. SW, Albuq., N.M.

 
Michele Varner, who will be joining my brother and sister-in-law, Elaine in the cooking this year, mentioned that chickpeas are the national dish of Spain, so I went a bought some and then began looking for recipes.   I found two different recipes for chick pea stew/soups; one in Mark Bittman’s Quick and Easy Recipes and the other Tapas by José Andrés.  Both recipes call for soaking and then slowly simmering the chick peas with garlic and finish with a tablespoon of salt and pepper and olive oil.  Where they diverge is that Andrés’ Spanish approach finishes the dish with sherry vinegar, paprika cumin, and saffron and adds two slices of crustless bread to thicken and adds spinach at the end to make a stew.  Instead Bittman’s recipe takes a decidedly more French approach by adding rosemary or thyme to the chick peas as they simmer and then removes the herb stems after two hours of simmering and adds a mirapoix (chopped onion, carrot, and celery) to cook for an hour and offers as an option finishing with ½ lb thinly sliced grilled or broiled sausage.

Let me admit that I have never cooked chick peas, so am a neophyte at this.  I decided to use Bittman’s recipe to cook the chick peas because we have fresh rosemary and thyme in the yard and decided to use fresh greens from our garden, since they were hit badly by the recent cold weather and there were many leaves that were green but their stems had been frozen and wee limp and would die and because I think of this dish as a peasant dish made with available ingredients.

I soaked the chick peas for over one day and drained the water and put fresh filtered water in the pot to cover and added the herbs and 6 cloves of sliced garlic.  Unfortunately I did not get the peas to a rolling simmer and they did not soften after four or five hours of cooking.  I should have known because both recipes said to watch them and add water as needed to cover to two inches above the peas.  I rode my bike and picked and cleaned and added spinach and kale at 5:30 p.m. because they were tough and we have found that they need to cook for a longer period of time than tender store bought spinach.    

I turned off the heat when I left to meditate at 6:45.  When Suzette arrived home sometime after 7:00 p.m. she tasted the peas and found them to still be hard and raised the temp to a strong simmer and added salt, which I had forgotten to do.  When I returned at 8:30 the peas had gotten much softer but were still al dente so I kept the heat up. 

Suzette had seen the thawed sausages and when I told her the recipe called for grilled sausages, she suggested we sautèe our about 1 ½ cup of PPI sautéed cabbage, onions and apples in the fridge with the sausages.  I suggested cutting the sausages in half lengthwise to insure even cooking and that wonderful burned weenie effect and she agreed.

So I cut the sausages lengthwise and placed them in a large skillet and added the PPI cabbage, onion and apples with them and cooked them at a moderately high heat which   darkened the sausages and gave them a slightly charred crust.

I then followed both recipes instructions to take about ½ of the chick peas and vegetable and puree them in a blender and return them to the soup.  Then I went to the basement for a couple of beers, which is our beverage of choice with grilled cabbage and sausage.

I then drizzled the last one tablespoon of our Spanish Aragon gold olive oil and we served dinner at around 9:00 p.m. by putting the soup in a pasta bowl and piling ½ of the sausage and cabbage mixture on the side of the chick peas (See picture).

I would not say this was my favorite dish but it was very hearty and made me think of the millions of peasants who had eaten similar dishes over the ages with what was available in their gardens and how satisfying a hearty chick pea and vegetable stew of fresh ingredients in the winter must have seemed to them, just as it did us. 

There is lots of the stew left, so I will jazz the stew up next time by cooking it more to soften the chick peas more and thicken the stew and by adding more salt and some white pepper and maybe even some of Andrés other ingredients; paprika, cumin, sherry vinegar, some saffron and more sausage or our PPI lamb to the soup.  This is a recipe in progress.

Bon Appètit