A stew of Potatoes and Chickpeas infused with Ginger and Saffron
Finely chop an onion and put it to melt down in a good glug of olive oil. Add plenty of finely chopped garlic and a good knob of fresh root ginger reduced to as much of a paste as you can. A microplane grater is excellent for this, use the fine gauge one and mind your fingers. Keep the lid on the pan and stir often to prevent browning.
Prepare some potatoes, I used new potatoes from our vegetable plot and only had to scrape them and chop into bite sized pieces but old potatoes work nearly as well. Peel them and make large dice. Throw them into the pan with the onions etc. and put in a good grind of black pepper.
You can use dried chickpeas, soaked and cooked until tender or tinned ones as I did. If using dried peas make sure they are recently harvested and do not add salt to the cooking water or they will be tough, tinned peas need to be well rinsed to remove the canning brine.
Add your chickpeas to the pan with enough stock or water to just cover the vegetables. This is a soupy stew and the broth is an integral part so you can err on the side of generous but don't make it too wet. Bring to a simmer.
Put a big pinch of saffron strands into the hot liquid. I know it's the most expensive spice known to mankind and hard to find in some places but you don't use it often. Give it enough that you can taste it or what's the point? Saffron always makes me think of seafood so I always intend to add some shredded seaweed as an experiment in this dish but as usual intention and ability are divorced and opportunity was missed again. Salt to taste.
Cover the pan and leave to simmer for 15-20 minutes while you do the washing up. O.k. you may not need to do the washing up, but I did. It's ready when the vegetables are cooked.
Bizarrely and unusually for France I have coriander leaf but not flat leaf parsley. The parsley is definitely better, chop some finely and sprinkle it over each serving.
My meal tonight was served with steamed broccoli dressed with balsamic vinegar which was no better than it sounds.
2 comments:
Do you think this would be OK in a slow-cooker?
I've never used a slow cooker, no really. So, I suspect probably not because the potatoes would most likely cook to a mush and you would have chickpea and potato soup, delicious but not what we have here.
It really doesn't take long to cook once prepared (and you can use tinned chickpeas to make that easy) or alternatively it reheats well so it could be made in the morning to save energy at dinner time.
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