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Ottolenghi’s Slow-Cooked Chickpeas on Toast

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Last year, we spent Thanksgiving with Mr Faraway’s family, but though he and I have chatted from time to time, there is no such invitation this year. I’ve also not heard from the friend I hosted every Thanksgiving for ten years, but since she made other plans last year, I assume we’ve both moved on, too.

In fact, I’ve heard from no one.

There are probably options, but after The Child and I discuss the matter, the only thing that either of us can come up with that will be missed about Thanksgiving is this: my stuffing. I’ll miss it, but the idea of not only not hosting Thanksgiving, but skipping it entirely, is strangely liberating. This year, there will be no leftovers that linger for too long; this year, we will not suffer through the miserable sameness of the menu.

No matter what new side dish or pie you make each year, no matter where you eat or with whom, Thanksgiving is always the same.

Except this year. I make reservations at a local seafood restaurant, and though I feel slightly guilty that someone will work that day so that I don’t have to, I remind myself that many college students are waiters and appreciate the extra income that guilty, generous people like myself leave on such a day. I resolve to leave a big tip, and with that, am relieved of both my guilt and my obligation to eat turkey.

Not having to make room in my fridge for a turkey has some huge pluses, but mostly this one: I can keep cooking food from all the fun, new cookbooks that the library let me borrow, even though I’ve developed an unfortunate habit of keeping their cookbooks far too long.

The most recent book is Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty More. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to bother with a book about nothing more than vegetables, since I attempted Ottolenghi’s last cookbook when The Child was still a vegetarian, and without much success. It wasn’t a bad book, but I didn’t get excited about it, probably because I was tired of hunting out and cooking things that she could eat, but wouldn’t.

I was much more excited with the recipes in Plenty More, especially this recipe for slow-cooked chickpeas – partly for the chickpeas, but mostly because I’ve lately become obsessed with anything served open-faced on toast, preferably with a soft-boiled egg on top. I ate Smitten Kitchen’s Spinach and Smashed Egg Toast every night for a week, and only stopped making it because I ran out of fresh spinach and didn’t have time to go to the store. The supermarket lines are long and slow this week – what with all those people buying turkeys – so a recipe that can be cooked from the pantry is ideal.

This recipe requires a bit of planning ahead, since you need to soak the chickpeas overnight. Don’t try to substitute canned, because you need dried chickpeas to withstand the long, slow simmer that infuses them with flavor. I did substitute canned tomatoes for the fresh tomato Ottolenghi calls for; use fresh if you like, but canned will save you a trip to the store and after five hours of cooking, you’re not likely to notice any difference.

The long, slow simmer is perfect for a winter weekend, and rewards you at the end with a nicely spicy, savory bean stew that is thick enough to sit politely on a piece of toast while being held and eaten. I was so enthralled with the spicy-bean-on-toast combo that I forgot all about the poached egg that Ottolenghi suggests and the soft-boiled egg I was planning (follow the Smitten Kitchen directions in the link above). The beans don’t need anything else, and they rewarm perfectly for a nice lunch the next day.

And the next.

Unlike turkey, they probably won’t last much longer than that in your fridge, and also unlike turkey, there’s no stuffed feeling, even if you have a second helping.

 

Slow-Cooked Chickpeas on Toast

 

Ottolenghi's Slow-Cooked Chickpeas on Toast
 
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Ingredients
  • 1 cup dried chickpeas, soaked overnight in water and 2 tsp of baking soda
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 3 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 1½ tsp tomato paste
  • ¼ tsp cayenne pepper
  • ¼ tsp smoked paprika
  • 2 medium red peppers, diced (about 1¼ cups)
  • 1 can (15 oz) diced tomatoes
  • ½ tsp sugar
  • 4 slices of sourdough or rustic bread, sliced thick, brushed with olive oil, and grilled on both sides
Instructions
  1. Drain and rinse the chickpeas and place them in a large saucepan with plenty of water. Place over high heat, bring to a boil, skim the surface, and boil five minutes. Drain and set aside.
  2. Place the oil, onion, garlic, tomato paste, cayenne, paprika, red peppers, 1 tsp salt, and some black pepper into a food processor and blitz until a paste forms.
  3. Place the paste into a large saucepan and fry for five minutes, stirring occasionally, then add the tomatoes, sugar, chickpeas, and 1 cup water. Bring to a low simmer, cover the pan, and cook over very low heat for four hours. Stir every so often and add water if needed to maintain a sauce-like consistency.
  4. Remove the lid and cook for a final hour, allowing the sauce to thicken without the chickpeas becoming dry.
  5. Place a piece of grilled toast on a plate and top with the chickpeas. If you like, you can top this with a poached egg drizzled with a bit of olive oil and za'atar.
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Spicy Three-Bean and Corn Chili

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I have a culinary crush on Thomas Keller, and in poking around on the website for Seattle’s cookbook store, I discover they have a signed copy of one of his cookbooks for sale. This seems like a good reason to leave the house during our Christmas vacation, so The Child and I abandon our new toys – briefly – and head in to the city.

 

It turns out the store doesn’t have the book I think they do – Ad Hoc at Home, in case you were wondering – but they have dozens of other signed cookbooks that they are happy to sell me. I immediately spy a signed copy of Alice Waters’ newest, which I leaf through and claim, since it has a number of vegetarian recipes, although, truthfully, I’m not sure how many of them I’d actually make. I keep looking.

 

There’s plenty to look at – all the big names are represented, many with signed copies – Ottolenghi! David Tanis! But it’s like being lost in paradise: Everything around me is wonderful, but I just want Home – the cookbook full of things I’d actually make and eat. Most of the books have one or two recipes like that, but that’s it, and those are the books I check out of the library.

 

The Child is bored. You found something, she says. Can we be done?

 

No, I tell her. Not until you find a cookbook full of recipes you would eat. Go find it.

 

She comes back five minutes later with her mission accomplished and a very pleased expression. Can we get it? It will be my first cookbook. Can I get it?

 

She’s found a tiny cookbook, beautifully and probably artisanally printed, with nothing but different recipes for strawberries. I can’t argue the point – she really would eat pretty much anything involving strawberries. I tell her it’s hers if she lets me find a cookbook too. I want something full of recipes we both want to eat.

 

She takes my Alice Waters and turns her nose up at it, and then does the same with Patricia Wells. I hand her a book full of Mac and Cheese recipes, but she pronounces them weird and points out that half of them involve meat. I finally pick up and start leafing through what I think is a baking book, Flour, Too, by Joanne Chang. I loved her first cookbook, which actually was a baking book, that I checked out of the library to try, and then made several superb recipes from (Classic Peanut Butter Cookies and Vanilla Bean Krispy Rice Treats). This new book, though, includes both sweet and savory dishes, and I sit down with it and start putting mental sticky notes on half the pages. Chili and soup and sandwiches that even The Child might eat. I hand it to her, and she doesn’t need to do more than look at the table of contents. Spiced Banana Pancakes? We’re getting it, she says.

 

The first recipe I tried was the first dinner recipe that The Child got really excited about – Three-Bean and Corn Chili. She misses chili, she tells me, and I kind of agree. It seems like an obvious thing to make for her, because she loves it and there are hundreds of recipes for vegetarian chili out there, probably thousands. Yet, I’ve never found one I liked, until now.

 

Chang’s recipe, like all her other recipes I’ve tried, isn’t complex. Although she gives directions for an overnight bean soak, she very graciously also gives directions for the rest of us –  the ones who didn’t plan our meal yesterday but really want chili right now. I made this with canned beans and it was just fine. I also didn’t use no-salt-added tomatoes, but took extra care at the end not to oversalt, tasting rather than measuring out salt. I cut all the pieces into a fairly small, even dice, and cooking was a breeze. It doesn’t have the issues that I’ve found with other vegetarian chili recipes that I’ve tried – too watery, not robust enough, not enough flavor. A lot of them feel more like soup to me than chili.

 

This chili is spicy, and those who don’t like things very spicy may wish to cut back on the amount of chili powder used (one blogger suggests cutting it by half). I thought it was fine, but The Child thought it needed to be less spicy. Still, she surprised me by proclaiming that she liked it,  and asking if I would make it again, just with a little less spice. I will definitely make it again, and play around with it until I get the spice mix just right for her – once I finish this batch. It makes a lot.

 

Spicy Three-Bean and Corn Chili

 

 

Spicy Three-Bean and Corn Chili
 
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Serves: 6
Ingredients
  • One 15-oz. can of cannellini beans
  • One 15-oz. can of black beans
  • One 15-oz. can of chickpeas
  • 2 tbsp vegetable oil
  • 1 onion, cut into ½-inch pieces
  • 1 large carrot, peeled and cut into ½-inch pieces
  • 1 celery stalk, cut into ½-inch pieces
  • 1 medium sweet potato, peeled and cut into ½-inch pieces
  • 2 garlic cloves, smashed and minced
  • One 15-oz. can of corn kernels, drained and rinsed
  • One 4-oz. can of minced mild green chiles
  • Two 14½-oz. cans of "no-salt added" diced tomatoes, with juice
  • 1 tbsp sherry vinegar
  • 2 tbsp packed brown sugar
  • 1 tbsp plus 1 tsp chili powder
  • 1 tbsp smoked Spanish paprika
  • 2 tsp cocoa powder
  • ¼ tsp cayenne pepper
  • 1 tbsp plus 1 tsp kosher salt
  • ½ tsp freshly ground white pepper
Instructions
  1. Drain the beans in a colander, rinse under running water, and set aside.
  2. In a large stockpot, heat the vegetable oil over medium heat. Add the onion, carrot, celery, sweet potato, and garlic, and cook, stirring occasionally, over medium heat for 6 to 8 minutes, or until the vegetables start to soften, the onion starts to turn translucent, and you can smell the vegetables cooking. Add the drained beans, corn, green chiles, tomatoes, and 4 cups of water, and bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Add the vinegar, brown sugar, chili powder, paprika, cocoa powder, cayenne, salt, and white pepper. Stir until well mixed and bring back to a simmer. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes, or until the mixture thickens a bit.
  3. The chili can be ladled into bowls and served immediately, or it can be cooled, covered, and refrigerated overnight to develop flavor and texture. It can also be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days or in the freezer for up 1 month.
Notes
Chang also gives instructions for using dried beans in her book. I used canned beans for convenience and the recipe worked very well. I also didn't use "no salt added tomatoes", but you should adjust the amount of salt you add at the end if you do this.
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Rice and Smothered Cabbage Soup

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I know: I can’t think of a worse name for a soup, either. If someone I knew said they were serving this soup for dinner, it would almost assuredly be someone who sounded like my mother, and who would add on equally unappetizing statements like, It’s good for you. Or maybe something about how children in some other country were starving. Castor oil would undoubtedly enter the discussion.

 

The first time I made this soup wasn’t quite that bad, but it wasn’t that good, either. I didn’t read the instructions completely, so I just roughly chopped up the cabbage instead of taking a bit of extra time and slicing it thinly as directed. Also, The Child got hungry, so I cut short the cooking time on the cabbage by about a half hour. Not my finest hour in the kitchen: the resulting soup tasted nutritious, in a drink-your-vitamins kind of way, and cabbage-y. Not horrible, to be sure, but nothing I really wanted to serve again.

 

I couldn’t understand why Marcella Hazan would do that to me, so I tried again, and followed the instructions more carefully, allowing the thinly-sliced cabbage to cook as directed, over a very low heat, for a very long time.

 

This time, it was all I could do not to eat all the cabbage right out of the pot. All of it. Now, I like cabbage, especially when it’s called sauerkraut and there’s a hot dog involved – this cabbage with nothing like that. It was meltingly soft and mild.

 

You can make the cabbage ahead of time, if you can restrain yourself from eating it, and then finish making the soup whenever you’re ready. The soup is pretty straightforward. It’s very thick, closer to a risotto than a soup. I keeps well overnight, and the next day makes a superb lunch. It’s warming, and filling, and makes the whole house smell so good that you don’t mind being stuck indoors. And no guilt: it’s good for you.

 

Call it whatever you want. I call it The Soup That Goes To Eleven.

 

The original recipe is in Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. I ran across it on Orangette, who read about it on The Wednesday Chef.

 

The recipe for Smothered Cabbage is here.

 

Rice and Smothered Cabbage Soup

Rice and Smothered Cabbage Soup
 
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Serves: 4
Ingredients
  • 1 batch Smothered Cabbage (see below)
  • 2 cups vegetable broth
  • 1 cup water, or more as needed
  • ⅔ cup Arborio rice
  • 2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
  • ⅓ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving
  • Kosher salt
  • pepper
Instructions
  1. In a large heavy pot , combine the cabbage, the broth, and 1 cup of water, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Stir in the rice, and then lower the heat so that the soup bubbles at a slow but steady simmer. Cook uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the rice is tender but firm to the bite, about 20 minutes. If you find that the soup is becoming too thick, add a little water. The soup should be pretty dense, but there should still be some liquid.
  2. When the rice is done, turn off the heat, and stir in the butter and the grated Parmesan. Taste, and correct for salt. Serve with black pepper and more Parmesan.
Notes
The original recipe calls for chicken or beef broth, which would be fantastic, but I always use vegetable broth, on the theory that there's a chance The Child will eat it.
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