Chickpeas with yogurt

Today could have been a pretty irritating day. We were foiled in our plans of going out to our CSA farm by the discovery that S.'s car had been molested by incompetent would-be thieves who had left it with a broken window and a batterd and gnawed ignition that no longer functioned. Grunt. Yet it was not so bad, after all, and there was plenty of lazy afternoon cooking. At dinner, S. took one bite and widened his eyes in happy surprise. "You'd better write down what you did, because you need to do it again. Soon."

Fortunately, it was all very easy. First, I started some barley in the rice cooker along with broth, a splash of white wine, a blob of butter, and some minced garlic scapes. That made for a nice little juice-catching bottom layer on the plate, but you could do without it. What you couldn't do without was:

GARLIC YOGURT
The most important part of this dinner. Take about a cup of nice thick yogurt, preferably the strained Greek kind. Mix it with a few garlic cloves that you have turned into a puree. If you chop them roughly and then add a pinch of salt, you can achieve this by rubbing out the pieces with the side of the tip of your knife. Stir in the juice of one lemon. Cover and put into the fridge for at least two hours. This will eventually appear in a large delicious blob on top of:

CHICKPEAS AND GREENS
1 large yellow onion, sliced into thin half-rounds
3 cloves garlic, minced with a pinch of salt
2 T olive oil
2 t ground coriander
a bunch or two of mild but not too, too mild greens: mature spinach would do well; I used escarole
1 small can (14 oz. or so) nice chickpeas, rinsed and drained
salt
pepper
a fat pinch of red pepper flakes

Saute the onion very slowly in the olive oil, in a heavy pot with a lid, until it is collapsing and deep gold. This can take up to half an hour, if you're doing it slowly and patiently. Near the end of the process, tip in the garlic. Turn the heat up to medium, add the coriander, and then add the greens with the water clinging to them (you know the drill). Cook these by turning down the heat and covering the pot. If there are too many greens to fit, do it in batches, just adding more and stirring things up a bit every time the previous batch has cooked down and out of the way. Add the chickpeas, pepper, and red pepper flakes. Depending on whether there is only a little liquid or too much, at this point, cook covered (the former) or uncovered (the latter) until the chickpeas are heated through.

Posted by redfox at June 20, 2004 08:40 PM (dinner reports) | Comments (6)

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