A straightforward, simple and tasty stew. Ready in under ten minutes and perfect for midweek meals. Juicy, meaty sausage with the umami tang of kale, bolstered by the satisfying bite of chickpea.
Chorizo, kale and chickpea stew:
130g chorizo, diced
1 onion, diced
150g kale, chopped
500ml chicken stock
1 tin chickpeas, drained
Fry the chorizo in a pan until starting to brown. Put to one side.
In the same pan fry the onion. When starting to soften put the chorizo back in, then add the stock.
When the stock starts to simmer add the chickpeas and the kale.
Simmer for ten minutes or until the chickpeas are tender. Season as necessary.
Yes, another recipe from Jamie Oliver’s book Jamie’s America. This one is a rich, moist chicken breast over a hearty and fiery chickpea stew. It sounds peasanty – and it is – but like most peasant foods is earthy and satisfying, and dead easy. I’ve used chicken breast with skin on as I want to give it time in the oven, and leaving the skin on retains moisture by allowing fat to drizzle through the meat. This prevents dry ‘orrible flesh. I’ve used tinned chickpeas ‘cos let’s be honest – who wants to soak chickpeas overnight?
The chicken breast was left to marinate before I went out for work in a mashed up blend of parsley, garlic, lemon zest, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Back from work a few hours later and it’s the turn of the chickpea. I sweat down an onion, two cloves of garlic and some paprika until soft, and then add four diced tomatoes, half a jar of sweet peppers and a tin of drained chickpeas.
While that simmers I turn my attention back to the chicken. I put it skin-side down on a hot griddle until dark lines appear, then turn 30 degrees to get that fancy criss-cross appear. When there’s more lines I turn them over and put the whole thing in a 200C oven for about 8 minutes. While that continues I look back over the chickpea stew, and adjust seasoning with salt, pepper and red wine vinegar. The chicken looks done now so I bring the chicken out to rest for a couple of minutes, to let all those tasty juices flow back through the breast.
To serve I pile some chickpeas up, top it with sliced chicken breast and few torn basil leaves over. At the last minute I reckon a drizzle of balsamic vinegar will help here, so I get out my best to sprinkle over. It goes really nice with the juicy chicken and peppery chickpeas. It’s a really tasty dinner and fairly easy too. I’ll be seeing this one on my plate again!
I saw this recipe on a low GI recipe website, but it was a little under-developed and felt sure it wasn’t going to quite come together. So I embedded a few ideas: a sofritto base of onion and carrots, but that wasn’t quite enough. I remember doing an Italian pasta sauce starting with basil stalks, infusing the whole thing with a deep flavour. For this I felt coriander would be good fit. Whaddya know, tastier than expected: red onion, carrots, and coriander stalks sweated off, then diced chicken, chickpeas, button mushrooms, tin tomatoes, tabasco and chicken stock are added. After 45 mins simmering some lemon juice, soy sauce, salt and pepper and coriander leaves are added for seasoning.
Served with greek yoghurt mixed with lemon juice and more coriander, this was quite satisfying and pretty simple.
