Chickpeas with tomato and fried eggs

I think I mentioned I've been watching a lot of cooking videos recently. They are my entertainment, relaxation, inspiration, and masterclass all rolled into one. I'm finding even if I don't cook the recipes I watch, I learn a lot of general knowledge about cooking and food, and some technique as well. It's generally a great education in bite-size pieces. I find it a fantastic learning experience.

Chickpea and goat cheese salad

We've decided on a salad again tonight since (once again) it is going to be a very hot day. I am also coming to quite enjoy those hearty salads that are meal in itself.

Once again I've gone to my "Mmmm ... salad" cookbook and have found a salad that looks like it will be rather hearty and yummy.

Here's the RECIPE for our dinner tonight:

Ingredients:

• 1 can chickpeas drained

• 2 spring onions finely chopped

• 50g red peppers (capsicum) diced

• 15ml / 1 tablespoon fresh chopped parsley

• 100g cherry tomatoes sliced in half

• 50g rocket

• 30g goat cheese sliced or crumbled to serve

Dressing:

• 1 teaspoon olive oil

• 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar

• 1/2 teaspoon runny honey

• 1 clove garlic peeled and crushed or finely chopped

Instructions:

• Rinse the chickpeas and put into a bowl.

• Add spring onions, red pepper, parsley and cherry tomatoes, mix well.

• To make dressing, which together the oil, vinegar, honey and garlic and stir into the chickpeas.

• Serve on a bed of rocket with the goat cheese sprinkled over.

I forgot to buy parsley when I went to the grocery store, so I just used the leftover coriander paste that I had from the bean and feta cheese that I made the other day.

Instead of cherry tomatoes, I used grape tomatoes just because I think grape tomatoes taste better and I like them better. :-)

Spanish chorizo and chickpea soup

It's getting into the cooler weather for us now and so I'm thinking that we will do a lot more soups for meals.

The Boy likes thick, hearty soups with lots of stuff in it or thick, creamy soups. I made one recently which was a huge hit, the wild rice and mushroom soup, which is just delicious beyond words.

Tonight, The Boy decided that he would cook and he picked a soup recipe out of the A Gluten Free Soup Opera by Sibel Hodge. He picked out the Spanish chorizo and chickpea soup. I didn't really help much at all besides helping him prep the stock and turning on the oven (he still hasn't figured that one out yet! :-) ). I'm so proud of The Boy for doing all of this himself.

So here's the RECIPE for the soup:

Ingredients:

• 100 gr of gluten free chorizo – chopped
• 1 x 400 gr can of chickpeas – drained and rinsed
• 3 large spring onions – sliced
• 2 cloves of garlic – crushed and chopped
• 1 ½ pints (approx. 3 ¾ cups) of gluten free chicken stock/vegetable stock/water
• 1 large carrot – grated
• 3 – 4 mushrooms – diced
• 1 green cubranelle pepper (or regular bell pepper) – diced
• 2 cups of rocket (arugula) – chopped
• 3 tablespoons of red lentils
• 2 large tomatoes – peeled and diced
• ¼ – ½ teaspoon of chilli flakes (optional)
• 2 tablespoons of paprika
• 1 teaspoon of smoked paprika (optional)
• 2 tablespoons of black olives – deseeded and chopped (optional)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Olive oil for frying

Garnish:

• Hard boiled egg – chopped

Instructions:

• Fry the onions, peppers, and mushrooms until soft
• Add the other ingredients and bring to the boil, then simmer for 35 – 45 minutes
• Top with the chopped egg and serve

Serves 4 – 6

The recipe asks for gluten free ingredients, but we did not use any. We just used regular old ingredients since neither of us need to be gluten free.

The Boy used all the ingredients, even the optional ones, except with the red lentils, he just used regular (I think, yellow) lentils, since the store did not have any red lentils in a can.

The only thing that we didn't do was the hard boiled egg for garnish. The Boy didn't get round to boiling the egg and since it was for garnish, we decided that we could live without it.

For the simmering for 35 - 45 minutes part, rather than have it simmer on the stove, which can be a bit dicey if not watched carefully, I turned the oven to 120dC and brought the soup to a full boil. Once it was boiling, I had The Boy put the whole pot of soup (make sure your pot is oven-proof!!) into the oven and let it simmer that way for the time. This is an excellent way of simmering or slow cooking anything. Very controlled, no mess, no fuss.

The soup turned out to be very, very tasty. It is a brothy soup with lots and lots of bits and pieces in it, so it makes for quite a filling and hearty soup. Because of the chili and the smoked paprika, the flavor it very full and slightly spicy. If you don't like your soup to be very spicy, ease off on the chili.

For us, this made exactly 4 serves. 2 for dinner and 2 to be saved for later in the week.

Definitely something that we will make again.

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Hummus .... a great dip and all around yummy

There's not much cooking going on this week since we had lots of leftovers from the beef and cheese macaroni casserole from the weekend and The Boy being out one night, me being out another. On top of that, The Boy is away for the next 3 days which means I won't bother to cook much until he gets home.

So rather than posting what I've been cooking, I thought I'd drag out a recipe from a good friend who makes the most delicious hummus.

I absolutely love this recipe. I think it's the garlic and the paprika that she includes in the recipe that makes it so tasty.

Here's the very simple RECIPE for it:

Ingredients:

• 1 can of chick pea
• 4 tbsp tahini
• 1-2 small garlic
• 1 or 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 lemon juice
• Some paprika
• 1/4 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 c good olive oil (More if needed)

Instructions:

• Add ingredients into food processor and blend until smooth.

That's it. Blend and dig in!

© This work is copyrighted to Invest-Ex and Destiny's Fortunes Pty Ltd