Chickpeas Diabolique

November 27, 2022November 27, 20224 Comments

We are truly working overtime down in the Just Gotta Get Through This Week salt mines this year (where we spend all day txting each other “just gotta get through this week”), though if the inexorable passage of time has taught me anything it’s that the universe or fate or whatever force is responsible for all this does not care that you’ve made it through this week/month/year! All of which is to say, the external stresses in my life are really externally stressing me this week, and so I’m reproducing a recipe some of you will have seen already last year in the small but mighty island nation that is my Patreon; but in this economy, I’m saying outfit repeating is not only cool, it’s the responsible choice.

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Joking about being a thesis replicant has rather backfired on me since upon reflection an actual replicant would be much better equipped to deal with trials and tribulations than I am; at the very least a replicant wouldn’t suffer pain in their thoracic spinal region from slumping over a laptop like a collapsed circus tent for eleven hours at a time in the library. But I can report one thing that is literally good: on Friday, I handed in my thesis (roughly 80k words all up, and on time!). Despite, if not because of everything else going on, I am very proud of myself, grateful to those who supported me along the way this year, and relieved to be typing again without the watchful chaperone of APA 7 referencing guidelines. This recipe for chickpeas diabolique is just the sort of barely-laborious cooking you can do when you’re half-conscious at best, and its rip-roaring red-orange hue reminiscent of molten red devil marbles, and surprisingly feisty cayenne heat will help make you feel full-awake.

This is my reworking of a Belgian scampi recipe; the chickpeas are not in the slightest bit intended to be a 1:1 analogue for seafood, it’s more that I thought this sauce and preparation would suit the legumes keenly, and I was correct. In fact, this is possibly my favourite chickpea recipe ever — so far — as much for its speed and ease as its dramatically delicious results from such a simple list of ingredients. Something remarkable, flavour-wise, happens somewhere between the tomato paste sizzling and caramelising and the vermouth hitting the hot pan and rising up again like a magician’s puff of smoke, and it tastes like you’ve done an awful lot more than you really have. It’s sticky, it’s messy, it’s rich and decadent but rustic and unpretentious, and it tastes amazing.

@hungryandfrozen

chickpeas diabolique, probably my favourite chickpeas of all? recipe at hungryandfrozen dot com 🤠 #chickpeas #vegan #cookingvideo #fyp

♬ The Dark Of The Matinée – Franz Ferdinand

Serving the chickpeas with bread to swipe at the lurid, lycopene-rich sauce makes sense, as does serving the dish as part of a table of mezze or small plates, and it goes without saying — but nonetheless, for the record — this would be wonderful stirred through pasta. I’d choose a ridged shape, to catch the sauce; I do like the idea of pappardelle with this, like a playground slide for the chickpeas, but something with more structural integrity would probably be a better choice, like bucatini or fettuccini. Any leftovers (I ate about 75% of what was in the enamel dish in the photos and refrigerated the rest) are strangely good cold, but probably best kept as a solo snack unless reheating. I still very much just gotta get through this week, but this recipe is another tick in the somewhat lonely “literally good” column, and will long continue to be.

Chickpeas Diabolique

Easy, fast, messily delicious, and with very few perishable ingredients you can keep the means to make it at any time safely in your pantry. Recipe by myself, but adapted from and inspired by the Belgian dish, Scampi Diabolique.

1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
olive oil, for frying — a couple tablespoons
1 x 400g tin of chickpeas, drained
1/4 cup tomato paste, heaped is fine
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
a pinch of cayenne pepper, or to taste
1/2 cup dry white vermouth (or dry white wine or dry sherry)
1-2 generously heaped tablespoons vegan aioli, plain vegan yoghurt, or anything else rich and creamy — even hummus or thick coconut cream
salt and pepper, to taste

1: Finely dice the onion and garlic cloves. Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a wide frying pan and gently fry both alliums over a low heat till soft but not browned. Tip in the chickpeas, stirring to warm them through, along with the teaspoon of smoked paprika and pinch of cayenne.

2: Turn up the heat and stir in the 1/4 cup tomato paste, continuing to stir to let the tomato paste coat the chickpeas and get stickily caramelised in the heat.

3: After a minute or so of this, pour in the 1/2 cup dry vermouth, which will hit the pan with an enthusiastic hiss, and stir it in, along with the tablespoon or two (and I lean towards two), of aioli. Let this warm through, still stirring, then remove from the heat. Season and taste, add a splash of water to make it saucier if need be (or, indeed, more vermouth), and serve.

Serves one as a hearty snack, or two with accompaniments. Could stretch to three if stirred through pasta.

Notes:
I assume confidently that the “diabolique” part of the name refers to the heat of the cayenne. If you’re serving this to kids, perhaps leave it out, but up to you — the dish is more punchy than truly spicy, but cayenne gets exponentially hotter pretty quick so if whoever’s eating it is not spice-confident, add with caution.

music lately:

Out Here On My Own by Irene Cara, another shining star extinguished by this cruel year. I can’t begin to describe what the film Fame means to me, nor shall I try, so instead let’s just celebrate her singular talent — that delicate yet raw, gorgeously emotive voice, that vivid, vulnerable screen presence — in this, one of the most beautiful and perfect ballads of all time. If you feel like wallowing then you might follow it up with I Sing The Body Electric, an unhinged and extraordinarily joyous song that never lets you guess its next move, and which is often unfairly left out of the rightful praise heaped upon this film’s soundtrack.

Dragnalus by Unwound, seems like only yesterday I was recommending my little brother music to blow his mind and now he recommends me music because I am old and set in my ways and only listen to the same seven tracks over and over. Fortunately, this is music recommendation catnip for me: it’s old enough to rent a car, it’s obscure enough that I missed it first time around, and it sounds like angry chickpea tin cans fighting in the bottom of a council skip.

Nobody by Keith Sweat feat. Athena Cage. Even when playing over the speakers of the Chemist Warehouse, with its fluorescent lighting and narrow aisles closing in on you, surely the least amenable and most incongruent environment to hear this song, still a seductive slow-dance air pervaded between those disorientingly jammed shelves.

PS: If you like my writing and wish to support me directly, there’s no better way than by stepping behind the claret velvet VIP curtain of my Patreon. Recipes, reviews, poetry, updates, secrets, stories, all yours every month. There’s no better time than right now — your support helps me to make all these blog posts!

Vegan Chocolate-Nut Fudge Candies

November 15, 2022November 15, 20226 Comments

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You can usually pinpoint the exact moment that I become cognisant of Christmas approaching because I’ll suddenly post an utterly frivolous recipe whose existence clearly serves to augment my annual edible Christmas gift round-up. Case in frivolous point, these Chocolate-Nut Fudge Candies, which you’ll see added to this year’s imminent list in a couple of weeks. I mean, I’m also aware that the Fideles are Adeste-ing because I’ve started having those dreams where I wake up on Christmas Day and haven’t organised any presents and everyone is deeply disappointed in me. But only one of these internal alarm clocks results in chocolate, and even though I am still largely in Thesis Replicant Mode (a mode which, admittedly, feeds on itself more than my thesis probably requires at this point) I still heeded the call.

If you need to cook something giddy and impetuous there are few safer bets than a second-hand mid-century book of recipes compiled from women across America titled America’s Favourite Recipes, subheading: Desserts, sub-subheading: including party beverages. I love to read this book when in need of comfort, and they weren’t lying about the party beverages, such as Cranberry Eggnog, a “mock Tom Collins” with two cups of milk in it, and a punch that includes, but is not restricted to, maraschino cherries, pineapple juice, and peppermint extract. These chocolate candies — and I use the American word here since it makes sense, provenancially — are adapted from a recipe in the book by Mrs O.S. Dews, who was, at the time of publishing in 1968, the president of the Officers’ Wives’ Club in Ogden, Utah. Should Mrs Dews still be kicking about, I graciously thank her.

@hungryandfrozen

chocolate-nut fudge candies 🤠 full recipe at hungryandfrozen dot com #chocolate #vegan #ediblechristmasgifts

♬ Ive Got My Love To Keep Me Warm – Billie Holiday & Her Orchestra

Though there’s a bit of boiling sugar involved here this recipe is remarkably easy and very delicious — admittedly, not a super complex flavour profile, it instead evokes solidified chocolate icing, but this is hardly a bad thing. Also, despite having not a lick of dairy, the combination of toffee shocked into submission by a pile of chocolate really does end up tasting like fudge, with its wet-sand, tooth-exfoliating soft melting grittiness.

The dusting of dehydrated plum powder, scattering on the white baking paper like pohutukawa needles (or, I suppose, a Fargo-esque spray of blood) on fallen snow, is, I assure you, truly for aesthetic purposes only. You could consider sprinkling over edible glitter to give it the old razzle dazzle, lean into immaturity with rainbow sprinkles, or assume a soberly logical stance and simply press extra cashews into the surface of the cooling chocolate candies. Either way, these are delicious post-dinner fortifiers or, logically, edible gifts, and just be glad my eyes weren’t caught by the peanut brittle recipe at the bottom of the same page of this book, which lists 16 inches (!!) of paraffin wax in the ingredients; but then it did win a prize at the Tulsa State Fair…

Chocolate-Nut Fudge Candies

You need to pay a little bit of attention here but these aren’t too arduous and they make, needless to say, an excellent edible gift. With their simple chocolate flavour they’re very kid-friendly, but maybe keep them out of the way while you’re boiling the sugar. Recipe adapted from the Favourite Recipes of America: Desserts book.

200g dark chocolate
2 cups sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup golden syrup (or light corn syrup for the Americans)
1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
1/2 cup roasted, salted cashews
1/4 cup boiling water
salt, for scattering over
dehydrated plum powder, to serve (very optional)

1: Roughly chop the 200g dark chocolate and set aside. Just leave it on the chopping board, no need to decant it into a separate bowl. You might as well rip off a couple sheets of baking paper and lay them on baking trays for later, too.

2: Place the two cups of sugar, cup of brown sugar, 1/4 cup golden syrup, 1/2 cup water and teaspoon of vinegar into a large heavy-based saucepan and cook over a low heat for about fifteen minutes, stirring constantly without letting it bubble up, until the sugar is entirely dissolved, or near enough. You’ll see it on the back of your spoon — it’ll look clear and shiny rather than gritty — and you should be able to feel it as you stir as well.

3: Once the sugar is dissolved, turn up the heat and let the sugar mixture boil, without stirring, for three minutes. The second three minutes are up, remove the pan from the heat, and once the bubbles have subsided, throw in the chopped chocolate and stir energetically.

4: Once the chocolate has entirely melted and incorporated and the mixture has thickened considerably, let it sit for ten minutes to cool a little. While this is happening, roughly chop the 1/2 cup of roasted salted cashews and boil the jug for the water. Stir the cashews into the saucepan along with the 1/4 cup boiling water — the chocolate mixture will go from quite dry and crumbly to shiny again — and drop tablespoons of the mixture onto baking trays lined with baking paper. Sprinkle over a little salt and, if you like, shake a little dehydrated plum powder (or any other red fruit, plum is just what I had in the cupboard) through a sieve over the chocolate candies.

Allow the candies to cool and firm up, then store them in an airtight container in the fridge. Makes around 30 – 35.

music lately:

American Teen by Ethel Cain, a fitting song to go with this recipe. Whether its an indictment of my age or just the fact that I genuinely prefer very old music, I’ve hit a point where I struggle to care about or resonate with much of anything that hasn’t already existed for many years, but this song broke through my walls and defences. Possibly because it has a distinct 1994-ish energy, but probably because it’s wildly beautiful and exhilarating with the kind of lively guitar riffs that make you want to raise a can of Pepsi-cola up a flagpole and salute it.

The Nitty Gritty by Shirley Ellis, the way this song perambulates and syncopates is so immensely satisfying, as is Ellis’ gorgeous voice, though little is as satisfying as the ludicrously sincere dancing in the video with it, I highly recommend clicking through.

(Birds Fly) Whisper to a Scream by Icicle Works, just the song you want playing as you run through concrete back alleys in the rain wearing a scratchy wool jumper while charmingly and cinematically coming of age circa 1983. Those drums — those drums!!

PS: If you like my writing and wish to support me directly, there’s no better way than by stepping behind the claret velvet VIP curtain of my Patreon. Recipes, reviews, poetry, updates, secrets, stories, all yours every month. There’s no better time than right now — your support helps me to make all these blog posts!

Roasted Zucchini with Spinach-Peanut Pesto

November 9, 2022November 9, 20222 Comments

I’m an all-or-nothing gal: if there are schemes and contrivances afoot in my life you’ll either never hear the end of it or you’ll be completely innocent of their existence. To that end, it occurs to me now that I’ve still not mentioned here that I’ve spent 2022 working full-time on my Master’s degree. (Before we get too excited that I’m embarking on a new era of financial stability and societal worth, it’s a degree in creative writing.) Having lost a lot of time to illness, and with my due date bearing down on me like an energetic mosquito, I’ve entered a kind of fugue state where I only exist within the fluorescent-lit walls of the library, consuming an unholy quantity of tamari almonds from the vending machine to keep my essential salts up as I toil and study and format and edit.

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And so a recipe like this Roasted Zucchini with Spinach-Peanut Pesto is just what I need for those brief inbetween times when I’m not at the library: dazzlingly, conspicuously green and vitamin-rich, a solid easy-to-make to aesthetic-pleasure ratio, compelling enough to wrench my somnolent face away from my laptop, and of course, delicious. I’m already a bigtime Bryant Terry fan (I’d hate to imagine life without his molasses loaf) and his book Vegetable Kingdom is more of the same excellence; including this recipe which I adapted just a little — he used collards in the pesto, I had a bag of spinach in the fridge so went with that instead. I imagine any robust green leaf could work, although I’m not sure if I’d place my trust in silverbeet unless it was blended with other greens.

It really is simple: just chop and roast zucchini (or courgette, as they’re more commonly known in these parts outside of a game of Scattergories, but with apologies to the French, the Italian term sounds cooler), blend up some leaves and nuts, there’s your recipe, it just looks — I hope — more complicated when you pile it all into a serving dish. The zucchini turns buttery and tender in the oven; the pesto is — despite spinach not having a wildly discernible flavour profile — boisterously salty and tangy. According to Terry, the inclusion of peanuts is inspired by a dish from Chad; they have an earthy near-bitterness that works well with the slightly metallic edge of dark-green leaves; while also softening and adding richness and welcome crunch.

@hungryandfrozen
roasted zucchini with spinach-peanut pesto via Bryant Terry’s Vegetable Kingdom, recipe at hungryandfrozen dot com #vegan #recipe #foodblog #nz
♬ AIRPORT – Minako Yoshida

If you’re not consuming this as a mere conduit for vitamins to your gasping brain cells, consider it a useful vegetable side dish that asks little of you — you can throw the zucchini in the oven while other things are cooking, and they taste just as good at room temperature as they do hot (and I can confirm that this tastes especially good next to Thai Yellow Curry Mac’n’Cheese); or serve it as part of a table groaning with small plates; I’d also be happy to eat it stirred through pasta (and I’d go for something short and curly or ridged) or ballasted by any of the other usual carbs. Either way: so delicious, so easy, so green.

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Roasted Zucchini with Spinach-Peanut Pesto

A charmingly — and deceptively — simple way to serve this vegetable, and a delightful way to eat your greens. This recipe is adapted slightly from Bryant Terry’s Vegetable Kingdom. He used collard leaves in the pesto and if you can get hold of them that’s obviously the best choice; otherwise kale, cavolo nero, or a mixture of these robust greens would be great.

4 large zucchini (aka courgettes)
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
salt and freshly ground pepper

Spinach-Peanut Pesto

2 cups spinach leaves, loosely packed
1/3 cup roasted peanuts
3 tablespoons white miso paste
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar (or fresh lemon juice)
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
extra chopped roasted peanuts, to serve

1: Set your oven to 220C/450F. Cut your zucchini in half lengthwise, then slice into half moons about 1/2 an inch thick. Or chop them however you like! This is just what I did.

2: Toss the zucchini slices with the tablespoon of olive oil and a little salt and freshly ground pepper on a roasting tray — the sort that comes as a pull-out shelf in your oven is ideal, depending on how clean it is — and arrange the zucchini slices in a single layer. Roast for about 20 minutes or until softened and browning around the edges — bearing in mind that the slices may look pale on top but will be browned underneath, so have your tongs at the ready to check.

3: While the zucchini is roasting, put all the pesto ingredients except the olive oil into a food processor and pulse to combine, then blend while pouring olive oil through the feed tube till it becomes a fantastically green puree. Now, if you only have a blender to hand as I did, stick to pulsing rather than full-on blending, otherwise you’ll lose all the texture, and start by adding half the olive oil with maybe a tablespoon of water to keep things moving, then add the rest of the olive oil and pulse again to combine. And finally, taste to see if it needs more salt, more sour, more texture, etc.

4: To serve, dollop spoonfuls of the pesto onto a wide, shallow bowl, pile the roasted zucchini on top and sprinkle over a handful of extra chopped roasted peanuts. Put any remaining pesto in a small bowl with a spoon for people to help themselves, or just tip it on top of the zucchini.

Serves 4 as a side, or with other sides added to it.

Notes:
I bought two of those little bags of chopped roasted peanuts that you can find in the baking aisle for this recipe — it’s not as elegant as roasting whole peanuts and chopping them yourself but they are always cheap and it cuts out an extra step for you.

music lately:

Glass by Yukihiro Takahashi, from his 1981 album Neuromantic, something in that raindrops-on-concrete opening really dances inside my brain and I love its slow-moving yet persistent urgency.

Plainsong, by The Cure, if anything can make you feel alive after doing a thirteen-hour stint in the library it’s the celestial starburst opening to this song.

Soliloquy by Joshua Henry from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel. In my correct opinion, it’s time for baritones to shine again and Joshua Henry shines in this song; if you don’t care enough to watch the whole thing then at least do yourself a favour and skip to the last minute, it’s spectacular.