Chickpeas with Spinach

⏳ Time

1 hour 30 minutes

🥕 Ingredients

🍽️ Servings

Description

A historic dish, made for centuries without fish or meat. Later, dried and salted cod, bacalhau, was added, but now it is increasingly replaced with pork.

Ingredients

Chickpea - 8.1 oz
Spinach - 17.6 oz
Onion - 1 head
Cooked Ham - 2.8 oz
Garlic - 7 cloves
Olive Oil - 2 tablespoons
Country Bread - 1 piece
Bay leaf - 1 piece
Saffron - a pinch
Ground Cumin - 1 teaspoon
Smoked salt - 2 teaspoons
Salt - to taste
Ground Black Pepper - to taste
Smoked pork knuckle - 1 piece

Step by Step guide

Step 1

Soak the chickpeas in water overnight, then drain the water, transfer the chickpeas to a large saucepan, and cover with water so that the liquid is 5 cm above the chickpeas.

Step 2

Peel four cloves of garlic and the onion, wrap them together with the bay leaf in cheesecloth, and place the bundle in the saucepan. Add a small pork knuckle, bring the water to a boil, and cook over low heat without covering, remembering to add salt ten minutes after boiling, until the chickpeas are soft—about an hour.

Step 3

Then remove from heat, take out the meat and the bundle with the onion and garlic—keep the vegetables, and leave the chickpeas in the liquid they were cooked in.

Step 4

In another saucepan, sauté the spinach leaves for five minutes: without oil, constantly shaking. Transfer the spinach to a sieve and squeeze out some excess water.

Step 5

In a third saucepan, heat the oil, fry the bread (cut off the crust) with fresh cloves of garlic until golden, then transfer everything to a blender, sprinkle with saffron, and blend.

Step 6

Add the cooked onion and garlic, cumin, sweet paprika, and a glass of liquid from the chickpea pot to the blender, and blend until smooth.

Step 7

Add this puree, along with the spinach and diced ham, to the pot with the chickpeas. (At this point, you can add salted cod if you decided to cook the chickpeas with it; 70 grams is enough, the knuckle and ham would be unnecessary in that case.) Mix well, warm over low heat, then season with salt and generously pepper. You can add sherry vinegar to taste.