Protein + folate + fibre + deliciousness = chick peas!!!?

Apparently so.

© 2009 Jackie Connelly Photography

I have recently fallen in love with chick peas. I don’t know what it is about them - their plump texture, insane flexibility to work so well in so many different dishes, or the fact that I’ve finally found a food that I love and is good for me - but I can’t get enough of them.

If you happen to share my recent obsession, I’ve collected some recipes from friends on Twitter, food magazines and a local restaurant I thought you might enjoy:

• • Persian Split Pea Soup ~ From PCC Natural Markets in Seattle  (you can follow them on Twitter here); peas, tomatoes, onions and spices, yum!
• • Recent interviewee Fig&Cherry recommends her Roasted Cauliflower and Chick Pea Salad.
• • Canadian Living magazine’s ‘Cheers to Chick Peas’ has 15 recipes here that all make use of the ingredient.
• • From the pages of Real Simple Magazine, and what my other half cooked us for dinner last night (pictured above): crispy breaded shrimp with garlicky beans. *he just added chick peas to the bean mix, it was delicious!
• • And if you ever have a chance to get your hands on some octopus, this recipe for Octopus Confit with chickpeas and roasted red peppers from the Blue Water Cafe Seafood Cookbook (order here) by Frank Pabst sounds amazing:

INGREDIENTS

Octopus confit
1 bulb garlic, halved through the equator
1 onion, quartered
1 red jalapeño pepper
1 small bunch fresh thyme
1 sprig dried oregano
1 Tbsp fennel seeds
2 bay leaves
2 lbs octopus, thoroughly washed and rinsed
4 cups olive oil

Chickpeas and peppers
4 red bell peppers
7 Tbsp olive oil
1⁄2 cup oil from the octopus confit
2 shallots, thinly sliced
9 cloves garlic, 6 thinly sliced on a mandolin and 3 cut in half
7 oz cooked chickpeas (about 1 cup)
12 slices baguette, each 1⁄4 inch thick
Juice of 1 lemon
Dash of red wine vinegar
1⁄2 cup basil leaves, coarsely chopped
1⁄2 cup Italian parsley leaves, coarsely chopped

METHOD

Octopus confit
In a pot just large enough to hold the octopus snugly, combine garlic, onion, fennel seeds and bay leaves, then place the octopus on top and add olive oil until the octopus is covered. Cook on medium heat for about 1.5 hours, or until a paring knife easily pierces the shoulder between the head and the tentacles.

Remove the pot from the heat and allow the octopus to cool in the oil. Once cool, remove the octopus from the oil and place it on a clean cutting board. Reserve the oil. Using a sharp knife, cut the tentacles—with skin and suction cups still attached—into bite-size pieces. Cut off and discard the octopus beak, then slice the remainder of the head into thin strips about 2 inches long. Set aside.

Chickpeas and peppers

Preheat the oven to 400F. Brush bell peppers with 1 Tbsp of olive oil and set them on a baking sheet. Roast for 15 to 20 minutes until the skins are lightly charred. Transfer to a metal bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Allow to cool for 30 minutes.

Peel the bell peppers, then cut them open and remove and discard the seeds. Cut the pepper flesh into wide strips about 2 inches long.

Heat the octopus confit oil in a medium pot on low heat. Add shallots and the thinly sliced garlic and sweat until fragrant, about 5 minutes. Add chickpeas and roasted peppers and cook for 10 minutes.

Heat 6 Tbsp of olive oil in a sauté pan on medium heat. Add baguette slices and pan-fry on both sides until golden brown and crunchy, about 2 minutes. Drain on paper towels to absorb the excess moisture, then rub croutons with garlic halves.

To serve: In a large bowl, combine octopus pieces, chickpeas and roasted peppers. Add salt, lemon juice and vinegar, then mix in basil and parsley. Divide the mixture among four bowls. Top each bowl with a quarter of the croutons.

Suggested wine: Go for something off the beaten path—Greco di Tufo shows lemon and clove with good fruit and a lively finish.

* Blue Water Cafe Seafood Cookbook by Frank Pabst © 2009. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Douglas & McIntyre: a division of D&M Publishers.

Do you have a favorite chick pea recipe? Let us know in the comments section!

Enjoy!

As part of our foodie interview series Chewing the Fat, we recently interviewed Christy from the Australian foodie blog Fig & Cherry. Now Fig & Cherry has been nominated in the Blogger’s Choice Awards for Best Food Blog. Woo hoo Christy, congratulations!

If you haven’t already visited her blog from our interview with her, or otherwise, please do so here…and if you enjoy it, you can vote for it here.

Good luck Christy!

Wanting to make a variety of fun and tasty shortbread over the holidays, but admittedly having no previous shortbread-making knowledge except for random memory snippets of my mother baking when I was young, I turned to the only instantaneous information source: the internet. On a side note, I totally would have gone down to a bookstore, and I probably still will, but it’s a lot easier to look for these things online at midnight on a Tuesday in my pajamas.

Google search term “shortbread” got me three kajillion results, so I narrowed my search. I tried “shortbread + holiday baking” and got all sorts of fun recipes. Jackpot. It also got me a few new sites, which in addition to the tried and true recipe sites in my bookmarks and RSS feeds, I have begun to acquire quite the collection. Then I said to myself: “Self, this is definitely a blog post. Get crackin’!”

In no particular order, here are the sites that I like to visit when looking for a new recipe, be it for holiday shortbread, what to cook for 6 dinner guests, or a soup that will feed just lil’ ol me. *I also like to browse these sites as inspiration for my next portfolio or stock shoot if I have a certain regional cuisine or food theme in mind.

• Epicurious ~ great site to add to your RSS feed for a daily recipe; gets updated with new recipes more often than I can read them. Other fun things like celebrities chit chat on food topics, and holiday features.

• Wish ~ made for women on the go. has a ’search recipes’ field; offers a 20 minute Supper Club which is free to sign-up and will deliver the recipe and shopping list to your inbox; also offers topics of info on beauty, fashion and decor.

• Food Network ~ thankfully Canadian, lots of recipes to search through, and you can mosey on over to the TV for their offerings on the Food Network channel (I like Restaurant Makeover for the before & after set-up, and the episodes of The F Word, but only when Gordon Ramsey is particularly annoyed and swears profusely).

• Canadian Home & Country ~ where I found my holiday shortbread recipe; cute photos.

• Fig&Cherry ~ not only a great header photo, but nicely organized recipes; also notes which as V (vegetarian), GF (gluten free) and VG (vegan).

• Recipe.com ~ a somewhat slick looking website with searchable recipes categorized by region and course; also has a recipe of the day.

• RecipeMatcher.com ~ this is an interesting one: enter the ingredients you have in your kitchen (food and alcochol options) and it will pump out a recipe for you. (ie.: broccoli + rice flour + brown sugar = rice krispies or basmati rice. Hmm.)

Do you have recipe sites you like to visit when you’re surfing the net at midnight on a tuesday in your pajamas? Please leave the URL and what you like about the site in a comment box to add to the list!

Upcoming post: photographic results of my holiday shortbread.

Happy recipe hunting!

~ j