Sunday Night Mixed Bites

Yesterday I had a really hard time making up my mind what to make. I started out with the compulsion to do chicken stewed with chickpeas; that morphed into a brief plan to make Poulet Basqueaise (from Bourdain) with chickpeas on the side. Complicating things, an article in this issue of Eating Well (a birthday gift) had a bunch of cauliflower recipes, so I wanted to make some cauliflower in order to prove to myself that I don't dislike it. And then there was the longer running "need" to repeat the quick lentil dish from a few weeks ago. Add in a vote for soup, and I was having a hell of a time making up my mind.

Because the chicken would have required a trip to Trader Joe's (I more or less refuse to buy chicken at Whole Foods after their recent price increase. TJ's has perfectly acceptable natural chicken that costs half as much.), that ended up dropping off the list. So the menu was: Roasted cauliflower; Spicy glazed chickpeas; quick lentils.

Roasted cauliflower couldn't be easier: cut the head into pieces (you want the flat edges from cutting), sprinkle with salt and pepper, roast in olive oil at 450 until nicely browned, turning once. This answered the cauliflower question: I like it. :-)

I don't have much of a feeling of the quantities I used for the chickpeas, so I'm not going to pretend this is a recipe: Put some olive oil in a hot pan, add a squirt of ketchup and some thinly sliced garlic. Cook for a couple minutes over high heat until the ketchup starts to caramelize a bit. Add some cooked chickpeas (not too soft!), a sprinkle of salt, a couple grinds of black pepper, a pinch of crushed red pepper, and a pinch of B&vG spice rub. Stir together. Add chicken stock to almost cover and return to a hard boil. Let things boil over high heat, uncovered, until the liquid is pretty much gone, stirring occasionally. Total prep time is ~10 minutes and the results are great.

The quick lentils were pretty much the same as before, though I added fresh parsley (good!) and forgot the bay leaf (not good!).