Saturday: Chickpea soup, baked chicken

The soup recipe (chickpea soup with spinach) is something I found in the recipe box from an older Bittman column (now apparently also in BittmanWorld). Deviations: I used frozen spinach because we had a bunch that needed to be used up; I fried a couple of thinly sliced garlic cloves in olive oil and added those (and the oil) to the soup.

The chicken is a Gary Danko recipe (by way of Bittman) that I also made back in November. This time I did bake the chicken at a lower temperature for longer, but it could have been even nicer... maybe 150C for an hour? I'll have to play some more. Other variations: I brushed the mustard on the chicken a couple of hours before baking. I also forgot the herbs in the crust (I was cooking between game summaries on the Sportschau), but that wasn't a tragedy. The garlicky breadcrumbs were quite lovely on their own.

We also had a big green salad.

Nice food.

Wine: we've been drinking a bottle of Domaine Alfred: 2003 Califa Pinot Noir that we picked up before moving from CA. It had been a while since we drank a big fat CA wine, and this is a good one.