Pasta with Chickpeas has been on my radar for a while, lets give it a go
video on something that I want to have a faf around with. So, I want to do chickpeas and pasta. Um, I don’t think it’s pasta fuzzle. Um, I don’t think it is actually. It will be a pasta dish that I can’t I can’t pronounce because I’ve struggled with my own language, let alone other people. So, basically, it’s going to be past chickpeas pasta and caramelized onion as the base of it. So, I’m just using some chicken fat to cook this onion. So, we’re going to cook this onion and then uh and get it almost not brown. We’re not going to caramelize it as such, but we’re going to soften it and get it to the stage where it’s sweetened up and started to almost almost caramelize, which that’s on too high a heat. I just kind of think the chicken fat will be nice cuz it’ll add add a depth of flavor. Um, if I wasn’t using chicken fat, I’d use butter. We might put some butter in as well. And then I cook some chickpeas. So, we got some chickpeas to put in it. I’ve seen different versions where people purely down the chickpeas and kind of make a bit of the sauce out of that. I don’t think I’m going to do that. And then we’ve got this juice that I cook the chickpeas in. And then I got this ridiculously big bag of pasta. So how much pasta? There’s three kilograms in there. Little were doing that thing where it was spend a certain amount of money and you get a free gift. And so I was looking down the free gifts and it was like 50 500 g of this type of pasta, 100 g of well no not 100 grams but like a kilo of this type of pasta or 3 kilos of that type of pasta. So, I was kind of like, well, obviously I’m going to get the 3 kilos of pasta. Uh, you know, because um why would you buy 100 a kilo of something when you can have 3 kilos of something for for kind of free even though I don’t know when I’m going to use all that? Uh, but we’re going to use that. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to do that. Oh, salt and pepper always. Uh, what I am going to do Oh, so the salt will bring out some of the moisture from the uh onions and help them caramelize a little bit quicker. And then pepper as always. What I am going to do with the pasta is because the pasture and chickpea it’s normally like tiny little bits of pasta. Uh I can’t remember the type that you’re supposed to use. Uh so what I’m going to do is I’m going to smash up that pasta. We’ll put it in a cloth and hit it with a hammer or the rolling pin and we’ll make it smaller. And then we’ll kind of do it like that. So, caramelize these off and then we’ll be um adding the pasta to that uh when it’s smashed up. Fry it around a bit and then we’ll be cooking it a bit like a ratoto. So, a little bit of water um when that water’s evaporated. Oh, the chickpea water and then add a little bit more water as as we kind of go. And we’ll probably put chickpeas in at that time as well. And then we’ll kind of see what see what we get. But the it should because we’re going to take some time and we’re going to caramelize these onions and we’re going to use this chickpea stock and we’re using chicken fat. We should kind of develop some kind of uh a good level a layer of flavor as opposed to something that’s just made out of chickpeas, onion, and pasta, which potentially could be extremely bland, but I don’t think it will be. Onions are olions. Onions are cooked and they’re just starting to caramelize on bottom of the pan. So, they are ready. Let’s give them a taste. They should be nice and sweet. Nice and sweet. So, it was a one big onion, 200 g of smashed up pasta. You can just buy that pasta that’s already in little squares. But not me. And then so this chickpea cooking liquid which has got a little bit of stock in it as well actually and a few other things, leftovers from something else. So that’s all right. Those bits of leak can go into that pan of soup that I’m making at the back of the stove. So probably want a bit more liquid on that. that in there. So, another bit of liquid. That’s that. Turn the heat up and then we’re going to cook it like a rosotto. I was kind of thinking maybe if I wanted instead of pureeing the chickpeas, I should have done two onions, taken half the onion out of the pan at this stage and pureed that onion. Pure that’s that’s me using the the hand blender. And then that would have have have um made like a sauce and then we could have added that back to this uh when it um when it’s all kind of cooked together. So what I’m kind of thinking is that this will the fat and the starch that’s going to come out of the pasta is going to combine with the cooking liquid and it’s kind going to form a sauce a bit like in the same way that you do with a catchier pepe or a or or a um pasta aligzia. I probably pronounced those wrong and I do apologize, but the same kind of principle. And then are we going to put the chickpeas in as well? Yes. So, let’s measure how much chickpeas we’re going to put in. So, what it weigh that I reckon? Let’s do it. So, it’s 200 g. Yeah. So, let’s do 200 g of pasta and two 200 g of chickpeas. And then that’s straightforward, isn’t it? So, one onion, 200 g of pasta, 200 g of cooked chickpeas, and then we’ll see how that turns out. So, it will need more liquid adding to it. As the pasta absorbs the liquid and the liquid evaporates through the cooking process, we will put we’ll need to add some more liquid. But, I’m going to do it like a rotto. So, just add a bit more liquid as we kind of go until the pasta is almost cooked. And then we can decide if we want to put some cheese in it maybe. Right. So, it has cooked and we’ve added a bit more stock as it’s cooking. How does it taste? How does it taste? Should have had the spoon ready, shouldn’t I? That’s surprisingly interesting for so few ingredients. Now I was thinking that it would have been nice to actually how would we have done it? How how would either use two onions like I said before and puree one half of the onions down to kind of make make the sauce or to put some diced leak in there would be nice. So, as it was kind of maybe a few a few minutes away from being cooked, stirring in some some like washed leaks. I think that would be really kind of quite nice. And maybe do that. Maybe puree the onion down to kind of make the sauce. Maybe maybe maybe that would kind of like nice and then you would have kind of layers of flavor and some herbs in there would be nice and all that kind of stuff. But I thought what we would do, you haven’t got any leaks, but what I thought we would do is we’ll take some out. like that. We’ll turn the heat off. That should be lovely and tender. I thought what we do is we will grate some cheese into this and see if we can do that catchy pepper type of of thing where we melt the cheese into the sauce. And it’s like making a cheese sauce because we’ve got all the the elements of a cheese sauce in there. So, we’ve got the starch, we’ve got the fat, and we’ve got the liquid. And then just to add the cheese, we get a melted cheese in, and that forms more of a sauce, of course. And it’s going to make it nicer because things with cheese are nicer, aren’t they? But don’t necessarily need it. I just kind of thought we’ll do a version with and without. And I might have to add a little bit more water. But probably not. But don’t have the heat on when you add cheese. Otherwise, there’s a risk of splitting it and the fat coming out of the cheese and it spoiling it. Well, it wouldn’t spoil it. You’d still eat it, wouldn’t you? Just because the fat split out of it and it looks doesn’t look as appetizing doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t eat it. Well, I’d carry on eating it. But then I can think if we were to put leaks in. Leaks work well with cheese, don’t they? So, that would be that would be extra nice. So, I have See, we’re not that far away from macaroni cheese, are we? Doing this, are we? That’s interesting. That’s interesting. I reckon we can do a different version of macaroni cheese. So, how’s it taste with cheese then? Good. Cuz it’s kind of grown like risotto. That’s good. That’s nice. That’s delicious. So, that works, doesn’t it? And opens up the possibilities for other things. So, I think just because you’ve only got a few things in your cupboard doesn’t mean you can’t have something nice for dinner. I mean, it is it’s not the most colorful of dinner. I mean, it’s a bit beige, to tell the truth, but but tastewise, lovely. Uh, so therefore, um, a success and a good way to use up all those bits of pasta that are all smashed up.
Dining and Cooking