Week 49 - Dried Fruit

The theme for Week 49 of the challenge was dried fruit. I may have mentioned before how *thrilled* I am to combine fruit into savory dishes, so I wasn't really looking forward to spotlighting dried fruit for dinner. Technically, though, the challenge doesn't really say I have to spotlight dried fruit, just that I have to use it, which was a distinction that made my choice very simple. 

I haven't made Catalan-style cigrons (chickpeas) in over a year, and the dish includes raisins which count as dried fruit. Really, I just needed an excuse to buy some more morcilla and make the cigrons (which you might remember from the year-end favorites post from last year). The cigrons are my best approximation of the dish you can get at the amazing Bar Pinotxo in Barcelona (which we still haven't written about). When I first started researching the chickpeas dish last year, I stumbled upon this site which gave an adaptation of Pinotxo's chickpeas recipe. I used that as my starting point last year and made small modifications to it along the way to align it with our fading memories.

I'm going to do something a little different with this post. Instead of posting the recipe with the amounts I actually made, I'm going to write up what I would usually make on a normal day, and what I think is probably closer to the correct proportions I prefer for this dish. The proportion of meat to chickpeas and other ingredients was a little off this time since I had to use the entire package of morcilla up. Usually one package will last me two meals of this dish, but with Christmas coming up, we just didn't have time for that and I didn't want the morcilla to get wasted. So I put the entire package in this dish, but I think it threw things off a little bit. Not enough to not taste good, but I didn't like it as much as last time.

The ingredients for this recipe are:

- 1/4 cup seedless raisins ($0.50)

- extra virgin olive oil (arbequina best, but we don't have any more Catalan arbequina in the house) ($0.75)

- 1 yellow onion, chopped ($0.60)

- 1/4 cup pine nuts ($1**)

- 2 garlic cloves, minced ($0.08)

- 2 small links of morcilla* ($2.75)

- 2 15-oz cans of chickpeas ($1.33)

- 1/2 bunch of parsley, chopped ($0.50)

- balsamic vinegar ($0.30)

- smoked paprika ($0.20)

- salt ($0.05)

* The recipe really should be botifarra negra but I don't believe they can import that into the US, sadly. If anyone around here would have it, it would be Despaña, where I get the morcilla, but when I asked them about it last year, they said they didn't carry it (and they don't make it like they do the morcilla and other chorizo).

** Pine nuts are ridiculously expensive. I don't actually remember how much they cost, but this is about what I usually end up getting. We got these out in the Portland area a while ago since the price was cheaper. The pine nuts are probably over $1, but I just don't know how much more.

The recipe costs about $8, the way that I would make it if I had a more flexible schedule to cook this week. Of course, the actual dish cost more this time, since I threw in an extra can of chickpeas and the rest of the morcilla package, as well as a little more raisins and garlic.

The recipe is pretty straightforward and only really needs a single pan (other than prep stuff). The steps were:

1. Soak raisins in hot water for at least 10 minutes. (I'm a slow prepper, so I usually end up soaking for longer and they expand quite a bit.)

2. In a large skillet over medium heat, heat up olive oil (about 2 tbsp) and then add onions. Cook onions until softened and then add garlic, pine nuts and raisins. Crumble the morcilla and add that. (I prefer the meat to be smaller and the morcilla this time for some reason wouldn't crumble that small, so I think next time I would chop it smaller after crumbling. I was short on time this time.) Lower heat to medium low and stir periodically.

3. Rinse and drain chickpeas, and add to pan. Also add the chopped parsley and smoked paprika to taste. Keep stirring everything around.

4. When everything has cooked and mixed well together, remove from heat. Add olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and salt to taste. (For estimated proportions, I would guess 1:1.5 oil to balsamic vinegar, and a light sprinkling of salt. The key for us is really the balsamic vinegar. Too little and it's a little dull. You definitely need enough balsamic vinegar to make it brighten up.)

We love this recipe. It's never going to be as good as Pinotxo, but it's a lot easier and more affordable making this than jetting off to Spain (as much as we'd like to do the latter). Whenever we make it to Barcelona next, you can be sure that we'll be heading to Pinotxo to get this again, and see if we can tweak anything else to make this a little better and closer to the real thing.

But for now, it'll do. We paired this with some patatas bravas (which will be a future post) and Crianza for a mini Spanish tapas night (can it still be tapas if you only have 2 dishes?) which really raised our spirits. Nothing like a little bit of Mediterranean warmth in the middle of December.