When cooking from a veggie box each week, you must eat what you get and what is in season. Although the vegetables are the freshest and best of their time, after a while you can reach "peak greens", and run out of interesting ideas for cooking leaves. The noble motivation of healthy eating is all very well but sometimes staring at yet another bunch of cavolo nero brings no inspiration. Thank you Rachel Roddy! Your chickpeas and greens recipe is so delicious on its own or the next day with fried egg on top!
Also, hidden amongst my cook book collection I discovered a small yellow covered book we picked up in a postcard shop when we visited Lucca in Tuscany years ago. What a wonderful place is Lucca. We circumnavigated the city on top of the walls, heard a Puccini recital, explored the beautiful streets. piazzas and churches and ate the amazing food of Tuscany!
One day we had lunch in a restaurant in the piazza outside the opera house of risotto with fresh porccini mushrooms and watched an enormous man who looked like Pavarotti himself tucking into an huge bistecca fiorentina while his elegant thin publicist picked at her torellini. Another evening, in a tiny place around the corner from our hotel I ate pasta with squid ink. It was so fresh, and tasted of the sea but turned my teeth, gums and lips black sending us into fits of giggles.
The little yellow cookbook is called Traditional Recipes of Lucchinese Farmers and contains simple but hearty country dishes including a number with wild game of every kind. The recipe for cavolo nero, pumpkin and kidney beans is a dense, wintery dish that goes well with crusty bread and good red wine.
Rachel Roddy's Chickpeas and Greens
bunch of greens ( I used cavolo nero but you can use any greens)
1 onion diced
2 carrots diced
5 tablespoons of olive oil plus extra to serve
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 dried chilli
1 cup of while wine
2 tablespoons of tomato passata or 1 tablespoon of tomato paste
2 and a half cups of cooked chick peas
a generous handful of chopped parsley
juice of half a lemon
If you are using dried chickpeas, soak them overnight and then cook them until they are soft. Tinned chickpeas are also fine.
Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil and add the greens. For Cavolo Nero, you need to cook them for a while because the leaves are tough but for softer greens, you can just blanch them briefly.
Once they are cool, chop them roughly and set aside.
Heat the oil in a heavy bottomed pan and saute the onion and carrot slowly with a pinch of salt until tender. Add the pepper and the chopped dried chilli.
Add the wine to the pan and let it bubble away until almost completely reduced.
Add the tomato the greens and the chickpeas and cook for around 10 minutes, stirring every couple of minutes.
Add the parsley, lemon juice, stir and let sit for around 10 minutes.
Serve it with a drizzle of good olive oil on the top. Add a fried egg if you want.
Zuppa di Cavalo Nero and Zucca ( Cavolo Nero, Pumpkin and Kidney Beans )
200g of red kidney beans ( tinned beans are fine)
50g of minced or diced bacon ( optional)
1 tablespoon of olive oil (plus more to pour over at the end)
salt
I bunch of cavolo nero - washed and cut into strips
300g of diced pumpkin
freshly ground black pepper.
sour dough bread or toast
Fry the bacon in the oil in a heavy bottomed pan which has a lid.
Add the cavolo nero and beans and some water and cook gently until the greens are soft. ( around 15 minutes)
Add the diced pumpkin and put on the lid and gently simmer for another 15 minutes.
The consistency either be a little soupy or drier like a stew depending on what you want.
Add pepper and salt to taste.
Put a slice of bead or toast in the dish and serve on top. Pour over a good drizzle of olive oil and some grated Parmesan.
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