Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Recipe from The Diner's Club Cookbook: Potaje de Garbanzas (Spanish bean soup)

I tasted a marvellous bean soup during a seminar I attended in Salamanca in Spain several years ago, and the ingredients I could identify are all in this soup. However, I will probably have to delay making it, since I am not sure I can get any soup bones here in Reykjavík – although I should probably ask at a Nóatún store before I make any such claims. (Nóatún offers the widest selection of meat products of any Icelandic supermarket).

The recipe:
To serve 6-8:

500 g (1 lb) dried chick peas
1 beef bone*
1 ham bone*
2 1/2 liters/quarts water
125 g (1/4 pound) bacon, chopped
2 onions, chopped
3 potatoes, peeled and diced
1 tbs salt
1/8 tsp saffron
2 Spanish sausages*, sliced thin

Soak the chick peas in salted water overnight. Drain. Combine the peas with the beef and ham bones and the water. Bring to the boil and cook over low heat for 45 minutes.

Sautée the bacon and onions together for 10 minutes, drain. Add the bacon, onions, potatoes, salt and saffron to the bean mixture. Cook over low heat for 15 minutes. Add the sausages and cook 5 minutes longer.

From Las Novedades restaurant, Tampa, Florida.
--
*I hate inexactness in cookbooks. How large are the bones supposed to be? Do you break them? And, there are literally hundreds of different types of Spanish sausages. Is it supposed to be smoked? Raw? Salted? Peppery? Sweet? I guess it doesn't really matter, since all I can get is chorizo.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just one spanish recipie????
I could give you many more :-)

Bibliophile said...

I'm sure you could, but this blog is dedicated to recipes I either have tried or want to try, that I have either developed myself or found in my own cookbook collection :-)