This dish took 15 minutes to cook and is a very effective use of all ingredients concerned. It’s aromatic, bright, comforting and luxuriant and sourdough bread-notwithstanding, it’s pretty inexpensive.
Serves two for a modest supper
Ingredients:
1 tin chickpeas
150g whole leaf kale, stripped from the tough stalks
1 red chilli, de-seeded and sliced thinly
2 fat garlic cloves or 3 smaller ones finely sliced
extra virgin olive oil
1/2 lemon
robust, delicious bread like sourdough, 1.5 slices each
parmesan to finish
How to make:
Prepare your ingredients. Boil a full kettle for blanching the kale and pour into a pan with two teaspoons of salt. When it’s boiling fast, boil the kale for 2 minutes and drain, saving a few tablespoons of boiling liquid.
In a frying pan, add 4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and the garlic and chilli and turn on the heat to medium, when the garlic is smelling really aromatic and sizzling but not browned, add in the chickpeas and toss well in the oil. Add the blanched kale and toss through the mixture. Squeeze in most of the lemon and a good hefty pinch or two of salt. Keep seasoning with salt and tasting until you’re happy. Drizzle in another tablespoon of oil and stir.
Toast your bread. Rub cut garlic on each slice when done.
Place toast on plates, spoon over the kale and chickpea mixture and the reserved kale cooking liquid. Finish with another drizzle of oil, a touch of salt, a squeeze of lemon and a good grating of parmesan.
PS – I had a small amount – around a tablespoon – of roasted tomato in the fridge which I added in to use up. You could use a little fresh tomato into the frying garlic if you wanted to.
Dinner Document 