Umm.  Sorry about the picture, dear reader. I should probably sign up for one of the “Introduction to Food Blogging” events at SXSW this week.  I bet they heartily endorse the idea of photographing your meal before you’ve eaten the whole thing.

This is another recipe from Mark Bittman’s Minimalist column.  If you’ll recall, I recently made and raved about his Ginger Fried Rice. This hybrid Spanish-Indian chickpea dish is another winner. It was dead easy, too- it probably took 20 minutes, start to finish.  My dear friend Molly joined Andy and me for dinner and the three of us devoured it. So either we are all healthy little eaters, or this recipe doesn’t really make 4 servings.  We ate it with bolillos from La Mexicana bakery (39 cents each!) and had ourselves a real good time.

A note about the sherry in this recipe.  Bittman calls for a sweet one, like an Amontillado, but I used the traditional dry one, and it came out great. A new bottle is like $11 and it’ll last for months in your refrigerator.

Fried Chickpeas with Chorizo and Spinach

• 1/4 cup olive oil, plus more for drizzling
• 2 cups cooked or canned chickpeas, as dry as possible
• Salt and black pepper
• 4 ounces chorizo, diced (the dry Spanish kind- look in your deli section, not the fresh Mexican kind)
• 1/2 pound spinach, roughly chopped (don’t chop if you use baby spinach)
• 1/4 cup sherry
• 1 to 2 cups bread crumbs.

1. Heat the broiler.
2. Put three tablespoons of the oil in a skillet large enough to hold chickpeas in one layer over medium-high heat. When it’s hot, add chickpeas and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
3. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook, shaking the pan occasionally, until chickpeas begin to brown, about 10 minutes, then add chorizo. Continue cooking for another 5 to 8 minutes or until chickpeas are crisp; use a slotted spoon to remove chickpeas and chorizo from pan and set aside.
4. Add the remainder of the 1/4 cup of oil to the pan; when it’s hot, add spinach and sherry, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and cook spinach over medium-low heat until very soft and the liquid has evaporated. Add chickpeas and chorizo back to the pan and toss quickly to combine; top with bread crumbs, drizzle with a bit more oil and run pan under the broiler to lightly brown the top. Serve hot or at room temperature.

It’s a snow day! Oh boy! If you’re in Austin, and you have a chicken (a dead one), there has never been a better day to roast that mother.  I’m going to give you my version of Thomas Keller’s simple roast chicken, and oh, friend, it goes down smooth.  You don’t put butter, or oil, or anything but kosher salt and pepper on it just before it goes in the oven.  I used to be of the opinion that roasted chicken should be slathered in butter before cooking, but this laissez-faire approach yields a chicken with crispy-schmaltz-y, delicious skin and lovely moist meat. It’s so chicken-y! Which is how it should be, if you’re using a happy little chicken from the farmers’ market- they’re perfect and need no adornment save a final bath in thyme-infused schmaltz.  Really fun.

So, we had this last night, and right now I’ve got the carcass simmering in a pot of water with the reserved pan drippings (minus the fat- that I’ve saved to use when I make matzoh balls tonight), carrots, celery, onions, shallots, peppercorns, thyme, and a bay leaf.  Tonight we’ll sup on matzoh ball soup with this lovely stock, latkes, and homemade apple sauce.  The perfect post-roast chicken dinner 🙂

Yum, yum, eat it up.

Schmaltz-y Roasted Chicken and Potatoes

• 1 4-5 lb happy chicken
• kosher salt and black pepper
• 1 pillow of fat, plucked from the cavity of your chicken
• 1 medium-large yukon gold potato, cut in 1″ dice
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
2. Pat down your chicken obsessively, until it is perfectly dry. If you haven’t already done so, remove the little pillow of fat that’s attached to the front of the cavity of your chicken. (If your chicken doesn’t have this, see if you can trim some fat from other parts of the chicken).
3. Put a hefty sprinkling of salt and pepper in the cavity of the bird, and then truss the bird with kitchen string. Put the chicken in a large cast iron skillet, and sprinkle it liberally with salt and pepper, turning the bird to coat the sides as well as the top. Toss the fat you pulled off the bird into the skillet as well, so that it will render in the oven. Put the bird into the oven immediately. It is very important that you salt the bird right before you put it in the oven. If you salt the bird and then wait for the oven to preheat, the salt will draw moisture out of the chicken, and this will inhibit your skin from crisping.
4. Roast the chicken for 15 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven, lift up the chicken and put the diced potato into the skillet, so it can mingle with the rapidly-rendering chicken fat. Put the chicken back on top and put it back in the oven for another 45 minutes.
5. Remove the chicken from the oven, and put on a cutting board. Toss the fresh thyme into the skillet, and mix it in so it coats the potatoes. Tilt the skillet so that your chicken fat/thyme liquid runs to the side, and spoon some of this over the chicken, so that the bird becomes shiny with chicken fat and flecked with thyme. Allow the bird to rest for 10 minutes, then devour, along with those schmaltz-y potatoes.  Ooohh- also, TK recommends that you serve this with a good dijon mustard and/or butter to slather on the chicken when you’re eating it.  These are both lovely and delicious suggestions.