The combination of seafood and legumes is as motley but successful, as ……. Laurel and Hardy!
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 5€ pp)
- 200 g cooked chickpeas (even Oliver Hardy would reject canned ones)
- 30-40 fresh mussels
- 1,2 litres of mineral water
- Salt
- 8 medium shrimps
- 1 small carrot
- 1 small red horn pepper
- 1 small onion
- EV olive oil
- Fresh rosemary
- 1 small lemon
-I think you should change your website name.
-What?
-I think you ‘d better call it Chickpea Gourmet instead of Democratic. This is the sixth chickpea dish you post.
-And what´s the problem? Legumes are very tasty, healthy and cheap, a perennial response to today´s lifestyle food with quinoa, tofu, salsify and other rubbish. But let me describe the dish, there are people who are reading us!!!!!!
First of all, we prepare the vegetables. We clean and peel them, we cut them in dice, we grease them and we roast them in the oven at low temperature (120 C). We don´t want them crunchy but soft, we just want their aromas to be concentrated. I remind you that horn peppers do not need peeling as their skin is very soft and does not provoke digestion problems.
Meanwhile, we remove the heads from the shrimps and we lightly fry them with just a few olive oil drops. When cold, we put them in a processor and we mince them. We put the minced shrimp heads in a pot, we cover with the mineral water and we simmer for 1 hour, taking care so that the temperature remains always low in order to achieve a clear stock, like this at the photo. When ready we pass from a fine sieve and we discard the solid parts.
We preheat very well a big pan and we put inside the mussels. We cover with the lid and by shaking the pan continuously we provoke the mussels opening usig always high heat. We remove the mussels from the shells.
We cut a rosemary sprig very finely and we immediately mix it with olive oil.
At the very last moment we reheat the stock and we boil the shrimp tails for 3 minutes if we keep them in shells or for 20 seconds if they are peeled. We check the stock´s saltiness and acidity, adding some salt and lemon drops.
We heat the chickpeas and the veggies and we put them in plates. When chickpeas are part of a soup, I slightly smash them (after serving), in order to make them more easily swallowed. We add the mussels, the shrimps and the very hot stock, drizzling with the rosemary oil.
