Old Favorites

Sometimes we get so caught up in our new food and drink finds that we forget about our old favorites. And some of those new recipes quickly become old favorites like this one: Fried Chickpeas with Chorizo and Spinach. Can it be that we only started making this last year? Keeping with our red food and drink theme this week, we made this quick and easy dish featuring chorizo.

Naturally, we do two versions--one with real Spanish-style chorizo for Alison and one with  Mexican-style soy chorizo for Jim (we haven't found a vegetarian hard chorizo but we love Trader Joe's soy chorizo).

Normally, I don't like doing separate dishes, but this one is so easy and only requires one pan per person, so it's nearly as easy to make both as to make one.

To pump up the protein, we double the amount of soy chorizo in Jim's version:

His ends up being spicier with the Mexican-style chorizo, whereas Alison's is richer with the meaty but milder Spanish-style chorizo:

Usually, I'm rushing to make this dish (as with all of my quick and easy dishes, I remember it being even quicker than it is and don't leave enough time) so I rush the frying of the chickpeas. While still tasty, they typically don't crisp up but some combination of more time, less attention, and the power burners on the stove made for much crispier chickpeas this time. They were a little drier as a result, but since I never let all the liquid cook off from the spinach/sherry mixture as directed, it all balances out. Yet another lovely one-dish meal courtesy of the NY Times. I think they're using food to get me so hooked that I'll actually pay the next time they try to charge for online content. I didn't bite when it just meant giving up the opinion page columnists but if they take away the recipes.....