If You Can’t Take the Heat, Still Stay in the Kitchen…

“Or, again, if you can’t take the taste, make the recipe anyway…” ~eam II

Yes, that’s my quote. I made it up. Why? Because again, eventually I was going to get to those recipes that I just didn’t want to make. Or eat. This was one of those.

Why did I not want to eat this recipe? Because I didn’t think I’d like the taste, or the ingredients, rather. I mean, come on, chickpeas. But again, I said I’d make all 40 recipes in this Cook the 40 Challenge I gave myself, and so here is one of the recipes that I kind of saved for the latter part of the year, because I wasn’t looking forward to making it or eating it.

Photo of the magazine cover. — Best-ever recipes? Let’s see if a chick pea recipe deserves to be in the list.

Cook the 40

So, why take on Food & Wine’s best-ever recipes from their forty years in publication? Well, they are Food & Wine, so they must know what they’re doing, right?

That being said, I was not looking forward to making the next recipe, but I went ahead and made it anyway…

40 Years of Food & Wine

According to the September 2018 anniversary issue of Food & Wine, and editor Hunter Lewis, https://twitter.com/notesfromacook?lang=en, what makes a good recipe is it being delicious, of course, and (I think even more important sometimes) the best recipes “tell a story worth repeating.” Well said, Hunter.

I am not sure what kind of stories these 40 best-ever recipes will tell from my kitchen’s point of view, but even with an ingredient—chickpeas—that isn’t my favorite, I am still excited to find out.

Chickpeas and Kale in Spicy Pomodoro Sauce by Missy Robbins.

Recipe Twenty-Eight: Chickpeas & Kale in Spicy Pomodoro Sauce

If you’ve known me for ten minutes, or followed my life on social media, you know I love pasta and basically every calorie-laden Italian dish known to mankind. And so while part of this dish was intriguing—the spicy pomodoro part—another part was not as intriguing. At least to me. I mean, why exchange pasta for chickpeas?

According to the article above, Chef Missy Robbins said, “I created this dish when I was watching my weight, and I needed the satisfaction and flavor of a good red-sauce pasta without using pasta. It’s an amazing one-pan dish that’s packed with richness but doesn’t take a long time to make.”

Fair enough. Let’s see how this goes…

Chickpeas *AND* kale??? Great. LOL Seriously, though…prep was pretty easy.

Well, I do love sautéed garlic in olive oil…

Kale is not my favorite leafy vegetable but maybe the tomatoes and garlic will make it taste better. 😉

It didn’t take long for the kale to cook down.

Next up, add the drained chickpeas, and cook for a few minutes.

Add some basil and Romano cheese, and here you go: Chickpeas and Kale in Spicy Pomodoro Sauce.

While perhaps not my cup of tea—or bowl of Italian food—the recipe was easy, and if you do like chickpeas, I can highly recommend this recipe.

What Was I Doing in 2017? What Did I Eat? Where Did I Go?

2017? Where did I go and what did I eat that year as Food & Wine was publishing Missy Robbin’s recipe? Where didn’t I go and what didn’t I eat?!

We started the year with a short weekend trip to Chicago where we visited some of our favorite sites and ate many of our favorite things – including my favorite pizza from Connie’s! The best pizza is not a bad way to start off a new year!

Short Trips

Other short trips in 2017 included Marble Falls, Denver and Louisiana. Louisiana was especially interesting as I gained about a dozen pounds and woke up with what I thought was gout. It ended up being an undiagnosable injury (per the doctors) that I assume was from eating too much gumbo, jambalaya, crawfish pie and one too many delicious fried delicacies from Louisiana’s best gas stations. Sigh. I love Louisiana.

We visited many of our favorite places in Chicago.

Long Trips

Long trips included a Mediterranean cruise from Venice to Greece with lots of great meals, gelato and beer in between, as well as a solo birthday trip to London and Stratford-upon-Avon where I added “kissing David Gilmour” to my bucket list, and probably had too many pints and not enough fish & chips. Because well, one can never have enough fish & chips in Great Britain.