garlic

Popcorn Chickpeas: Random Cool and Delicious Stuff You Can Do With Pantry Staples

Posted by Margot | Filed under:
May 20 2010

the blurry flying chickpeas are easy to miss, so I circled them in red they're tricky buggers to photograph.

and i wasn't using a fast enough lens to capture them in focus so i'm hoping the preponderance of visual evidence will be convincing: these are not smudges on the lens, these are chick peas in flight.

The first time I encountered “popcorn chickpeas” was on a menu. It was offered as a $5 or $6 appetizer a wine bar/restaurant in downtown Ann Arbor. When I ordered it, I wasn’t sure whether to expect the chickpeas to be mixed with popcorn or coated in popcorn or if maybe the chick peas themselves would be puffed like corn pops. And I was initially a little disappointed when I got what looked like just a bowl full of regular old chickpeas. They had clearly been cooked—they were golden brown and mixed with browned bits of garlic. And that’s all there was—no greens, no sauce, not even a garnish; it was almost audaciously simple.

But they turned out to be delicious: a little crisp on the outside, creamy in the middle, garlicky and salty. Addictive. I imagine they’re a little like the fried black eyed peas that Alton Brown chose when he was featured on The Best Thing I Ever Ate.

I inquired about the name, and the server said it was because they “pop” when you cook them in hot oil. So the first time I made them, it was just for the novelty. I had to find out what this popping business was all about.

the size of the explosion seems to depend on how dry they are and how hot the pan is; drier & hotter = more spectacular explosions and a messier kitchenObviously, chick peas don’t have a hard shell the way dried corn does, so the explosion isn’t quite as spectacular and doesn’t produce a starchy poof, but as far as I can tell, the reason for the popping is basically the same—the outside of the chickpea is slightly drier and harder than the inside, so moisture inside the peas turns into steam and starts to build up pressure (again, way less pressure than inside a popcorn hull, but basically the same idea). When it reaches the breaking point, it ruptures, which makes a popping sound, and the release of pressure sends it flying.

Aside from being kind of fun to make, they’re such a vast improvement over plain chickpeas that this has become my favorite way to add them to salads or pasta/grain dishes. So I guess this is more of a concept than a recipe—the version below is as adaptable as chick peas themselves. The only constants are cooked chickpeas, enough oil to coat a pan, a clove or two of garlic, and plenty of salt. Serious Eats posted a version from the cookbook The Herbal Kitchen that calls for rosemary. You could dress them up even more with a blend of spices like chili powder, cumin, and ground ginger. Or you could use them to showcase a fancy or flavored salt.

 in a green salad, with roasted cauliflower and cucumbers over a brown rice pilaf with diced tomatoes, topped with grated parmeggiano cheese

Recipe: Popcorn Chickpeas

  • 15 oz can chickpeas or ~2 cups cooked chickpeas
  • 1-2 T. olive or peanut oil
  • 2-3 cloves garlic
  • 1 t. kosher salt
  • 3-4 grinds of black pepper
  • a sprinkle of fresh lemon juice (optional)
  • other herbs and spices, like rosemary, parsley, chili powder, and/or cumin (optional)

1. Drain the chickpeas well.

2. Mince the garlic and chop/grind any herbs or spices, if using.

3. Heat the oil in a large skillet until it shimmers. Add the garlic and toss or stir to coat lightly in the oil.

4. Add the drained chickpeas and cook for 5-10 minutes, shaking the pan or stirring occasionally. They should start to pop after the first couple of minutes. Cook until they’re as browned as you want them.

they are also totally delicious just as they are

Cheddar-garlic Biscuits: In Defense of Garlic Powder

Posted by Margot | Filed under:
Mar 8 2010

Lobster not included 

I have been carefully trained to look upon garlic powder with great disdain.

—S.J. Sebellin-Ross

At the third Ann Arbor Ignite last Thursday, the audience cheered and applauded when the last speaker exhorted us to use fresh garlic instead of dried or powdered (about 41:40 here). And sure, in a recipe like the bolognese he was describing, I’d probably use fresh garlic, too, but that’s hardly a reason to cheer. The crowd’s reaction instead seemed symptomatic of the emblematic status fresh garlic has achieved. Its superiority has become one of the central commandments of the “food revolution,” and no wonder, it hits all the right notes: seems more “natural” and more “authentic,” supposedly better-tasting, and possibly healthier (although, as that site notes, it’s possible to dehydrate garlic without deactivating the enzymes with therapeutic value, which cooking can destroy). It also has the added bonus of a built-in villain in the form of its dehydrated, powdered counterpart, which for many people is associated with the industrial food system, bland mid-century midwestern cooking, and laziness.if you're afraid of losing foodie cred, click on the picture for instructions on how to make your own powdered garlic (assuming you have a dehydrator) from The Deliberate Agrarian

But aside from being slightly more convenient for busy or novice cooks, garlic powder really works better for numerous applications—it dissolves in dips and gravies, it keeps dry rubs dry, and it can be sprinkled to taste on popcorn or pizza or whisked into the dry ingredients of any bread recipe. Instead of thinking of it as a bad substitute for the fresh stuff, I prefer to think of it as a pedestrian version of the powders made by bleeding-edge chefs like Alinea’s Grant Achatz and WD-50’s Wylie Dufresne. Sure, they often taste different than the non-powdered versions, but they open up a whole array of different uses. Of course, you could make biscuits with a garlic-infused fat or stud the dough with chunks of raw or roasted garlic, but neither of those options is going to give you the same intensity of flavor or evenness of distribution as garlic powder. And these biscuits definitely challenge the notion that powdered garlic can’t be delicious.

Most recipes for cheddar-garlic biscuits, even Paula Deen’s, simply suggest adding garlic powder and grated cheddar to a baking mix like Bisquick. That would probably be pretty good too, but I don’t have enough uses for Bisquick to keep it around (especially given that rumors about toxic molds developing in expired pancake and biscuit mixes turn out to be true, if somewhat overblown). So instead, I added garlic powder and grated cheddar to the recipe I use for rich, buttery biscuits. The recipe has a higher proportion of fat : flour than most baking powder biscuit recipes, so it makes biscuits that are rich enough to eat plain (and too rich to make a very good vehicle for gravy or butter). Whatever fat you use, it must be solid so chunks of it will remain in the dough. Those chunks melt during baking to create the flaky layers. Lard or shortening work slightly better than butter or margarine because they don’t contain water. However, butter is delicious, so I used half butter and half lard. If you don’t eat butter or lard, margarine or vegetable oil shortening should work equally well (although if you’re avoiding trans-fats, you should stick to ones composed largely of palm oil or produced by fractionation).

Recipe: Cheddar-garlic Biscuitsfats cut into pieces before chilling

  • 1/2 cup solid fat—I used 4 T. butter and 4 T. lard
  • 9 oz. all-purpose or cake flour (about 2 cups)—I used bread flour with 2 T. replaced by cornstarch
  • 2 1/2 t. baking powder
  • 1/2 t. baking soda
  • 1 t. kosher salt
  • 1 pinch sugar
  • 1 1/2 t. powdered garlic
  • 1 T. dried parsley and/or chives (optional)
  • 4 oz. grated sharp cheddar (about 1 cup)
  • 3/4 cup buttermilk (or regular milk soured with 1 T. lemon juice)
  • extra flour for dusting
  • extra milk for brushing biscuit tops

1. Preheat the oven to 500F. Cut the fat into pieces and chill while you prep the remaining ingredients.

2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, garlic, and herbs if using.

3. Toss the chilled pieces of fat with the flour and and combine them with a pastry cutter, crisscrossing knives, a food processor, or your bare hands—just don't melt the bits of fat. You want the largest pieces of fat to be about the size of small peas.

Criss-crossing knives = less dishwashing even if it takes a little longer than the food processor. My hands tend to be too warm for the bare hands method. Just a minute or two later: big chunks of fat remaining, but fat relatively well distributed throughout the flour

4. Mix in the grated cheddar and the buttermilk or milk. Stir just until most of the flour is moistened—you don’t want gluten to form so the goal is to handle the dough as little as possible once you’ve combined the wet and dry ingredients.

the sharper the cutter, the less it will squish the edges, which can prevent rising brushing with milk isn't strictly necessary, but it does promote nice browning

5. Dust a table or countertop with flour, dump the dough onto it and press or knead together just enough to form a dough. Flatten the dough to between 1/2” and 1” thick and cut desired shapes—if you don’t have a biscuit cutter, a glass or empty jar will work, or you can just cut the dough into squares or triangles.

6. Place on an baking sheet (ungreased) and brush the tops with buttermilk. Place in preheated oven, and reduce the oven temperature to 450F and bake for 7 minutes. Rotate the baking sheet and bake another 5-7 minutes, or until the biscuits are golden brown.

neglected, sprouting rutabega in the background warm, garlicky, cheese-studded biscuits. kind of hard to beat.