Monday 8 May 2006

lav·en·der mi·so mar·i·nat·ed chick·peas

I have been looking forward to the next installment of Paper Chef and I was very pleased when Kevin of Seriously Good announced the 17th edition of the ever popular Paper Chef.

The ingredients for this round are chickpeas, lavender, miso and "something local".

I had some chickpeas soaking in anticipation of a marinated antipasto style salad. Naturally enough I knew I had to convert the intended garlic-lemon-ginger marinade into something involving lavender and miso - but what about the local ingredient?

Well, you might have noticed that I have been getting into gardening . . . so imagine how great it felt to decide that the local ingredient was going to have been grown less than 10 meters from my front door. Yes! The spring onions were ready to be pulled. And so that is what I did to complete the challenge of a local ingredient.

I made the chickpeas like this :

Lavender miso marinated chickpeas with local spring onions

1 cup of dried chickpeas
1 teaspoon of miso paste
juice of a lemon
2 tablespoons of olive oil
a good pinch of lavender*
salt and pepper
spring onions

Soak the chickpeas in plenty of water and a pinch of baking soda for at least 24 hours. Drain, rinse and simmer in fresh water for approximately and hour and a half or until tender.

Blend the miso with the lemon juice, olive oil, lavender and salt and pepper to taste.

Drain the chickpeas and while still warm mix with the dressing. Slice the spring onions finely and mix into the chickpeas. Leave for at least 24 hours to marinate ; the longer the better. Serve as part of an antipasto platter or as a salad to begin a meal.

*I used organic culinary lavender from Lavender Impressions which was grown in Levin. Levin is less than 100 miles from Wellington so the lavender is local too!

2 comments:

Kevin said...

Emma,

Great idea.

Anonymous said...

I like this one! I really like cold dishes. Especially with summer coming on.