Alex's Portuguese Chorizo Chickpea Dish

Wow, what a day! Jen has had a bad case of the stomach flu/food poisoning since about 4am this morning. She has only just perked up and is currently eating some ramen noodles. And Alexander (Lee) McQueen has died. So normally Im not that affected by celebrity drama stuff, but out of all the designers I think he is really cool. The stuff he has in his Bicester Village shop is really cool (I want this cool pair of brogues and this luggage that looks like a rib cage). Am already planning my trip out there to buy up all the good stuff... If only I wasn't an impoverished student.

But apart from that, things are going well. PhD write up is going swimmingly, weather is nice but cold, so all in all pretty good.

Right, now to the point of this blog. I have this friend (Alex), who I work with, who gave me the recipe and inspiration for this dish. I guess one would think from the title that he is Portuguese... you couldn't be more wrong. He is actually from Newcastle and looks eerily like Harry Potter. But he used to share a house with a Portuguese guy, etc, etc... and hence the dish.

Ingredients:

1*400g tin of chopped tomatoes

1*400g tin of chickpeas

1 onion

3 cloves of garlic

chorizo

a couple of fresh tomatoes and/or a bell pepper

paprika

ground cumin (optional)

tumeric (optional)

some honey or brown sugar

some fresh parsley

salt and pepper

Directions:

Chop up the onion, slice the garlic finely, and chop the chorizo into bite size chunks (the exact size is up to you). Throw them all into a pan and start frying. You can add a glug of olive oil if desired to aid this process, but the chorizo should release a magic oil that makes everything taste sublime. Once the onions have turned golden and silky add the tin of tomatoes and some chopped fresh toms and/or the chopped bell pepper. Throw in the spices and sugar (I haven't put any fixed amounts as I have not yet perfected this dish, they are usually just a rough guide anyway as I rarely actually measure stuff out). Salt and pepper to taste. Bring the mixture to boil and leave to simmer for a few mins. Once you are ready to eat, add the chickpeas. They normally dont need more than 10 mins. Actually this part can be tricky bc you don't want them to be undercooked and if you cook them too long they can get mushy. When you serve add the fresh parsley on top. MmmmMmmm. Good with some bread on the side.

Taste: 7/10

Price: 4/10

Difficulty: 3/10

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