Chickpeas with mushrooms and rice

Sharp-eyed observers may notice a family resemblance to one or two other recipes on this blog.  I make no apologies. Mushrooms and chickpeas were made for each other and are complemented superbly by tarragon and green peppercorns. 

 

Mushrooms, a sublime gift from a benign Providence, are becoming more and more easily available to cruising people. Because of this, I include them rather more often than I would have done had I written this blog 15 years ago - if there were blogs, 15 years ago. While canned mushrooms are a sad travesty of the real thing, ‘freeze-dried’ ones are a very acceptable substitute and, where available, are not outrageously expensive. While they don’t need pre-soaking, it does them no harm. If you're cooking the chickpeas from scratch, rather than using a tin, put the dried mushrooms in at the same time. Half a cup of mushrooms would need about the same water. You can of course buy such exotics as porcini or Chinese dried mushrooms, although I find the latter rather too chewy and, particularly the dark ones, slightly overpowering unless diced quite small. On the other hand, those packets of Chinese, dried 'white' mushrooms are wonderfully versatile and have a lovely flavour profile.

Serves 2

 

Ingredients 

1/2 cup chick peas, soaked

3/4 cup rice

2½ cups water

2 tbsp olive oil

6 or 8 fresh mushrooms OR 1/3 cup freeze dried mushrooms

1 onion, chopped

1 clove of garlic, chopped

1 tsp tarragon

2 tsp green peppercorns, crushed

salt

 

Method:

• Put the rice and chick peas in the pressure cooker and cook for 15 minutes. If you are using dried mushrooms, put these in at the same time and add an extra 1/2 cup of water.
• While these are cooking, heat the oil in another saucepan, slice the mushrooms and chop up the onion and garlic. Put them all into the pan and cook over a medium heat, turning frequently to prevent them from burning. Be gentle – you don’t want to break up the mushroom slices.
• Using a pestle and mortar, crush the peppercorns and grind the tarragon in with them. (If you don’t have a pestle, crush the peppercorns in a shallow bowl with the back of a spoon. Be careful, they tend to fly about a bit.) Add these to the vegetables and stir to mix everything together. Lower the heat to a minimum.
• When the chickpeas, etc have finished cooking, reduce pressure gradually and then empty the contents of the pressure cooker into the saucepan. Mix carefully, and leave for a few minutes so that the flavours mingle before serving the food.

Variations: 

• If you’re not fond of ‘spicy’ food, you may find 2 tsp of green peppercorns a bit much. In that case, reduce the amount to 1 tsp.
• If you substitute 1/4 cup wild rice for brown rice, you get a luxurious version, which you can happily serve to any guests.
• If you don't happen to have green peppercorns aboard, use black
• Thyme can be substituted for tarragon: it goes well with mushrooms, but will, of course, impart a completely different flavour to the dish.

 

You will find many more rice recipes here