Sundays with Sparky - Cranberry-Clementine Cloud Pie

Last Sunday was National Pie Day (as opposed to what I guess is Universal Pi Day, which you can bet we will be celebrating on this blog!)  and I had to find a pie more exciting than the American Pie Council's top five (can you guess them without clicking the link?)  I rounded up Sparky and his buddy Zuko and I put them to work.

Well, I sort of put them to work.  You see, I went temporarily insane:  I had a soon-to-go-south bag of clementines and an equally suspicious looking bag of cranberries, so I thought I'd make two citrus curd fillings and top that with meringue.  The boys were happily playing kill-the-pillow, or smash-the-tower or steal-the-superball or something equally raucus upstairs, and I realized discretion was the better part of valor - I was going to have to do the footwork myself.  So I did.

First, I made "everyday" piecrust - the one I keep in the freezer to roll out for "OMG, you volunteered me to bake WHAT?" desserts.  Our other, more formal, holiday piecrust tastes better, but this is a satisfying and flaky make-ahead crust that works right from the freezer.  The Pioneer Woman did such a careful job of blogging it that I'll send you there for the recipe.  I tossed three carefully-squashed piecrust-blobs in the freezer and started the boys on zesting clementines.

This they did with, well, zest.  Sparky and Zuko are good cooking companions, taking turns zesting and juicing the clementines.  It took about eight clementines before we had the 2 tablespoons of required zest, but we wound up with enough juice for everybody to have a little refreshment before we went on to the next step.

Since we have lovely tiny 6" pie plates, we made 4 pies instead of just one, so Sparky and Zuko each got to roll out piecrust, put it in the form, and dock it all over by pricking it with a fork.  These were baked at 350 for about 7 minutes until they were lightly golden.

I then sent them off to play and worked on the curd fillings (to make gathering your ingredients easier, you will need a total of 6 eggs for this recipe:)






Cranberry Curd:

12 oz bag of cranberries
1/4 cup water
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
3 egg yolks

Clementine Curd:

Zest from 6-8 clementines (or 2 tbsp fresh orange zest)
7 tablespoons juice from the clementines (or oranges)
3 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour

Start with the cranberries:  pour them into a saucepan and add the water and bring to a boil.  Cook on medium heat until the cranberries soften and burst, about 10 minutes.  Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.  Pour the cranberries into a blender and blend on high until they are completely pulverized.  Place the blender jar in the refrigerator and allow to cool.

While they are cooling, move on to the clementines:  using an electric mixer, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until they are light and fluffy.  Add the zest, juice and flour and mix to combine.  Set aside.

When the cranberries are cool enough to touch, (basically, cool enough that they won't scramble your eggs) put the blender jar back on the blender and blend the egg yolks and flour into the cranberries.

You now should have a cooled piecrust and two fillings.  Make the meringue:

In your stand mixer or with an electric mixer, whisk the 6 remaining egg whites with 1 cup of sugar until it makes stiff, glossy peaks.  This will take a considerable amount of time, more than if you were whisking plain egg whites because the sugar will at first make it heavier.  If you are having trouble (e.g. using less-than-fresh eggs,) add 1/8 tsp of cream of tartar.  If you're still having trouble, add powdered egg whites, 1/4 tsp at a time.  Keep whipping and don't worry, despite the vagaries of chickens, humidity, and the tides - eventually you will have a glossy, marshmallowy mass.

At this point, I called the boys back and had them attempt to pour the curds in a yin-yang shape into our piecrusts.  Unfortunately for me, the cranberry mixture was much more viscous than the clementine mixture, and so we wound up with a sort of crescent-moon shape which everyone was quite happy with, anyway (Zuko said it looked like the Waterbending emblem.)

Now, do NOT do what we did here - BEFORE you put the meringue on the pies, put the filled pies in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes, or until the clementine juice starts to thicken.  Trust me; what's pictured here is WRONG (sigh.)  We wound up having to re-cook the pie after I pulled it.

After the pie filling sets slightly, pile the meringue on top - making sure it touches the edge of the pie dish, so it won't shrink when cooked.  (Zuko did his best to emulate the Avatar symbol.)

Bake the meringue for an additional 20 minutes, until it is beautiful and golden-brown.  Cool completely and serve!

The Food Desert Project - Tuna and Cannelini Salad

Sometimes, I'm making a food desert recipe and I don't even know it!  Today, I was home on my own and needed a quick lunch - so I headed for the pantry as usual.  Sometimes it's just as simple as dumping stuff into a bowl:

1 pouch tuna
1 can cannelini beans, drained
2 tbsp capers
1 tbsp black olives, chopped
2 canned roasted red peppers, chopped
4 canned artichokes, sliced
Simple vinaigrette.

Simply toss the ingredients in a bowl, drizzle with vinaigrette, and serve!  Enjoy!

Policy Point Wednesday - Misleading Advertising, Packaging and Practices

Recently, both McDonalds and Taco Bell made national news for promoting products whose names suggested something more wholesome than the actual ingredients.  McDonalds lost the right to sell its original recipe Maple and Fruit Oatmeal in the state of Vermont - there, the recipe now contains pure maple syrup instead of sugar and "maple flavor," as it does everywhere else.  In a similar action, Taco Bell is being sued for calling the beef-and-filler mixture in its tacos "ground beef" when it contains water and starches from oats, wheat and corn (interestingly, Taco Bell is planning a counter-suit, claiming the non-beef ingredients are a "proprietary blend of spices and seasonings."  I'll be curious to see how this pans out.)

Standards for advertising are more lax in restaurants than they are in packaged foods, but even those can be misleading:  if you're not an ingredients-list reader, you might be surprised to find that a picture of blueberries on a package of muffins or cereal doesn't indicate there are blueberries inside.  There is no regulation on how an advertiser may present "blueberry crunchelets" or other manufactured blueberry analog, but at least the ingredients label will show there aren't any blueberries.  Another disturbing trend: structure/function claims -  a company is allowed to advertise a relationship between a food and a normal body structure or function (e.g. fiber reduces cholesterol) even if this relationship is unproven.  Another deceptive practice: using the FDA's guidelines for labeling trans fats (less than .5 grams per serving don't have to appear on a label,) girl scout cookies are labeled "trans-fat free," even though they do contain trans fats.

Unfortunately, fresh foods don't always come with labels - some avid-cook friends of mine were recently shocked to discover that the vibrant orange zest they'd been using from fresh oranges was more than likely colored with a non-food-safe dye!  Or, my personal pet peeve:  chickens can be labeled "natural" and "fresh" even if they have been injected with up to 15% of a saline solution (so you are paying for salty water instead of meat.)  Unfortunately, the food industry is geared more towards profit than towards the health of its consumers - it pays to read labels and ask questions!

Sundays with Sparky - Dolsot Calzones

After our successful experiment in baking bread with our Dolsot, Sparky and I decided to make some lunch.  Using the leftover dough from last week, we rolled out a large round of dough and draped it inside our Dolsot, which had been warmed slightly on the stove and oiled well with olive oil.

I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story:

Sparky added a layer of tomato sauce to the bottom of the calzone, which we topped with a layer of pesto:

Then he added quartered, drained canned artichokes and fresh quartered mushrooms:

Then a layer of mini pepperoni:

This was all topped with a heavy layer of shredded mozzarella cheese, with a bit of parmesan for flavor, and the top was crimped tightly, and the whole thing spritzed with olive oil:

The lid was placed on the Dolsot, and  the entire thing went in a 400 degree oven - NOT preheated.  After about 15 minutes, I removed the lid.  It baked for about another 15 minutes, until the top was golden brown and we could hear escaping cheese sizzling inside the bowl (the smell was incredible.)

Ain't she a beauty?  The bottom came out lovely and pebbly-crisp, too.

We cut the Calzone into quarters, and shared it for lunch - believe me, it tasted as good as it looks!

The Food Desert Project - Buffalo Chicken Wing Soup for the Soul

When I first posted this recipe on LTHForum, some readers reacted with horror:  used bones?  I am apparently not alone in horrifying friends with my Barbara Kafka-like tendency to "snatch bones from plates."  However, as time-honored as the tradition of using bones in soup is, I haven't found specific food-safety advice: I did send a request for information to the FSIS, and will update this post* when I get an answer.

In the meantime - feel free to share this meal with someone you'd swap spit with anyway; it's infinitely better (and better for you) than canned stock or a bouillon cube.  For a Food Desert dweller, this recipe ranges a little outside the realm of drug/dollar stores...but fast-food places, particularly chicken places, are one of those "fringe foods" of the food desert that I've written about.  This is a way to get a bit of healthy mileage out of a not-so-healthy meal.

Stock:

Leftover chicken bones from a large order of chicken wings, rinsed
(Or leftovers from a fried chicken meal, including breast, back and wing bones - you need at least enough bones to fill a gallon ziploc bag - we usually eat wings, put the bones in said ziploc, freeze them, and make soup later)
2 ribs of celery from said order of wings - and 2 carrot sticks if avail. (or a pinch of celery seed)
1/4 cup of canned diced tomatoes, or spaghetti sauce, or fresh grape tomatoes, halved
1 bay leaf
1 tbsp onion flakes
1 tsp lemon juice or vinegar
Water
Salt to taste (start with 2 tsp, taste when it's close to finished and add salt as needed)
Pepper to taste

Put all the ingredients together in the largest pot you have (or your slow cooker; cook on high for 8 hours) and add water, covering at least 2" deeper than the depth of the bones.  Simmer for 4-5 hours, taste and adjust the seasoning.  Strain, discarding solids. (Before I got my lovely cast-iron casserole for Christmas, I would do this in my multi-pot with the pasta drainer insert; all you have to do is lift out the insert and toss everything in it)

I usually freeze my stock in an ice-cube tray and transfer the "soup cubes" to ziploc bags or another freezer-safe container.  Sparky has a horror of hot foods; "soup cubes" are a handy way to cool down soup without watering it down.

Of course, it can go right into the final dish:

Simple Buffalo Chicken Noodle Soup

To every 2 cups of stock, add 1/4 cup of canned diced tomatoes, 1 tsp of wine vinegar, and 1/2 cup of dry pasta.  In keeping with the Buffalo Wing theme, season with a tiny pinch of celery seed and some chili flakes.

Cook according to directions on pasta package.  If you've got any meat left over, add it just before the pasta is cooked.

* The Ask Karen service got back to me the same day!  Nice work, FSIS!

Here's the transcript:

Subject 

Is it safe to make stock from leftover bones that have come in contact with someone's mouth?

Discussion Thread  Response (Ask Karen) 01/21/2011 05:26 PM 

Thank you for writing Ask Karen.
If you heat the stock to 160 degrees you will kill any bacteria that might have gotten on the bones.

Sincerely,
the Ask Karen Team

Policy Point Wednesday - The Plate System

Ever since the advent of the Food Pyramid, critics have been complaining that the overly complicated symbol doesn't help Americans eat better.  Enter the plate system, designed to save the day!

This system simply divides a plate into parts, and suggests what foods should go where.  Of course, the plate system is not immune to lobbyists:  The produce-lobby-sponsored site Fruits & Veggies, More Matters, offers a somewhat simplistic plate, half of which contains fruits and vegetables.  Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group supported by PETA offers a plate system containing no animal products at all.

However, in researching this post, I found excellent versions of the plate system:  In particular, I like this one by Family Education, (an educational website owned by education-media giant Pearson,) which goes a step further.  It divides the plate into several different-sized segments, and specifies what should go in each one.  The largest segment is for "non-starchy" vegetables, the second includes dairy, starchy vegetables (including beans and corn!) fruits and grains, the next smallest for lean protiens and one tiny section remains for fats.  IMO, it's a much better visual plan for a diet (and I'm busted for counting peas and beans in my half-plate system!)

The American Diabetic Association offers a similar plate-system, including the step of measuring the plate itself - a critical issue in addressing portion control.  Their system is similar to the Family Education one, but they offer a list of specific examples of which foods belong in each category.  Finally, tableware manufacturer Royal Staffordshire offers the The Diet Plate, containing a visual map of these principles...looking at the instructions, it seems a bit overcomplicated, but the pictures do offer a good visual guide.

We've adopted the "half your plate" policy in our house, and have found it to be an effective way of making sure we are following the dietary guidelines - happy eating!

Sundays with Sparky - Dolsot Bread: Stone Bowl Yeast Rolls

Christmas Eve found our little family at the local H-Mart, picking up last-minute grocery items for our holiday feast.  My husband suddenly left Sparky and I to admire the live octopus in the big fishtank, and returned with a heavy, lumpy package that he told me not to touch.

Of course, my curiosity was piqued: what could he have bought me?  A wok? A pet?  A cake? A new especially-lumpy variety of cheese?  On Christmas Day, the lumpy package was revealed to be a Korean Dol Sot, or stone bowl!  Yay!

Sheepishly, my husband said "I was looking for a jewelry case...but then I saw this and thought, 'she could put jewelry in there' ...or...cook in it...yea, you're probably going to cook in it, aren't you."  Probably going to cook in it?  (Seriously - you read this blog - what did you think I was going to do with it? ;-) ) God bless my husband, who knows I might well convert even a conventional jewelry case into a cooking device.

Dol Sot BiBimBap is one of my favorite dishes EVER!  BiBimBap (Bap meaning rice in Korean, while bibim can be translated as mixed-up, or mishmash) is a traditional homestyle Korean dish, designed to artfully and tastefully dress up leftovers, especially the Korean vegetable garnishes called panchan.  They're served arranged over rice, and covered with a lightly-fried egg; then the whole thing is mixed together with a spicy sauce - a bowlful of crunchy, healthy goodness.  Dolsot BiBimBap takes this meal a step further: the Dolsot is greased with sesame oil, heated to screaming-hot, and the BiBimBap is arranged so the rice on the bottom gets crispy and delicious.

Sparky had asked for plain white rice to go with our traditional English-style Standing Rib Roast...so of course, I immediately pressed the Dolsot into service, and as soon as it was seasoned, I made some plain white rice and seared it in the bowl on my stovetop.  It was delicious, containing nothing more than rice and a small amount of sesame oil, and it went surprisingly well with our fairly traditional meal.

But this post isn't about Christmas.  This post is about suddenly discovering a...a unitasker has made its way into one's tiny urban kitchen.  NOOoooo!  After scouring the internet, I discovered that a Dolsot has one job, and one job only: to crisp-up precooked rice (robo-translators being what they are, it's quite possible that there are websites with better information than I was able to find; so any of you who know better, please comment!)  Delectable as crispy rice is...I can't dedicate the cabinet space to a seven-pound solid-stone rice crisper poised to leap off a shelf and break my toe at any moment.

So, Sparky and I put our heads together and thought.  We thought about shoes, and ships...we thought about cabbages and kings...we thought about the World Series in 1975...and I suddenly thought of pizza stones!  Of course!  The bowl shape of our Dolsot was perfect for crisping rice - so it should be perfect for crisping bread, too!  Eureka!

So I looked up recipes for pull-apart dinner rolls.  I heated the Dolsot slightly on the stovetop so it would be warm for the rise, and combined the following in our KitchenAid mixer:

1 tablespoon light brown sugar
1 1/3 cups very warm water

1 package or 2 1/4 teaspoon of dry active yeast

I waited for five minutes, until the yeast was frothy.  Then I added the following:

1 1/2 teaspoons olive oil
4 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt

I mixed them for 10 minutes until I had a smooth, elastic dough.  This I covered and set aside on our stovetop (a warm place) until it doubled in size and, when poked, the indentation remains - about half an hour.

I then asked Sparky to punch it down, which he approached with his usual sense of literality and vigor:

Sparky then patted and rolled the dough out into a rectangle and cut it into squares with a pizza cutter, while I prepared a "bath" of garlic oil:

1/4 cup of olive oil, 3 chopped cloves of garlic (note: do NOT keep raw garlic in oil unless you plan to cook it) and 1 tbsp chopped fresh herbs (in this case, rosemary and parsley,) heated gently in a saucepan until the garlic began to sizzle, and then removed from the heat and poured into a ramekin for easy roll-bathing.

Sparky then pulled each square into a ball by its corners, bathed each in the garlic oil and piled them randomly in the slightly warm Dolsot.

The remainder of the oil was poured over the top. The Dolsot was covered and the dough allowed to double in size, again about half an hour.

At this point, the entire thing, lid and all, was put into an oven preheated to 300 degrees, which was then raised to 375. After about 15 minutes, the lid was removed, and the bread baked uncovered for another 15 minutes.

Yess! Our objective achieved, we basked in the warmth of our rice-crisper/bread baker, and especially enjoyed the pebbly-crisp bottoms of our garlic pull-apart rolls.

The Food Desert Project - Knoephla Soup (Cream of Potato Soup with Dumplings)

It's sometimes surprising when a food-desert-worthy recipe will pop up.  Just this morning, I saw an interesting link on my Serious Eats FB page: nom.icanhascheezburger posted this very interesting map of "food by state."


see more My Food Looks Funny

Now, I pride myself on having a widely diverse palate, and I've sampled most of the delicacies posted therein...but I had never heard of either of the foods listed for the Dakotas.  After a bit of googling, I discovered that Knoephla Soup was something to explore for this project.  Knoephla (apparently pronounced nip-fla) is a diminutive of the German word knopf, or button, and is a type of blob or button-shaped spaetzle.  The dish originates with the Russian/German settlers in the Northern US.

Knoephla Dough

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 egg, beaten
6 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tsp black pepper

Soup base:

2 tbsp minced dried onions
1 tbsp dried parsley
2 -3 tbsp white wine
1 tbsp butter
3 cups chicken (or vegetable) broth
1 small can of carrots, drained and diced

2 cups instant mashed potato flakes
3 cups milk
Salt and pepper to taste.

First, begin by rehydrating your aromatics: put the onion and parsley into your soup pot and pour over the wine.  Bring to a boil and then turn off the heat.  Add the butter and allow to sit while you make the knoephla.



Beat the egg with 5 tbsp of milk until frothy.  Add the flour and mix well; you will have a very stiff dough.  Roll the dough into a long snake and cut into button-size chunks.

 Add the chicken broth and carrots to the aromatics and bring to a boil, and then drop the knoephla in a few at a time, stirring lightly between each addition.

When the knoephla rise to the surface, add the potato flakes, milk, and season to taste with salt and pepper.  It isn't traditional as far as I know, but we garnished our soup with some shredded cheddar cheese - and liked it!

Policy Point Wednesday - The New Food Safety Law

Foodsafety.gov just posted an excellent overview of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, which was just passed over the holidays.  This law will give the FDA broader jurisdiction over food safety issues, including the power to demand a recall (currently, this power is limited to baby formula - all other recalls are voluntary on the part of the manufacturers and distributors.)  It also provides for more inspections of foods,depending on the available resources of the FDA to provide inspectors.

However, there are some important limits on this law - the most important being that the roles of the FDA and USDA remain the same.  This means that meat, eggs, poultry and dairy - which have been implicated in food borne illness in the recent past - are not subject to mandatory recalls.

While this law is far from perfect - and, as is typical of recent legislation, it mandates change without providing for funding - it is, at least, an important step forward.  The biggest change this legislation offers is one of philosophy: it "puts prevention up front for FDA. For the first time, FDA will have a legislative mandate to require comprehensive, science-based preventive controls across the food supply. Under the Act, implementation of mandatory preventive controls for food facilities and compliance with mandatory produce safety standards will be required."

Sundays with Sparky - Remembering Haiti - Pain Patate Hand Pies

Our little corner of the world has just as much Haiti in it as it has Mexico, Colombia, Jamaica or Eastern Europe: we live less than a block from a Haitian church, and the only Haitian restaurants in Chicagoland, so far as I know, are right around the corner.  Many of our neighbors are of Haitian descent, and so the earthquake affected them immediately and directly.  Nearly one year ago, I'd been casting about for something more meaningful than adding an extra $5 to our grocery bill.  So it was with gratitude that I read about a bake-sale benefit, organized by My Vegetable Blogger, Joanna Miller.  (Thanks also to Martha Bayne for the heads-up!)

At the time, I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to offer Sparky a shot at some social action, so off to the Rogers Park Fruit Market (a local market specializing in Caribbean goods) I went.  I'd done a bit of research into Haitian sweets, and discovered a recipe that fascinated me: Pain Patate, which translates into "potato bread."  Rather than bread, it's actually a custard of rich white-sweet-potato (also known as boniato, or Japanese yam;) fortunately, for the abovementioned reasons, boniatos are readily available in my neighborhood.  Since I needed something that could be sold by the piece, I decided to make Pain Patate Hand Pies, using the pastry recipe I love so much from Smitten Kitchen.

Pain Patate Hand Pies
Pastry mise:
5 Cups of flour
4 sticks of butter, frozen and diced
1 cup sour cream
2 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 cup water
1 tsp salt.

First, we blended the flour, salt, and frozen butter together until it resembled coarse meal, using a stiff whisk and our fingers.  We then made a well in the center and added the liquid ingredients, stirring them together and then folding them into the dry until it made a heavy dough. (we kind of threw caution to the wind and assumed we would need all the liquid; we were lucky to be right.)  This went into the fridge to chill while we ran some errands.

Next, we peeled the boniatos, cubed them, and steamed them until they were mashable (I decided to create a hybrid of a couple recipes I found online) to make 2 cups of mashed bonaitos.  This was blended with 2 large mashed bananas.

To the 2 cups of mashed boniato, and 2 large mashed bananas, we added the following:





3 medium eggs,
1 cup brown sugar
1 12-oz can of evaporated milk
1 tsp fresh grated ginger root
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp fresh grated nutmeg
zest of one lime
1 13.5 oz can of coconut milk
1 tsp ground cinnamon
(To fill the pies, you will also need 1 cup of raisins and about a cup of rum to add to the finished custard)

This was blended well with an immersion blender.  The boniatos are quite interesting: they have a heartier, starchier texture than white potatoes, but taste very like Idaho potatoes with a good spoonful of sugar added.  In future, I'd like to try this dish with American sweet potatoes, but I think these offer the other flavorings a chance to shine.  The somewhat soupy filling was heated over a double boiler until it thickened slightly (don't overcook, you want it to be a heavy liquid.)

Cover 1 cup raisins with rum, microwave for 30 seconds or until warm, and leave them to soak as you continue to work with the potato mixture.

After the filling was mixed, we rolled out the dough, using our handy hand-pie forms to cut it into circles and create a divot to accept the filling.  Pies were filled, first with the drained raisins, then with the thickened filling.  They baked at 375 for 20 minutes.


If you enjoyed this post, please remember that Haiti has a long way to go, and continues to need support.  You can donate directly to aid organizations that are working there; these pies were originally sold to support Partners In Health, a charity that has been working in Haiti for 20 years - but here is a more complete list of charities supporting the relief efforts in Haiti.

The Food Desert Project - Pasta E Ceci (Chickpea Soup)

It's decidedly winter in our little corner of the world, and to me, winter means dipping your bread in a warm bowl of comfort.  In my opinion, a hearty winter soup is not just for your body, it revitalizes your soul, too.  Creamy, rich soups don't need to be laden with calories and dairy - here's a soup that's lightning-fast, hearty, healthy - and can be made vegan if need be.  It's a relative of the famous tomato-y Pasta e Fagioli (or Pasta Fazool) but, while this broth does contain some tomato, it gets its primary flavor and richness from chickpeas.   Nutritional Information.

One nearly constant frustration with the Food Desert Project: although rehydrating the onions and garlic in wine overnight produces the best results...I almost always forget.  This time, instead of my usual cheat of heating it in the microwave, I just started the whole thing on the stovetop with excellent results.

Combine in a saucepan:

A good drizzle of EVOO (about two teaspoons)
2 tablespoons white wine
1 tablespoon of dried minced onion
1/4 tsp granulated onion
1/4 tsp granulated garlic
1/2 tsp ground rosemary (or substitute poultry seasoning for the herbs)
1/4 tsp ground thyme
A few grinds or shakes of black pepper

Turn the heat onto high and bring to a boil.  Turn down to medium-low heat and simmer until the wine is nearly gone and the seasonings are fragrant.  Add:

3 cups stock (vegetable broth, chicken stock, beef stock - whatever you've got.  You can even substitute boullion cubes and water.)
1/4 cup of your favorite salsa (I avoid brands that use tomato paste as an ingredient)
1/2 can of drained chickpeas

Bring to a boil.  Puree the chickpeas and seasonings, either with an immersion blender or by adding to a regular blender, and taste the broth to see if you need salt.



Add:

The remainder of the drained chickpeas
Two large handfuls of mini pasta (I keep a box of mini pasta odds and ends; you could use orzo, macaroni, or even broken up spaghetti.)

Bring to a boil and cook as directed for the pasta.  Garnish with croutons made from cubed stale bread and a drizzle of EVOO, and enjoy.