Turn Canned Chickpeas Into A Spanish-Style Side Dish By Adding This Leafy Green From Your Fridge
If you've got a can or two of chickpeas sitting in your pantry, here's one flavorful and healthy dish that can use them up: Spanish-style espinacas con garbanzos (spinach with chickpeas). In fact, there are a few different ways to make it, so it may be one of those recipes worth returning to, to try some variations.
As the name implies, the primary other ingredient you'll need on hand is some spinach. In its simplest version, the dish otherwise leans mostly on pantry staples: Onion and garlic cooked in some olive oil, before adding paprika (ideally, smoked), spinach, and chickpeas (no cooking needed). It's lightning fast, too, requiring under half an hour.
However, you can get more elaborate with it: The traditional version throws in a paste of fried bread and garlic, which is mashed up with sherry vinegar and spices like cumin, and cayenne. The paste adds some body to the dish and apparently helps the liquid cling to the spinach to give it some heft. This version doesn't take much longer: You'll just fry up a slice of bread in oil and then blend it with the garlic and spices, although if speed is the goal, the blender and extra steps will slow you down a little. Some versions use tomato: This isn't really a tomato-based stew, so you could add just a little paste in, perhaps along with the bread mixture.
Some history and other tips
Garbanzos con espinacas are closely associated with Seville, in southern Spain. It stems from Moorish style cooking centuries ago, as Muslims brought Spinach to Andalusia in the medieval era. Paprika was a later addition, as it arrived in Spain from the Americas later on. Since it has no meat, it's especially popular around Lent. The dish is often served in tapas bars, as a full plate that's meant to be shared among others. If you visit Seville, you can drop by the city's oldest bar (open since 1670), where a slow-cooked version is available: Spinach is fried for 30 minutes, and then simmered with the bread paste for four hours before adding chickpeas.
Beyond the aforementioned tomato and bread options for the dish, another way it varies is in the ratios of chickpeas to spinach. In the "classic" version, spinach dominates, although some versions flip the recipe and put the emphasis on chickpeas (in which case, the name might be switched to "garbanzos con espinacas"). It's often served with fried bread or ideally some kind of crusty loaf to help soak up the juices. The recipe's soupiness is another debated topic: The traditional version from Seville keeps things fairly dry, but some others are closer to saucy stew thanks to added broth.
If you want to bulk it up, one go-to is to add a fried egg to the final dish. Another version adds cod; this can be fresh or the preserved, salted cod you'll see on the Iberian peninsula, although it's not strictly the same dish.
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