Pressure cooker Catalan style chickpea stew

This chickpea stew is one of my favorite legume dishes, and we make it more or less every other week. I recently learned that this particular stew is called "Garbanzos a la catalana", or, in English, "Chickpea stew Catalan style". Cataluña (in English often translated as Catalonia) is a region on the north-east side of Spain, right next to the Mediterranean Sea and the borderline with France. Little did I know that this stew apparently originated there, I just called it "My mom's chickpea stew".

This dish takes some time to make, but it's worth every minute of it, in my opinion. I use my Crock-Pot Multicooker for this, but you can use any other type of pressure cooker, even a manual one. This dish contains egg, but you can make this dish vegan by not adding it. 

Ingredients:

• 300-400g dry chickpeas (10-14 ounces).
• 1 egg
• 1 onion
• 1 potato
• 1 tomato
• 2 garlic clovers
• Bread
• Raw almonds to fry (a handfull, I always eyeball this).
• 800ml-1 litre of water (27-33,8 american fluid ounces).
• Parsley (preferably fresh parsley)
• Salt
• 1 concentrated stock (optional).

The very first step is to put our dry chickpeas in water and let them get soaked. You should do this around 8 hours before you start cooking, so I typically put them the night before. 

Once they've been soaking for a few hours, squish them with your hands and remove a few of the skins. They should come off fairly easily. 

Boil an egg beforehand. Some people like to boil several eggs at the same time, so they have enough  for the week, but that's not my case. Let it cool down.

If you want to, you can boil the water you're going to use and add a cube of concentrated broth. If you do so, do it at the same time as the next step. However, this is completely optional. I would still recommend that the water you use isn't cold, but rather lukewarm or warm. 

Fry your almonds until they are brown. I don't use a specific measure for this, but around a handful or handful and a half. Be careful not to burn them! Set aside and let them cool down.

Fry some bread. This is also something that I eyeball, but around 4 loafs (keep in mind that here we buy the bread in a bar). Once is cooked, set aside and let it cool down.

Take your fried bread, almonds, a clover of garlic and some fresh parsley and blend them together. You can use a food processor or a hand blender. This mixture is known as picada. Read more about picada here.

Peel the boiled egg, cut it open and add the yolk to the mixture. Blend it for a few seconds. Save the whites for later. 

Now it's time to start using our multicooker. If you don't have one, you can just do this using a regular pot or pan. 

Start by cutting and onion as small as you can and set aside.

Cut a clover of garlic as small as you can and mix it with the onion.

Cook the onion in your pot. Because I'm using the multicooker, I'm using the sauté option with low temperature. 

Peel and cut a potato. You don't need to cut it too small. I'm cutting it by making a small incision and breaking it with my hands.

Add it to the pot and let it cook for a few minutes. 

Wash and cut a tomato as small as you can. I don't peel it, but you can do so if you want to. If you have trouble cutting it very small, you can use a grater. 

Add it to the pot and stir. This is also a great moment to add some salt. 

Add the almond and bread mixture (aka, picada) to the pot and stir.

Remove the water from the chickpeas, add them to the pot and stir. 

Add the water to the pot. You may put more or less water depending on how thick you want the consistency to be. Because I usually make this the day before in the evening, I usually put 1 liter, but if it's to eat the same day, 800ml-900ml would be enough. 

Stir the pot once last time and turn off the heat. Put the lid back on and select the menu "Stew" or cook in high pressure for 35 minutes. 

Once is cooked, let the pressure release by itself. Of course, if you're in a hurry you can do it manually, just be careful. This is what we should have. 

Remember those whites that we set aside earlier? Cut them in small pieces, add them to the pot and stir. 

Serve while hot and enjoy this delicious stew. 

Note: if your chickpeas feel quite hard, next time add hot water instead of cold or lukewarm water. 

I hope you guys enjoyed and feel tempted to try this recipe. Is a bit time-consuming, but it's so delicious that is totally worth it. 

My next post should be up around mid April. It will be one of my all-time favorite rice recipes. Spoiler alert: it's not paella.

I hope you guys are staying safe and healthy, and I'll see you next month. 

M.C.