The good... and the ugly

 I cooked a completely delicious dinner last night, but it's so hideous that I'm saving it for the second half of this post lest I scare you off. I don't usually care a lot about the way food looks (as my food photography of the past year testifies), but this was... bad.

Fortunately, tonight's dinner is a warm salad which is actually pretty, and tastes nice, so it should balance out. This is another Home Cookery Year spring recipe, and it's very simple and good for right now in the seasonal food availability. I fully endorse it. Super green goodness.

 

You will need: 

• Purple sprouting broccoli, steamed
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• Peas, cooked
• Spring onions, roughly chopped
• Leaves from a nice round lettuce or similar
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• I also randomly had some spare dill, which was in no way a bad idea
  

Add the spring onions and peas to a pan with a little oil and seasoning, and cook them till the onion is to your liking - quite a while, imo.  Then serve on the lettuce and broccoli, with the dressing.

Ah yes, the dressing. A little light vinegar, a grated garlic clove, a tsp of mustard, a pinch of sugar... and 100g of clotted cream. 

Look, I never said this was healthy. But it's so, so nice. A lovely thick dressing, but not claggy like mayo can be. Hurrah for it!

But if you don't fancy this, last night's dinner is a classic. I've been looking for a proper chickpea and spinach recipe after a few brilliant tapas over the years, but all the ones I've tried have been a bit halfhearted. This, fabulously tasty (another one from Andalusia, which I've now had 2 good recipes from in a week and may have to take back my allegation it's no use.

I think this one was helped by me having a (spendy) proper jar of chickpeas, which are so nice you'd easily eat them without any faff. But it's a really delicious version and one I'll make again. So long as I'm only making it for me. There's something really grim about someone looking at your cooking when it's genuinely hideous. (Even my poor party bunny on the lawn, which was a joke, made me slightly defensive.) 

The key to this is a proper ground almonds, breadcrumbs, cumin, cayenne mix. Which is made from fried stale bread and a handful of blanched almonds and as such, knackered my blender, so I only partly mixed it. This did not help. 

The base of this is the inevitable softened onion, with plenty of chopped tomatoes then added and cooked down for about 20 minutes. I had to whizz that up with my part-blended almonds and bread to get the texture down. I was a bit short of tomatoes, so it's a bit less liquid than it should be. This also did not help.

Returned to the pan, chickpeas and their liquid added and... 

I've never made something that looks so much like puke tbh. 

It's a tiny bit better when you wilt the spinach in. But not much.

But it's so, so delicious. Honestly. One of the nicest things I've made in weeks. I'll try it again with a bit more tomato to make it a bit saucier.