Chamba Recipes

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Chamba Recipes

Farro and Chickpea Soup for Summer
(Serves 6)

From Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen, Broadway, 2007 (posted with permission of the author)

I love cooking in clay pots of all kinds, and the Chamba black clayware is no exception. It’s a beautiful material, so soft that it makes me want to cook in a gentle manner, with extra care. But that’s not because the clay isn’t strong — it is. It just gives a different feeling than metal.

Farro and chickpeas needn’t be relegated to the cold season months — they make a fine summer soup too, and they needn’t be served hot. Room temperature is good, too.

This soup takes about fifteen minutes to put together, 30 minutes to cook, but it gains in flavor if it can stand for a few hours.

Ingredients
1 cup farro, soaked 4 hours in cold water
2 to 4 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, finely diced
1 celery rib, peeled if stringy, then finely diced
2 garlic cloves chopped with a handful parsley leaves
1 teaspoon tomato paste
1 cup finely diced or crushed tomatoes, plus their juices, fresh or canned
1 15½ ounce can organic chickpeas
sea salt and freshly ground pepper

To Finish
1 small handful basil leaves, finely slivered
extra-virgin olive oil
freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Drain the farro. Warm the olive oil in a wide soup pot. Add the onion, celery, garlic-parsley mixture. Cook, stirring every so often, over medium heat until the onions are translucent and starting to soften, about 7 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste then add the tomatoes, farro, 1 teaspoon salt, and 6 cups water.

Simmer 30 minutes, covered, until the farro is tender but still toothsome. Stir in the chickpeas and their liquid. (At this point the soup can sit at room temperature for several hours, giving the flavors a chance to meld.)

Reheat the soup before serving if you wish to have it hot, or serve it at room temperature. Stir in the basil, a few drops olive oil in each bowl, and grate a little Parmesan over the top.

Cooking Rice in your Chamba Pot

For 1 cup of rice, use 1¼ cup liquid. (For 2 cups rice, use 2¼).

Sauté the rice in a little olive oil or butter in the pot for a couple of minutes. Add the broth, which should be at or above room temp. (I will sometimes microwave it for about a minute.)

Bring to a boil, cover and reduce to a simmer for 10 minutes. After ten minutes, check and see if most of the water has been absorbed. If not, cook rice another 2-5 minutes until it has.

Turn off the heat; stir the rice with a wooden spoon to fluff it up. Take a clean dish towel, wrap it around the lid tucking the corners up on top, and place back on the pot. Leave for another 10-15 minutes to steam.

The towel does two things: it creates a better seal, and it also absorbs the steam that rises so that it doesn't condense on the lid and drip back down on the rice, which would make it sticky. I have kept rice in the pot up to 45 minutes and it still stays warm.

Recipe courtesy of Stuart Cristol-Deman and Toque Blanche

Ajiaco—Colombian Chicken & Potato Stew
(Courtesy of Jennifer at www.glutenfreeinspired.com)

Ingredients & Preparation for 4 Servings
2 skinned chicken breasts with bone
2 chicken thighs skinned
1 chicken neck (optional for broth)
1 yukon gold potato, peeled and cut in ½ slices
3 russet potatoes, peeled and cut in ½ slices
8 cups of water
½ of one small yellow onion peeled, but not sliced
2 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
2 ears of corn, remove husks and cut into 2 inch segments
3 sprigs of cilantro
1 half cup dried guascas (available in Latin American food stores with Colombian products or online)
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper to taste for chicken broth

Condiments for soup
¼ cup sour cream
½ cup capers
½ ripe avocado

Fill a pot with the water, skinned chicken breasts, thighs, and neck, Yukon gold potato slices, onion slices, garlic, cilantro sprigs, bay leaf, salt and pepper. Bring the water to a boil, cook the chicken, adding salt and pepper to taste for 30 minutes. Take out the chicken breasts, cover and set aside. Maintain thighs and neck in the pot to enhance the flavor of the broth. Remove boiled onion and cilantro.

Continue to simmer the broth for another 10 minutes, breaking up the yukon gold potato to thicken the broth.

Add the sliced russet potatoes and corn on the corn on the cob pieces. Cook for another 20 minutes on medium heat until the russet potatoes are tender, but not falling to pieces.

While the potatoes and corn are cooking, break up the chicken breast into pieces, removing bone. Set aside, cover, and keep warm.

When russet potatoes are tender and corn is cooked, add the ½ cup of guascas and simmer for another 5 minutes.

Serve soup with chicken breast pieces, a dollop of sour cream and a teaspoon of capers.

As a side dish, serve white rice and a slice of avocado.

Hot Artichoke Dip
(Pauline Picchi)

Ingredients:
1 cup of mayonnaise
1 cup of grated Asiago cheese
2 cups of boiled fresh artichoke hearts
3 cloves of garlic

Directions:
In a food processor, blend all ingredients until it becomes a puree. Place into a CHAMBA serving dish. Sprinkle some Panko breadcrumbs on top, and bake for 25 minutes in 350 degree oven.
Serve with toasted Crostini or crackers.

Baked Crispy Yogurty Rice
(Eric Gower, Breakawaycook.com)

I seem to always have quite a bit of cooked rice around. My standby for leftover cooked rice is a breakaway treatment of fried rice, but something got into me today when I glanced over at the Chamba (the Colombian claypot shown in the photo). I thought that I if just combined the cooked rice with some other stuff, gave it a crust, and baked it, that it might be good. It was! Four hungry eaters polished this one off in a heartbeat, and everyone wanted more! This is sure to become a staple around here.

Into a big mixing bowl:
roughly 5 cups cooked rice (I used basmati, but any rice will do)
2 tablespoons greek yogurt
about ¼ cup tofu, squished
2 eggs
about a cup of leftover cooked, chopped vegetables: I had an onion/fennel/carrot mixture, but you could use any veggies at all
plenty of salt and pepper

Directions:
Rub some butter or olive oil into the claypot, and spoon in the rice mixture. Then take a slice of stale bread (I used a grainy hippie bread) with a teaspoon of coriander seeds and whir. Sprinkle that over the rice, and spray the whole thing with olive oil. Bake at 375 for about half an hour, or until the top is nicely browned and crispy.
Serve a slab in lieu of your usual rice (or other carb), alongside whatever else you’re having for dinner.

Swiss Chard with Black Beans and Feta Cheese
(Pauline Picchi)

Ingredients:
1 ½ tblsp. vegetable oil
1 ½ tblsp. butter
2 cloves of garlic minced
1 pinch of aleppo chili flakes
1 bunch Swiss Chard-rinsed, stems removed and cut into 1l2 inch slices
1 can of black beans, 16oz.
1 small tomato, chopped
salt and pepper to taste
1 tblsp. fresh lime juice
3 tblsp. of feta cheese

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease an 8 or 9 inch Chamba baking dish. Heat the oil and butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and aleppo chili flakes; cook and stir until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add Swiss chard, cover and cook for 4 minutes. Uncover and mix in the black beans, tomato, lime juice, salt and pepper. Cover and continue cooking until the chard is wilted, about 4 more minutes.
Transfer the chard to the baking dish and dot with feta cheese, pushing it down into the dish. Bake for 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the feta cheese is warmed.

Quinoa
(Courtesy of Dar Horn)

Rinse 2 ½ cups quinoa (the amount in a package from Rancho Gordo) several times until it stops "foaming". (I worked in Bolivia for awhile when I was an anthropology grad student and the folks I lived with used the foaming rinse water to wash their hair!)

Put the quinoa in a Chamba soup pot with some good olive oil and "saute" it as best you can (given that it is so wet.) Add spices to taste.

Add 2 ½ cups store-bought organic chicken stock plus ½ cup water and bring to a semi-hard boil.

After boiling for a few minutes, put on the cloth-wrapped lid and turn off the heat.

After about 10 min, fluff up the quinoa and put the lid back on for another 10 minutes or so. It is then ready to serve.