The Third Piece of the Puzzle

I know it's all about The Third Plate these days, but I have another dilemma in my house, namely the Third Piece issue. That is, in the meat-veg-starch triumvirate, I usually have the meat and vegetable down, but lately I've been stumped by what else goes on the plate that my brown-rice and bean-hating kids will be excited about, but that isn't a big pile of potatoes. (I know, everyone should have my problems.) Sometimes I just go with meat and a double vegetable, but the other night I decided to grab two of the seventy-five cans of garbanzo beans I've collected in the pantry (How? Why?), then drained, rinsed, dried, and fried them up in some oil before adding a few spices. And I think I might have found my answer. They were (somewhat) healthy, golden and crispy (read: appealing to the kids -- probably because they didn't recognize them as beans), flexible and can always be in the pantry, loyally awaiting dinner duty. Highly recommend if you have a few dozen cans in the pantry yourself.

Crispy Chickpeas The other night I served these with a cucumber-yogurt-mint salad and cold picnic chicken. (Recipe for that one on the way.)

Add a generous amount of canola oil to a cast iron skillet set over medium-high heat. Drain, rinse and dry two 14-ounce cans of garbanzo beans. When pan is hot but not smoking, add beans (in batches, if necessary, you want a single layer of beans on the pan's surface) and fry about 15 minutes per batch, tossing every 5 minutes or so. Remove with a slotted spoon into a paper-towel-lined bowl. Once all chickpeas are fried and drained, add salt, pepper, a pinch of cayenne, a 1/2 teaspoon of both garlic salt, and paprika, or (Bon Appetit-style) just smoked paprika and cayenne. You can also top with yogurt that has been mixed with a squeeze of lime juice and some freshly chopped mint or cilantro. Or you can stir in some chutney. Or you can offset the spiciness with a cool yogurty-cucumber salad. In short, go crazy.

Speaking of chickpeas, I remember these Crispy Cinnamon Garbanzo Beans being the most addictive after school snack ever.

And apropos of nothing: How good is The Third Man? I just added it to my Netflix queue -- I don't think I've seen it since the Orson Welles unit in college. The zither!