Chickpeas on Toast with Aioli and Crunchy Veg

And that's the toast, folks!

[clap]

[upbeat music]

Hey guys, I'm Molly from Bon Apetit

and today I am going to walk you through

a little recipe I developed

that features Bush's garbanzo beans.

I've been using a lot of canned beans

in quarantine right now because, frankly,

I know a lot of people are becoming obsessed

with cooking beans from scratch,

but the reality of working in quarantine

is you don't always have time for that.

And that's when something like Bush's beans

comes in very handy for us.

And I'm going to turn them into a sort

of a garbanzo Italian chopped salad

and I'm also gonna crisp up some of the garbanzos,

so you're gonna see how to use them two ways

and spoon them over toast.

The first thing you have to do, obviously,

is crack open the can.

So, remember to always save your aquafaba

'cause there are many uses for it.

So I'm gonna go give these a quick rinse.

[running water]

To properly crisp up these chickpeas,

the first thing we need to do

is to pat them dry.

I'm just adding about half of them here,

just eyeballing it, to this paper towel.

I'm gonna add a couple of glugs of olive oil

to this non-stick skillet,

maybe a tablespoon or two,

and I'm gonna add the chickpeas

that have been drained right in there.

And setting this over medium heat

and just letting it do its thing

for the next 15 minutes.

Okay, so chickpeas have been going

for four or five minutes or so

and you can see that they are starting

to get kind crisp and golden on the outside.

But they're still pretty pale

and we're gonna give them another five or ten minutes.

Half the chickpeas are goin' in the back.

I have my ears on them, although not my eyes.

The remaining chickpeas are gonna get marinated.

In my salad, I am going to put one stalk

of thinly-sliced celery.

And I'm just slicing it on a bias all the way down.

Like a quarter of a head of radicchio.

If you don't have radicchio,

iceberg would be kind of awesome here.

We're sort of emulating a classic chopped salad vibe.

Salami.

You could use any kind of salami you want.

Sopressata would be awesome.

I mean, I wouldn't be mad about mortadela in here.

I have some pickled cherry peppers,

which I've become slightly obsessed with

in quarantine for whatever reason.

And so I'm going to just roughly chop them up.

Just sort of whittle this cheese into chunks.

This is provolone.

I've also made this with parm with great success.

Any sort of hard, salty, Italian-ish cheese.

And now we dress it.

The dressing basically involves one garlic clove,

finely grated.

This is an enormous garlic clove,

so I'm only gonna use about half of it.

A little bit of lemon zest

and then a generous dousing of sherry vinegar.

Probably equal parts, I would say,

sherry vinegar and olive oil.

Obviously, a big pinch of salt,

and then I'm gonna grab a spoon

and we're just gonna mix-y mix until it tastes good.

You just want it to be juicy.

Think of this as marinating more

than it is dressing a salad.

So you can really kind of over-dress it.

We are marinated.

I'm gonna clean up for a second

and then we're gonna make quick aioli,

fry some bread, and assemble everything.

All right, so, we have supremely crispy garbanzos here.

I'm gonna show you.

You can even hear them, they're crisp.

I'm gonna season them with salt and set them aside

and let them cool.

And we'll come back to those in a few.

In the meantime, we're gonna take that same skillet,

put it back to medium-low heat

because it is already quite hot,

add another nice glug of oil.

And I'm gonna fry up a piece of bread.

I'm just gonna swoosh it around a little bit

so that it coats in the oil.

The last thing that we're gonna do here

is make a garlicky, lemony mayo situation.

So, I have a half a cup of mayonnaise,

that reserved garlic clove, the remaining half,

and I'm gonna grate that.

I have a little bit more lemon zest in this lemon,

so I'm gonna use that, too.

I've cut that in half and now I'm squeezing

the juice of about half of it right in there.

We're gonna season it with salt, taste it,

and stir it all up.

And then it's gonna get slathered all over

this fried bread. [tapping]

And I think we've done a good job.

Bread is getting there.

But we're not quite there,

so we're gonna leave it in there, couple more minutes.

Now we're going to assemble.

So, slathering generously with some

of our aioli right over top.

And now we're just gonna spoon this all over this bread.

Couple more spoonfuls of the salad, right on top.

Finally, the creme de la creme,

the crispy chickpeas on top.

And that's the toast, folks.

[clap]

All right, so, before I dive into this,

I'm gonna call my brother.

He is notoriously not a very inspired cook.

And so I would like to show him

that he could create something as complex and delicious

as this antipasto chopped salad,

crispy chickpea toast using a can of beans,

which I know he has at home,

and just a few minutes and mostly things from his pantry.

So we're gonna check in on him right now.

Hi Sam!

Hi!

You look pretty!

Hey, botched your smoothie a little bit,

but it's fine.

Wait, hold on, let me show you something.

Smooth girls.

Hey, cheers!

Cheers!

Okay, so, are you guys having lunch over there?

I wanted to share a meal with you, I thought

that was the plan.

Yeah, I'm gonna make some delicious peanut butter

and jelly sandwiches.

Oh, please walk me through it.

[woman laughs] It's a little complex.

Personally, I actually think maybe it's over your head.

You wanna see what I made?

Ugh. Gorgeous.

It's like a light bean salad of some sort?

Okay, so, it's canned chickpeas

that get marinated with all of the elements

of an Italian chopped salad,

so you've got your provolone, you got your celery,

you got your radicchio, a little salamis,

and then they get a vinegar-y, spicy dressing

and then it gets spooned over fried bread

with aioli and crispy chickpeas on top.

And it sounds really 2.0, but it's so easy

and it's one can of chickpeas.

Check it out.

Check that out.

Wow, you almost have like a peanut butter pull!

Cheers everyone, oh! [clicks tongue]

Cheers!

[upbeat music]