Pork and Chorizo Cocido with Garbanzos

Next time you have roast pork, I recommend you use any leftovers to make this spicy and interesting stew. It’s a variation on a theme that appears in many of my books and recipe articles, a real favourite combination of food and hard to screw up. It could be made with cocktail sausages, ribbons of squid or chicken. I’ve added chickpeas at the end (garbanzos) but boiled potatoes would work and so would peas.

Serves 2, generously
Prep: 25 min
Cook: 45 min

1 onion
1 tbsp olive oil
100g Spanish chorizo ring or whole sausage
300g approx leftover roast pork
2 tomatoes
2 carrots
150ml red wine
200ml chicken stock (cube is fine)
400g tin chickpeas
½ lemon
handful of coriander or flat leaf parsley

Halve, peel and finely chop the onion. Heat the olive oil in a medium, lidded, heavy bottomed pan over a medium heat and stir in the onion. Cook, stirring often, for 10 minutes or so while you run a sharp knife down the chorizo to cut the skin you can then tear/peel away. Cut the sausage into small chunks. Cut the pork into small kebab size dice. Boil the kettle, place the tomatoes in a deep receptacle and cover with boiling water. Count to 30, drain, cut out the core in a pointed plug shape, quarter the tomato and peel away the skin. Chop the tomatoes.  Scrape the carrots and chop into dice slightly smaller than the pork. By now the onions will be slippery soft and lightly coloured, stir the chorizo into the onions and cook, stirring often as the fat leaches and colours the onions. Add the pork. Toss it about a bit and then add the wine, letting it bubble up and into the meat, virtually disappearing. Add the carrot and tomato, cook for a couple of minutes then add the stock. Establish a gentle simmer and cook, stirring occasionally as the tomatoes break down. Semi-cover the pan and cook for a further 20 minutes or so until you are happy the pork is tender to your liking. Add the chickpeas (I rinse tinned chickpeas but add the liquor of Spanish garbanzos in a jar), taste and adjust the seasoning with salt and a squeeze of lemon. Chop the coriander or parsley and stir into the stew just before serving. This, like all stews and most soups, is even better the next day.